Elliott steals Kansas Speedway race in wild overtime finish, secures spot in 3rd round of playoffs

KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — The odds were stacked against Chase Elliott as he lined up eighth in overtime at Kansas Speedway in a pivotal NASCAR playoff race.

He had five Toyota drivers ahead of him including Denny Hamlin, who had dominated all of Sunday until a slew of late cautions turned the race upside down.

Even so, not even Elliott's own crew believed NASCAR's most popular driver could steal the win and lock himself into the third round of the playoffs.

“No. No,” crew chief Alan Gustafson said when asked if he thought Elliott had a chance at the start of overtime. “I’m not like, ‘Oh, damn, we’ve got a good shot.’ A couple restarts didn’t go our way, and yeah, you get a little frustrated. The percentage of winning decreases. Did I think that we had a great shot there? No.”

And yet Elliott pulled it off, coming from seemingly nowhere to chase down Hamlin, Bubba Wallace and the fleet of Toyotas. He door-slammed Hamlin to get to the checkered flag first — his second win of the season — and the Hendrick Motorsports driver joins Ryan Blaney as the two drivers already locked into NASCAR's third round of the playoffs.

Elliott said he believes it is the most exciting victory of his 21 career Cup wins.

“There are days and moments like today that bring a definite level of excitement for everyone,” Elliott said. "I didn't know what was going to happen any more than anybody else did. You live this stuff, you live these moments and I was making split-second decisions based off the information I had in front of me at that time.

“I definitely think there’s a level of excitement to that one that I’m not sure I’ve experienced in the Cup series to this point. Any win, though, is great. I’m not going to complain about it.”

Hamlin dominated and led 159 laps until a bevy of late issues denied him his chance at career win No. 60 for Joe Gibbs Racing. The race had a slew of late cautions — Hamlin dropped from the lead to seventh on a slow pit stop — that put Wallace in position to win the race. A red-flag stoppage for Zane Smith flipping his car set up the final overtime restart and Wallace was holding tight in a door-to-door battle with Christopher Bell for the victory.

Then Hamlin came from nowhere to catch Wallace, who drives for the team Hamlin co-owns with Michael Jordan, and Wallace scraped the wall as he tried to hold off his boss. That's when Elliott suddenly entered the frame and smashed Hamlin in the door to get past him for his second win of the season.

Elliott and Blaney are locked into the round of eight of the playoffs. The field will be cut from 12 drivers after next week's race in Concord, North Carolina, and Elliott said once he got in position for the victory, he wasn't giving up.

“I figured at the end of the day, it was what it was at that point,” Elliott said. “Wherever I ended up, I ended up."

Hamlin finished second and was clearly dejected by the defeat. The three-time Daytona 500 winner is considered the greatest driver to never win a Cup title and needed the victory to lock up his spot in the next round of the playoffs. He also has a 60th Cup win set as a major career goal and is stuck on 59 victories.

He drove the final 50-plus laps with his power steering on the fritz.

“Just super disappointing. I wanted it bad. It would have been 60 for me,” Hamlin said. "Obviously got really, really tight with (Wallace), and it just got real tight and we let (Elliott) win. Man, I wanted it for my dad. I wanted it for everybody. Just wanted it a little too hard.”

Hamlin was followed his JGR teammates Bell and Chase Briscoe, who were third and fourth.

Wallace wound up fifth and even though the victory would have moved him deeper into the playoffs than he's ever been in his career, he was satisfied considering how poorly his car was running earlier in the race. He wasn't even upset with Hamlin, and shook hands with his boss on pit road.

“To even have a shot at the win with the way we started ... you could have fooled me. We were not good,” Wallace said. “Two years ago I’d probably say something dumb (about Hamlin). He’s a dumbass for that move. I don’t care if he’s my boss or not. But we’re going for the win. I hate that we gave it to Chevrolet there.”

Elliott, in a Chevrolet for Hendrick Motorsports, was the only non-Toyota driver in the top five.

The four drivers in danger of playoff elimination headed into next Sunday's race are Ross Chastain, Austin Cindric, Tyler Reddick and Wallace.

Reddick raced Sunday and finished seventh, hours after his wife disclosed on social media their newborn son has been ailing for several months.

Alexa Reddick posted she was in the cardiovascular intensive care unit at a North Carolina hospital with Rookie, the couple's second son who was born in May, working on improving his “heart function.” She wrote she had been seeking medical care for Rookie for some time without getting any concrete answers for what appeared to be "signs of heart failure that were being missed.

“Always trust your mom gut,” she added.

A playoff elimination race at the hybrid oval/road course at Charlotte Motor Speedway, where Kyle Larson won a year ago.

AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing

Denny Hamlin, right, Chase Briscoe (19) Chris Buescher (17) and Kyle Larson, back, make a pit stop during a NASCAR Cup Series auto race at Kansas Speedway in Kansas City, Kan., Sunday, Sept. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Colin E. Braley)

Drivers head toward Turn 1 at the start of a NASCAR Cup Series auto race at Kansas Speedway in Kansas City, Kan., Sunday, Sept. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Colin E. Braley)

Chase Elliott celebrates in Victory Lane after winning a NASCAR Cup Series auto race at Kansas Speedway in Kansas City, Kan., Sunday, Sept. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Colin E. Braley)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Two senators from opposite parties are joining forces in a renewed push to ban members of Congress from trading stocks, an effort that has broad public support but has repeatedly stalled on Capitol Hill.

Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Republican Sen. Ashley Moody of Florida on Thursday plan to introduce legislation, first shared with The Associated Press, that would bar lawmakers and their immediate family members from trading or owning individual stocks.

It's the latest in a flurry of proposals in the House and the Senate to limit stock trading in Congress, lending bipartisan momentum to the issue. But the sheer number of proposals has clouded the path forward. Republican leaders in the House are pushing their own bill on stock ownership, an alternative that critics have dismissed as watered down.

“There’s an American consensus around this, not a partisan consensus, that members of Congress and, frankly, senior members of administrations and the White House, shouldn’t be making money off the backs of the American people,” Gillibrand said in an interview with the AP on Wednesday.

Trading of stock by members of Congress has been the subject of ethics scrutiny and criminal investigations in recent years, with lawmakers accused of using the information they gain as part of their jobs — often not known to the public — to buy and sell stocks at significant profit. Both parties have pledged to stop stock trading in Washington in campaign ads, creating unusual alliances in Congress.

In the House, for example, Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida is trying to bypass party leadership and force a vote on her own stock trading bill. Her push with a discharge petition has 79 of the 218 signatures required, the majority of them Democrats.

House Republican leaders are supporting an alternative bill that would prohibit members of Congress and their spouses from buying individual stocks but would not require lawmakers to divest from stocks they already own. It would mandate public notice seven days before a lawmaker sells a stock. The bill advanced in committee on Wednesday, but its prospects are unclear.

Gillibrand and Moody, meanwhile, are introducing a version of a House bill introduced last year by Reps. Chip Roy, a Republican from Texas, and Seth Magaziner, a Democrat from Rhode Island. That proposal, which has 125 cosponsors, would ban members of Congress from buying or selling individual stocks altogether.

Magaziner and other House Democrats, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, wrote in a joint statement Wednesday that they “are disappointed that the bill introduced by Republican leadership today fails to deliver the reform that is needed.”

The Senate bill from Gillibrand and Moody would give lawmakers 180 days to divest their individual stock holdings after the bill takes effect, while newly elected members would have 90 days from being sworn in to divest. Lawmakers would be prohibited from trading and owning certain other financial assets, including securities, commodities and futures.

“The American people must be able to trust that their elected officials are focused on results for the American people and not focused on profiting from their positions,” Moody wrote in response to a list of questions from the AP.

The legislation would exempt the president and vice president, a carveout likely to draw criticism from some Democrats. Similar objections were raised last year over a bill that barred members of Congress from issuing certain cryptocurrencies but did not apply to the president.

Gillibrand said the president “should be held to the same standard” but described the legislation as “a good place to start.”

“I don’t think we have to allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good,” Gillibrand said. “There’s a lot more I would love to put in this bill, but this is a consensus from a bipartisan basis and a consensus between two bodies of Congress.”

Moody, responding to written questions, wrote that Congress has the “constitutional power of the purse” so it's important that its members don't have “any other interests in mind, financial or otherwise.”

“Addressing Members of Congress is the number one priority our constituents are concerned with,” she wrote.

It remains to be seen if the bill will reach a vote in the Senate. A similar bill introduced by Gillibrand and GOP Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri in 2023 never advanced out of committee.

Still, the issue has salience on the campaign trail. Moody is seeking election to her first full term in Florida this year after being appointed to her seat when Marco Rubio became secretary of state. Gillibrand chairs the Senate Democrats’ campaign arm.

“The time has come," Gillibrand said. “We have consensus, and there’s a drumbeat of people who want to get this done.”

FILE -Sen. Ashley Moody, R-Fla., speaks during the confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee for Kash Patel, President Donald Trump's choice to be director of the FBI, at the Capitol in Washington, Jan. 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis, File)

FILE - Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., leaves the Senate chamber after voting on a government funding bill at the Capitol in Washington, March 14, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)