Elliott eager for first win
CONCORD, N.C. — NASCAR Hall of Famer Bill Elliott remembers taking his son to a kart race out West that the little boy badly wanted to win. But when he spun out and couldn’t get his ride restarted, his shot at victory was gone.
“He was devastated,” Elliott recalled with a laugh. “It’s just his DNA.”
A dozen or so years later, Chase Elliott is still very hard on himself.
The latest disappointment came last weekend at Dover International Speedway, where his first Cup Series victory was right in front of him. But with a little more than a lap remaining, Kyle Busch chased him down and denied the 21-year-old Elliott his long overdue first trip to victory lane in NASCAR’s top series.
Elliott had been close to winning before, but this defeat was by far the most painful for one of racing’s emerging stars.
“That’s as close as I’ve been to finishing one off, and when you go through defeats like that, I don’t think you’ll ever forget it,” Elliott said. “There is no silver lining. It was nobody’s fault but my own, and I take full responsibility for it.”
The hurt hung with Elliott for a day or two, but moving past the disappointment is paramount to his ability to learn how to win in a Cup Series car. His first chance at redemption comes Sunday at Charlotte Motor Speedway during the opening race in the second round of NASCAR’s playoffs. The field of 16 drivers has been cut to 12, and with unpredictable Talladega Superspeedway looming next week, Elliott wants to knock out a strong finish at Charlotte.
He will start seventh after Friday’s qualifying at the track, where Denny Hamlin earned his first pole position of the season. Hamlin will be joined in the front row by Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Matt Kenseth. Kevin Harvick, Busch, Clint Bowyer and Brad Keselowski are next in the starting grid before Elliott, who is ready to compete again.
“I think you take that frustration (from Dover) and everything that came with giving that race away and apply it to the upcoming week,” Elliott said. “This is an important round.”
Elliott has leaned on Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jimmie Johnson, a seven-time Cup Series season champion, as well as his famous father while dealing with the disappointments that come from racing. It was Johnson who got to Elliott’s car first at Dover to give the young driver a chance to calm down before facing television cameras.
Johnson’s advice to Elliott was to learn from the disappointing result, but Johnson wasn’t sure how Elliott could have changed his strategy to hold off Busch. Elliott had taken command of the race by running a low line he never adjusted, even though lapped traffic clogged the line and gave Busch time to catch him.
“From where I was in third, I thought Chase made the right move protecting the bottom,” said Johnson, an 11-time winner at Dover. “But there are many pieces to that mental game of winning, and one is just not handing them to somebody. Like nine out of 10 times, Chase ran the exact right line. But there is a way to learn how to win them, and I feel like Chase has put in his time and he’s only going to be stronger for it.”
In his second Cup Series season, Elliott is still trying to figure out how to outrun the stars of the sport. Each time he has come up short — he has five runner-up finishes in his career — he has been extremely hard on himself. His father believes that is a family trait, but it’s one Chase is working on overcoming.
“You’ve got to pick up the pieces and go on. Right now, it takes him a few days,” said Bill, the 1988 Cup Series champion and a twotime Daytona 500 winner. “But he’s learning how to deal with it and go on. He’ll be fine.”
Primed for victory
Hamlin turned a lap at 191.598 mph on the 1 1/2-mile oval to win the pole Friday evening, and he considers a good starting spot especially important this weekend.
He has wins at New Hampshire Motor Speedway and Darlington Raceway this year, but he has never won at Charlotte.
“This is a track position-type race track,” Hamlin said. “You want to have that first pit stall and have the clean air.”
Hamlin has 25 poles in his Cup Series career, and he has earned at least one every season for 13 years straight after Friday’s accomplishment.
Earnhardt honored
Dale Earnhardt Jr., who is racing at Charlotte for the final time, qualified 23rd in a backup car after he crashed just moments into practice Friday afternoon.
Earnhardt drove into the high line of the track and slipped in the grippy substance speedway officials had used on the surface before hitting the wall. Earnhardt wasn’t very happy about his misfortune and felt the compound — known as PJ1 — was too slick. “It’s like ice,” he said. The day picked up after practice, when Earnhardt was given his retirement gift from the track: $100,000 to establish the Dale Earnhardt Jr. Concussion Research Fund at Carolinas Healthcare System’s Levine’s Children’s Hospital. The gift will underwrite ImPACT baseline concussion testing for more than 10,000 students in eight area counties. Mooresville High School, Earnhardt’s alma mater, will be added to the program that includes “blink reflexometry” research.
Members of the Mooresville High School football team were on hand for the presentation, and Earnhardt shook hands with each of them. He’s retiring at the end of the season in part because of multiple concussions he has incurred while racing.