Looking at the stats from Chase Elliott’s weekend at Circuit of the Americas, you might think he had himself a solid outing. A top-three qualifying effort, a respectable stage finish, and a fourth-place result should add up to a decent race day. But in reality? This was more of a survival mission than a podium battle.
Elliott rolled off third on Sunday, the highest of any Chevrolet driver in the field. That should have set the stage for a strong performance. Instead, it took all of one corner for the entire plan to detonate like a firecracker in a microwave.
Ross Chastain, ever the agent of chaos, decided Turn 1 was the perfect place to introduce Elliott to the finer points of unrequested bumper assistance. Elliott got unceremoniously punted out of the way, throwing his entire day into disarray before he could even get settled. But if there’s one thing we know about NASCAR’s most popular driver, it’s that he’s not one to pack up and go home when things go sideways.
With a busted right rear toe link, Elliott limped to pit road, where his Hendrick Motorsports crew went to work. They slapped on some fresh parts, sent him back out, and told him to get on with it. And so began the long, grueling process of clawing his way back through the pack. He managed a fifth-place finish in Stage 1, a sign that all was not lost, but by the middle of the race, the No. 9 Chevrolet seemed to be stuck in neutral.
Then, in the final laps, something changed. Like a switch being flipped, Elliott came charging toward the front, slicing through traffic like a man who just realized his dinner reservation is in five minutes and he’s still on the wrong side of town. When the checkered flag dropped, Christopher Bell was celebrating, but Elliott? He was left wondering how, after everything, he had landed in fourth.
“Yeah, it was just a crazy day, really. I got run over, I felt like, there in the first corner,” Elliott said. “I’m curious to see it. I still haven’t seen it to know whether or not I did something wrong. I’m happy to own it, if I did. I just felt like it was the first corner of the first lap, and it’s just a bummer to get behind and then we had damage. Alan (Gustafson, crew chief) and the guys did a great job fixing it and getting it that close.
“We got behind on a restart there and just had to play major catch-up. Alan made a great call there at the end to put tires on it. We were rolling up through there really good at the end. Obviously, when you have a good car like that, I would have liked to have been in the fight with those guys, but it was a great recovery from where we were at during the end of the second stage.”
A great recovery indeed, but not exactly what Elliott came to COTA for. With his last win dating back to Texas last spring, the No. 9 team is overdue for a return to Victory Lane. If nothing else, they proved this weekend that they can take a punch, fix what’s broken, and still come out swinging. Now they just need to dodge the Ross Chastains of the world and put together a race where they don’t have to fight their way out of a hole. Because when they do? They’ll be a problem for the rest of the field.
Greg is the author of "The Nuts and Bolts of NASCAR: The Definitive Viewers' Guide to Big-Time Stock Car Auto Racing" and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, a Masters degree in psychology and is currently a PhD candidate majoring in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek.
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