KANSAS CITY, Kan. – The old adage may read that sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good, but Chase Elliott was both during Sunday’s Hollywood Casino 400 at Kansas Speedway.

Elliott was able to stay in contention up front all afternoon long, but it wasn’t until Kevin Harvick had to serve a speeding penalty following a green-flag pit stop with 54 laps to go that the young gun from Dawsonville, Ga., was able to pounce and win the second elimination race of the playoffs.

Harvick, who won the second stage of the race, had to come back to pit road for a pass-through penalty, while Elliott climbed further and further up the running order. When Brad Keselowski – who had utilized a strategy of staying out longer than anyone else all race – finally ceded the point for his last stop on lap 224, the die was cast.

Elliott cycled through to lead for the first time all afternoon at that point and then paced the final 44 laps en route to victory, though he had to hold off a hard-charging Kyle Busch before he could celebrate.

Because Elliott was the first of the frontrunners to make his final green-flag stop, Busch had slightly fresher tires on the run to the finish. He carved a three second advantage down to one second with 15 laps left, then sliced that deficit in half by the time the 10 to go benchmark was crossed.

However, even as the pair diced through slower traffic in the final laps, Elliott remained steadfast and hit his marks perfectly on the high side of the track to earn his third career Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series victory and second in the last three races.

The playoff points Elliott earned by winning on Sunday set him up as the fourth seed for the third round of the postseason.

“That was awesome, there at the end,” noted Elliott of his battle with Busch. “I just enjoy racing with him. I obviously got lucky, with Kevin (Harvick) having his penalty, because I thought we were really, really equally matched there for most of the day. I wish we could have raced him straight up obviously, but we had a great car today and I’m glad it all worked out for us.”

Even with two wins in the round of 12, Elliott knows there’s no letting up with a title on the line.

“It’s been a great couple of months, but we can’t get complacent,” he noted. “We’ve got to keep this rolling. This is the time of year that counts and we’re coming for them; you can count on that.”

Busch came home as the runner-up, a reversal of the playoff race a year ago at Dover Int’l Speedway when he chased Elliott down and was able to make the pass for the win with two laps remaining.

On this day however, the handling of Busch’s race car just wasn’t where he could fight forward.

“We got too tight there on that long run. I knew it was going to get tight, it was just a matter of whether or not I could get there and get by him (Chase Elliott) first,” said Busch. “Running the top like that, it just inherently creates a tight condition in the race car. The sooner you get up there, the longer you’re up there and it just gets that much tighter.

“Chase did a good job of having that big of a gap that he didn’t have to go up there so early, and he had a little bit better tire there when I got to him to where he was able to move down a little bit and keep rolling with the speed. I just couldn’t do it that way,” he continued. “We came home second today. That’s just kind of all there is it to it. I didn’t think we were going to have to a second place car, so this was a good day for us as a team and we’ll roll on to Martinsville and chase a win there next week.”

Kyle Larson, who needed a win to advance in the playoffs, started from the rear of the field and was running down the top two in the final laps. He was within a second of the leader coming to three to go, but could get no closer and crossed the line third at the finish.

Larson was eliminated from championship contention along with Brad Keselowski, Ryan Blaney and Alex Bowman. All four drivers finished among the top nine on Sunday, but their efforts weren’t enough to put them above the cut line after 400 miles in the Sunflower State.

The Toyotas of Erik Jones and Martin Truex Jr. were fourth and fifth in the final rundown.

Polesitter Joey Logano led a race-high 100 laps and won the first stage, but finished eighth, while Harvick rallied back to 12th after his speeding ticket in the final stage.