On Sunday Chase Elliott had his best run of the season and ended up finishing P3 in a Martinsville race defined by Hendrick Motorsports. The NASCAR champion had a shot to win, but couldn’t make it happen.
William Byron had the track position. He was the best car all day and the only one able to really drive up through the field. Even with Kyle Larson, Chase Elliott, and Alex Bowman running strong in the top-10, Byron stood out.
After the race, Elliott talked about his teammate’s strong run. He isn’t sure what the difference was. Byron just had something everyone else lacked.
“I don’t know, he was super good. Credit to him because he passed his way all the way to the lead,” Elliott said, via Bob Pockrass of FOX Sports. “It wasn’t like he did it on pit road or anything, he just flat-out drove by us all. So, after the cycle and he came back out I saw him coming. I’m like, ‘Man this is going to be tough, he’s way better than anybody else I’ve been around all day.’ And he did a great job with whatever they had working. I don’t know why, maybe it was just him, maybe he just did a better job today than the rest of us.”
As for that final restart, Chase Elliott was aggressive. He got physical with the 24 car, but couldn’t make the move he wanted to make. At that point, he didn’t care if he was P2 or P3, just going for the win. Whatever happens after, oh well.
“Sure we came off four there in the zone, I had an okay jump, just couldn’t make it stick there on the outside,” he continued. “Got into three and tried to root him up off the bottom and went to get the power down to get up underneath him and I just couldn’t do it and then I tried to run in really hard into one and roll a little bit of a diamond, and couldn’t make that stick either. So, at that point, I figured what was second or third who cares at that point, you try to go for the win or nothing.”
Chase Elliott is not one to linger on things. He tends to move on quickly. It appears he wants to do that with the Martinsville finish as well. It was a great day for Hendrick Motorsports. So, there’s no point in thinking about what could have been.
“It was going to be a, I felt pretty good one of us was going to win the race unless we crashed each other. Which, I wasn’t going to crash him. I wasn’t worried about me crashing him, I don’t know about the rest of them but I wasn’t worried about that. Gave him a shot there, tried to win the race, and didn’t work out. One of us won it, the ifs, ands, buts don’t really matter at this point. William was able to get it done and we got a nice one, two, three for HMS.”
This season started off on a rocky footing. The No. 9 team really didn’t have speed to speak of in those first few weeks. However, things have slowly started to change. Chase Elliott now has two top-5 finishes in back-to-back weeks.
While we haven’t seen him in Victory Lane since Talladega-2 in 2022, it’s coming. Chase is too good to keep out of P1 for long. As he builds confidence and speed, keep an eye on that No. 9 car.
More must-reads: