Denny Hamlin: Chase Elliott is ‘in the cellar’ in NASCAR playoffs, names best chance for him to advance

Denny Hamlin kept it real when discussing where Chase Elliott stands in the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs following a disappointing weekend in Las Vegas.

It wasn’t meant to be for the sport’s most popular wheelman in Sin City. Elliott was caught up in a wreck involving Tyler Reddick, Brad Keselowski, Austin Cindric and Ryan Blaney, leading to a P33 finish for the former NASCAR Cup Series champion.

The wreck put Elliott in a pretty damning position as far as where he sits in the playoff standings at the moment. He’s in P8 out of the eight drivers he’s competing against, 53 points from the cut-line for the Championship 4. Basically, Elliott will have to win his way in over the next two weeks, barring a miracle.

During the latest episode of his Actions Detrimental podcast, Hamlin elaborated on what he believes Elliott needs to do moving forward, and whether it’s realistic to expect the Hendrick Motorsport star to be racing for the championship when the Cup Series heads to Phoenix.

“Chase Elliott, we talked about his points position, he’s in the cellar. Not good,” Hamlin said, regarding the former Cup Series champion. “He was definitely kind of an innocent bystander. It looks like he — you know, watching the beginning of the race, he was coming to the front pretty quickly, and I saw after the race he was pretty happy with his car before that crash. He had got the track position. He didn’t qualify well, but he was making it up rather quickly.

“So, he’s in a position where Homestead — he’s probably stronger at Martinsville than he is at Homestead. He’s going to try to win both, but I give his best shot to win at Martinsville.”

Perhaps Elliott would’ve been able to survive a rough weekend at Phoenix if he had a stronger playoffs prior, but that hasn’t been the case. He only has only four top-10s and two top-fives in the seven playoff races thus far, which isn’t good enough when you consider the competition he’s working against.

Denny Hamlin is currently on the outside looking in as well, so Chase Elliott will have some tough sledding if he wants to shock the world and move on to the Championship 4. Time will tell, but don’t count the No. 9 wheelman out.