Alan Gustafson, crew chief for Chase Elliott’s No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet, was at his home packing a suitcase for the weekend race at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway last Friday when his boss, the boss, Rick Hendrick called.
“He wanted me to deliver a message to the team,” Gustafson recalled. “The quote for him was, ‘this is a marathon not a 10K race. We’re in it for the long run. Regardless of the way it starts, it’s about the way it finishes.’”
And the way it finished Sunday evening at the Martinsville half-miler was optimum – exactly the result Hendrick, Gustafson, Elliott and the greater team had hoped to deliver Chevrolet’s first victory of the season and the earliest win in a season that the 2020 series champion Elliott had ever earned.
For the effort, the 30-year-old Georgia-native now sits fourth in the NASCAR Cup Series championship standings. The team’s strategic, hard-fought win was especially encouraging considering it came on a day when Joe Gibbs Racing veteran Denny Hamlin, started from pole position, won both stages and led a dominating 292 of the 400 laps.
The return for Chevrolet to the winner’s circle was particularly significant in a season when Toyota had won five of the first six races and Ford, the other.
And as the phone call from Hendrick demonstrated, the motivational power the respected championship team owner provides should not be underestimated. Hendrick Motorsports is perpetually racing for wins and championships. That is the minimum expectation.
And who could argue with Sunday’s results?
“Sometimes that’s a kick in the butt, sometimes that’s just support,” NASCAR Hall of Famer and Hendrick executive Jeff Gordon reiterated of the boss reaching out to Gustafson. “He [Hendrick] wants it bad. Nobody’s more competitive than he is. But it’s just always interesting to see how he views it and how he feels what the team needs best.”
Elliott’s victory at Martinsville was indeed a shot of adrenaline for the four-car Hendrick team, which also includes two-time and reigning series champion Kyle Larson and William Byron, who both had top-10 Martinsville finishes as well.
And it was a legitimate boost for the entire Chevrolet contingent.
Toyota, with the help of four-race winner Tyler Reddick and Hamlin [who won at Las Vegas two weeks ago] has proven itself ‘The’ manufacturer most on its game early in this season. Even with a 15th-place finish Sunday in the No. 45 23XI Racing Toyota, Reddick maintains a dramatic 82-point advantage atop the points standings. With his win Elliott moves into fourth place, first among the Chevrolets, but still 104 points behind Reddick.
“Man, this is awesome,” Elliott said of his early season victory. “Really cool and going into an off-week too which means we get to enjoy it for two weeks, not one.
“It’s the little things, man. You kind of learn to enjoy that stuff. … I know we still have a lot of room for improvement, don’t get me wrong, but great way to kind of cap off this first stretch [of races]. A lot of good momentum for the whole organization, honestly, I think.”
While Elliott cautioned that his win Sunday – aided by a clutch late race strategy call by Gustafson – doesn’t mean he and the rest of the field have necessarily “caught” the Toyota contingent. It does at least provide solid encouragement and a reminder that it’s still early in the season with plenty of highly-motivated teams and drivers prepared to give Toyota a run for the big trophy
“I think we’re still figuring it out,” Elliott said. “But certainly winning, that’s petty self-explanatory, when you get that many more points from second you want to get that done. How the rest works out we’ll just have to kind of see as we go.
“It’s simple,” Elliott said of his appreciation for team leadership. “We just show up and go to work, man. We try to do the best we can to put the best result out there for everybody involved.”
The NASCAR Cup Series goes into its first off-weekend of the season but resumes racing April 12 with the Food City 500 at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway (3 p.m. ET on FS1, PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). Kyle Larson is the defending Bristol race winner.
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