MARTINSVILLE, Va. — With a Championship 4 spot on the line, William Byron put the bumper to Ryan Blaney to win at Martinsville Speedway on Sunday in the third-round finale of the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs.

Byron made his winning move with 43 laps remaining, seizing the bottom lane in Turn 1 and moving Blaney up the track by tagging him in the left rear.

The Hendrick Motorsports driver led the rest of the way and fended off Blaney on a restart with 11 laps remaining. Starting from the pole position, Byron led a race-high 304 of 500 laps for his third victory this season in the No. 24 Chevrolet.

“I thought William drove the race of his life,” said Hendrick vice chairman Jeff Gordon, a four-time Cup champion and nine-time winner at Martinsville himself.

It was the first win in 11 races since August at Iowa Speedway for Byron, who won the regular-season championship despite a six-month drought after opening the year with his second consecutive Daytona 500 victory.

He had one top-five finish (a third at New Hampshire Motor Speedway) in the previous eight playoff races and opened the third round with a 36th at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and a 25th at Talladega Superspeedway that left him in a win-or-else position to make his third consecutive Championship 4 appearance.

Byron delivered with his 16th career Cup victory — his first in a playoff elimination race and third at Martinsville.

“Damn, I got a lot to say,” Byron said. “Things have a way of working out. God really tests your resilience a lot of times. We’ve been tested. Just unbelievable. We just worked so hard, and you put everything into Sundays. Sometimes you don’t get anything in return. That’s been the last couple of weeks and honestly throughout the year. But sometimes life is that way. You just got to keep being resilient. We were. Just feels damn good.”

Blaney also was in a must-win situation to advance to the championship round. Trying to win his third consecutive playoff race at Martinsville, came up one spot short despite qualifying 31st and leading 177 laps on the 0.526-mile oval.

There were no hard feelings afterward as Blaney congratulated Byron in Victory Lane.

“That’s just two guys going for it, I don’t blame him for taking that,” Blaney said about the contact with Byron on the pass for the lead. “I would have done the same thing. I knew it was going to be tight. I tried to crowd him as much as I could. Just proud of the effort from the team. They gave 100% of what they had, and that’s all you can ask. Wasn’t quite enough.”

Kyle Larson, Byron’s Hendrick Motorsports teammate, captured the final championship-eligible berth in the season finale with a fourth-place finish that put him seven points ahead of Christopher Bell, who was seventh.

“What a performance by William,” Larson said. “Happy for Hendrick Motorsports. This win is as good as it could have been for us to score more points than Christopher then have William win, too. Hopefully one of us can win it.”

Bell again was the first driver left out of the Championship 4, but he could live with the outcome more than last year’s race when he was bounced by Byron in a finish tainted by manipulation.

“I feel content with the results,” Bell said. “The four are legitimate contenders. Whoever the champion is, it’s going to be well-deserving.”

Byron and Larson advanced to face Denny Hamlin and Chase Briscoe in the title round Nov. 2 at Phoenix Raceway, where the championship will be awarded to the driver with the best finish of the four drivers who are split evenly between Joe Gibbs Racing and Hendrick.

Along with Bell and Blaney, third-place finisher Chase Elliott and defending series champion Joey Logano (eighth) also were eliminated from the playoffs.

With Blaney and Logano locked out of the Phoenix title race, Team Penske’s streak of three consecutive Cup championships was snapped.

Hamlin and Briscoe both suffered engine failures during Sunday’s race.

Hamlin, who opened the third round with a Las Vegas Motor Speedway victory to advance to the title race, was running second on the 334th lap when he pulled his sputtering No. 11 Toyota into the garage.

It was the third playoff race with a mechanical problem for Hamlin, who also needed a push from team members Saturday when his car failed to start in qualifying.

“I felt like the car was coming to us and was just starting to close in on Blaney,” said Hamlin, who finished 35th after winning at Martinsville in March. “I didn’t feel anything. The engine was running and then not. We’ll work on it. I’m obviously concerned, but obviously nothing I can do about it. So we’re going to have to live with it and hopefully we get lucky next week.”

Briscoe finished last when his No. 19 Toyota lost power after 295 laps, but the JGR driver already had locked into the Championship 4 with his Oct. 19 victory at Talladega Superspeedway.

“Went to upshift and something happened,” said Briscoe, who was running 12th before the failure. “Not really sure but next week is what it’s all about anyway.”

ORANGEBURG, S.C. — The NCAA owes a former college football player and his wife $18 million, a South Carolina jury decided while finding college sports’ major governing body negligent in failing to warn the player about the long-term effects of concussions.

