NASCAR
Brandon Jones Beats Chase Elliott in Overtime Buzzer-Beater at Chicagoland
JOLIET, Ill. – Never giving up being in the non-preferred groove in overtime, Brandon Jones stunned many after starting 29th. Joe Gibbs Racing’s No. 20 Toyota muscled its way by Chase Elliott on a green white checkered finish to earn Jones’ maiden win of 2026 at Chicagoland. All three full-time JGR O’Reilly Series drivers have now visited victory lane this season, with Jones taking career win number eight.
Chase Elliott appeared as best in class early on in JR Motorsports’ No. 88 Chevrolet. The past Chicagoland Speedway winner took the lead on pit road between the opening two stages, and paced all of Stage 2.
Elliott’s Camaro only seemed to build in more and more speed with each passing run. The 88 would retake command with 10 laps left and began to gap the field. An overtime-triggering caution for a few cars tangling in turn four would pit Elliott against Brandon Jones for one more restart.
On the two-lap dash, Jones got the jump on Elliott and had the 88 cleared by turn three. Elliott was never able to mount a successful last-lap charge, giving Chicagoland’s comeback win to the 20.
“I had to earn that one,” Jones said. “I haven’t had an exciting one like that in a long time. Thank you guys for sticking this out in the rain. MD Building Supplies and Menard’s and Toyota, I’m so happy to get them back in victory lane. It’s been such an up-and-down year. We’ve had some success early on and we’ve been in a little bit of a rut the last couple of weeks, so it’s nice to do what we did today, we had to earn that one.”
“It says a lot about how resilient we are and how hard we are working at this. Chase (Elliott) made it really difficult on me. He’s one of the best in the sport so I know it was going to be difficult. We were all on old tires, that was a blast to slide around and duel it out like that. I knew had made the right adjustments there at the end and you can tell people were getting tighter tonight with the temperature falling down and the track was migrating. Awesome racetrack, you guys know I love these style of tracks, they fit me so well, let’s get on a roll and get some more here before the Chase starts.”
Behind Jones and Elliott at the finish were: Jesse Love, Brent Crews, and Austin Hill. Justin Allgaier, Taylor Gray, Sam Mayer, Cole Custer, and Connor Zilisch were the rest of the O’Reilly Chicagoland top-10.
Allgaier’s nice recovery from a costly pit road error preserves his mammoth championship lead. The No. 7 now leads Jesse Love by 195 points with only four regular season races left.
O’Reilly teams will be back in action next week from Atlanta’s EchoPark Speedway. The drafting track is the next hurdle to clear on the championship path, with Austin Hill eyeing Atlanta redemption in the Focused Health 250. The Georgia green flag flies Saturday at 7 p.m. ET on The CW, PRN, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
Written by Peter Stratta
Be sure to follow us on Twitter/X
Be sure to follow the writer on Twitter/X
Photo credits to Jonathan Bachman/Getty Images
