Chase Elliott apologizes to Josh Berry for spinning him at Gateway

For the second straight week, Josh Berry was wrecked in the opening laps of a playoff race. His chances are on absolute life support at this point, this time courtesy of a spin induced by Chase Elliott.

In a post-race interview, Elliott, who finished P3 on the afternoon, immediately pivoted to the wreck with Berry. He was apologetic.

“First off just want to apologize to Josh and the 21 team,” Elliott said. “I had no intention of getting into him. I’ve known those guys my whole life, so I just hope that they at least know it wasn’t anything intentional.

“Known Josh for a long time, too, so just want to make sure those guys know that I feel terrible about that. Felt terrible about it right when it happened and wish I could take it back. Yeah, unfortunately that transpired.”

The wreck occurred when Chase Elliott was at the low side of the track going into a turn. He came up into the corner and got into Berry’s back left bumper, spinning him around.

Berry’s car hit the outside wall hard as a result, knocking his front left wheel way out of whack. It was catastrophic damage, ending Berry’s day in P36.

For Chase Elliott, though, the day was a very positive one. For the first time in a while he felt like he had a chance to win.

“Really proud of our effort,” Elliott said. “I thought we had really good pace in our NAPA Chevy today. I was able to be on good offense, put ourselves in some good spots throughout the course of the race. Had good restarts and got ourselves up there in the mix. We probably weren’t the very best, but I thought we were really close.”

Chase Elliott, always a fixture near the front of the pack, remains in decent position in the NASCAR Cup Series playoff standings. He is in ninth place, riding 28 points above the cut line heading into the final weekend.

If he can put together another outing like he did at Gateway, he’ll be in great shape. That’s the goal, anyway.

“As respectable as we’ve been in some time, in my opinion,” Elliott said of his race Sunday. “Hopefully we can carry that forward into Bristol next week, would be a fun one to do it at.”