Following a civil trial that wrapped up late last week, Orangeburg County jurors awarded $10 million to 68-year-old Robert Geathers, who played at South Carolina State University from 1977 to 1980 as a defensive end. His wife, Debra, was awarded $8 million, according to a court document.

A physician diagnosed Robert Geathers with dementia several years ago, The Times and Democrat newspaper in Orangeburg reported. Now he has trouble with day-to-day tasks such as dressing himself and helping making meals.

Other physicians who testified at the trial said Geathers displays symptoms of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease found in former football players who received repeated blows to their heads while playing. CTE can be diagnosed only posthumously.

The couple’s attorneys argued to jurors that blows Geathers took during practices and games for the historically Black school in Orangeburg caused trauma that didn’t show up until decades later, the newspaper reported.

Geathers attorney Bakari Sellers alleged the NCAA knew about concussion risks since the 1930s but didn’t tell coaches or players about those risks until later.

“All of the information they knew, they withheld,” Sellers told jurors, adding that “their job was to keep the boys safe.”

The verdict can be appealed. NCAA spokesperson Greg Johnson said Saturday in an email that the organization disagreed with the verdict and that it “was prepared to pursue our rights on post-trial motions and on appeal, if necessary.”

Johnson said the “NCAA has prevailed in every other jury trial around the country on these issues” and that the South Carolina State team standards “followed the knowledge that existed at the time, and college football did not cause Mr. Geathers’ lifelong health problems.”

NCAA trial attorney Andy Fletcher said at the trial that Robert Geathers has several health conditions that influence dementia-like symptoms, and that the NCAA’s football rules committee is composed of representatives of member schools that could propose rules.

“There’s going to be head-hits. That’s inherent to the game. You can’t take head-hits out of football,” Fletcher said in closing arguments.

According to the newspaper, the jury determined the NCAA “unreasonably increased the risk of harm of head impacts to Robert Geathers over and above the risks inherent to playing football.” And it also determined the NCAA “voluntarily assumed duties to protect the health and safety of Robert Geathers” and that the NCAA “negligently breached their duties” to him.

After the trial, Sellers said the result provided justice: “I felt good to hug Debra Geathers. She gets to go home and tell her husband some good news.”

Texas quarterback Arch Manning left the game after his helmet appeared to bounce off the ground at the end of a 13-yard run on the first play of overtime in the No. 22 Longhorns’ 45-38 victory at Mississippi State on Saturday.

Manning dropped back to throw on the play but scrambled up the middle when he couldn’t find an open receiver. As Manning dove while being tackled by safety Isaac Smith, he was hit from behind by defensive lineman Kedrick Bingley-Jones.

Texas right tackle Brandon Baker tried to help Manning up, but the signal-caller struggled to get on his feet and sat on the field, sending trainers out to get him. Manning was in the medical tent at the end of the contest.

Longhorns coach Steve Sarkisian didn’t have an update on Manning after the game, telling reporters, “We’ll find out more when we get back to Austin.” Sources confirmed to ESPN that Manning suffered a concussion.

Backup quarterback Matthew Caldwell came in and threw a 10-yard touchdown to Emmett Mosley V to finish the Longhorns’ stunning comeback, in which they rallied from a 17-point deficit in the fourth quarter to send the game into overtime.

According to ESPN Research, the Longhorns were the first SEC team to rally from a 17-point deficit in the fourth quarter to win since South Carolina came back from 17-0 down to beat Missouri 27-24 in two overtimes in 2013.

After a slow start, Manning had perhaps his best performance at Texas, completing 29 of 46 passes for a career-high 346 yards and three touchdowns with one interception. He also ran for a score. He went 12-for-20 for 166 yards and two touchdowns in the fourth quarter, becoming the first Texas quarterback with at least 150 passing yards and two touchdowns in the fourth quarter since Sam Ehlinger in 2019.

Trailing 38-21, Manning gave the Longhorns some life when he threw a 21-yard touchdown to Mosley to cut Mississippi State’s lead to 38-28 with 9:34 to go.

Texas’ defense came up with two sacks to force a three-and-out on the Bulldogs’ next possession, and the Longhorns reached the MSU 5-yard line. Texas had to settle for Mason Shipley‘s 26-yard field goal that made it 38-31.

After another three-and-out from the Bulldogs, Texas’ Ryan Niblett returned a punt 79 yards for a touchdown to tie the score at 38 with 1:47 left in regulation.

The Longhorns will host No. 10 Vanderbilt next week.