Ahead of a dramatic battle for the final spot above the playoff cut line that saw two drivers literally go in opposite directions at the finish line, Shane van Gisbergen won the Bank of America Roval 400 at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval to earn his fifth win of the season and the sixth of his NASCAR Cup Series career. After being eliminated from the playoffs in the Round of 16, SVG was able to put a period on his season as NASCAR’s King of the Road, winning his fifth of the six Cup road course races this season and his fifth in a row.
While Van Gisbergen was able to outlast both Kyle Larson and Christopher Bell after a close and spirited race between the three drivers, the intrigue of Sunday’s race wound up surrounding the cutoff for the Round of 8, which came down to defending Cup Series champion Joey Logano and Ross Chastain.
NASCAR playoffs 2025 race schedule, results: Complete list of Cup Series race dates, winners, tracks
Steven Taranto
Thanks to scoring a good chunk of stage points, Chastain needed to finish only four spots ahead of Logano in order to advance to the next round, but his path towards doing so was complicated by a pair of self-inflicted wounds on pit road. He first cost himself track position by missing the turn at pit exit under caution at the end of stage 1, then put himself in an even worse position when he sped on pit road under green after accidentally leaving his pit box in the wrong gear.
Shortly after being passed by Chastain, Logano elected to come to pit road with 11 laps to go, giving him slightly fresher tires to try and run down enough cars on a three-stop strategy that he could gain enough points, combined with Chastain losing enough positions and points on older tires, that it would get him to the next round. It took until the final lap, but Logano’s strategy would work out, as Denny Hamlin passed Chastain in turn 7 with one lap to go to flip the cut line back in the defending champion’s favor via a tiebreaker that Logano held — and then things got really interesting.
In a desperation move in the final corner, Chastain lunged into the frontstretch chicane from well back of Hamlin to try and move him out of the way, but ended up spinning himself out along with Hamlin. Chastain threw his car into reverse and backed across the finish line, but by that point it was too late: Logano drove past the incident to finish 20th, which was enough to put him in the Round of 8 while Chastain, along with Tyler Reddick, Bubba Wallace and Austin Cindric, were all eliminated from playoff contention.