Chase Elliott’s night at Bristol ended with the sound no driver wants to hear—the thud of a stock car smashing nose-first into the concrete. On lap 312, three cars went looking for the same bit of Tennessee real estate, and Elliott’s Chevy was the unlucky tenant. Just like that, his race was over, his headset was on, and he was left pacing the garage like a man waiting for the executioner to read the verdict.
Depending on which camp you sit in, Elliott was either the architect of his own disaster or just collateral damage in one of Bristol’s many bouts of short-track chaos. Either way, it was a gut punch to his Playoff run. The No. 9 team came to Thunder Valley in shaky mathematical territory, and now their hopes were left hanging by the threads of everyone else’s misfortune.
Miraculously, no spoiler came to spoil it. Elliott advanced, but the real question is: how much further can he limp down this road?
Elliott himself was candid about the crash that parked him early.
“The No. 22 got position on me,” he said. “I thought I was clear getting back in line, but I got a huge shot from behind. Not sure if the 42 got pushed or wasn’t expecting me, but nonetheless, it happened, and it’s done.”
That’s Bristol, baby. The track where ‘clear’ is just a theory and ‘room’ is a fairy tale.
Which is a shame, because for once, Elliott looked like he’d wrestled his way out of the hole he’d been digging all night. Restarting 10th, the NAPA Chevy suddenly had the scent of progress, and then—bang—concrete. The kind of twist that makes Bristol both infuriating and brilliant.
Elliott admitted the tires had all the reliability of a cheap lawn chair.
“It was super sketchy,” he said. “Our car was really good for a few laps, then we struggled. We spent most of the night in the back just trying to get back on the lead lap. Once we did, we needed some balance adjustments. We were working on it and making it better.”
The tires didn’t so much force a new driving style as magnify the misery of running behind, he explained.
“Being in the back versus up front was a big difference in how I was driving. We were working on our balance and it was slowly getting better.”
But there’s the rub. Slowly. Bristol doesn’t wait for slow. It chews through rubber, patience, and Playoff math with equal ferocity.
So Elliott walks away battered but alive in the championship hunt. The wreck was brutal, the car a mess, but the season isn’t dead—yet. The next round is another story entirely. For now, he lives to fight another week, which is the NASCAR equivalent of staggering out of a bar brawl missing a shoe, but still upright.
Greg was a writer for DriveTribe supporting Amazon's The Grand Tour 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, and a Masters degree in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek and a regular contributor to Forbes.
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