Elliott’s win stirs up links to his dad
So now there is evidence hinting as to why Chase Elliott had not won a Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race in 98 tries.
Apparently he needed a threat from his old man, none other than Awesome Bill from Dawsonville, owner of one of the best nicknames – and some of the best Fords – in NASCAR history.
The threat was none too subtle. In the very week that Chase finally broke through after a frustrating series of eight runner-up finishes, his dad, Bill, had announced he would be returning to NASCAR national series racing by stepping into an Xfinity Series car later this month at Road America.
That announcement came like a bolt out of the blue. The older Elliott hasn’t driven in a national series race since 2012, and his last Cup win came in 2003, his last full-time season. He drove limited Cup schedules from 2004 to 2012 without scaring any of the other residents of victory lane.
Bill Elliott is 62, 40 years older than Chase. That generation gap finally was closed Sunday after a 21⁄2-year struggle, Chase taking the checkered flag first at Watkins Glen International to join his Hall of Fame father on the Cup Series’ victory list.
There are few wins as emotional as one’s first, and the hug shared by father and son in the craziness of victory lane was special on a number of levels.
The only unfortunate thing about Elliott’s victory Sunday was that his mother, Cindy, wasn’t there to see it. A former auto racing photographer who was shooting images of Bill long before she married him, Cindy perhaps has traveled the toughest road watching her son come oh-so-close to victory but falling short. Often, it hits the mom the hardest.
Perhaps the toughest of Elliott’s nonwins came last October at Dover International Speedway in Delaware. Elliott led 138 laps, including 59 in a row near the end of the race before being passed by Kyle Busch for first place as the two drivers approached the white flag. Busch won.
Elliott climbed from his car on pit road, clearly stung by the nature of another failure to win. Before the news media horde descended on him for yet another explanation of yet another second place, Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jimmie Johnson walked from his car to Elliott’s, joining Chase for a few minutes of conversation and giving the young driver a chance to settle his nerves and confront the frustration.
Ironically, when Elliott finally won Sunday but then ran out of gas on the race’s cooldown lap, it was Johnson, who is enduring a long winless streak of his own, who pushed Elliott’s car toward victory lane. Elliott called Johnson “a hero of mine” and “a guy I leaned on a lot through some of those hard days.”
There were other ironies associated with the win. Like his father, Chase finished runner-up eight times before winning, and his first win and his dad’s both came on road courses.
Additionally, it’s worth noting that Elliott’s Sunday win moves him solidly onto the playoff list while leaving teammates Alex Bowman and Johnson, both winless, roaming around in the neighborhood of the playoff cutoff line.
That brings a bit of discomfort to Hendrick Motorsports, which is used to bigger and better things, particularly for Johnson, its seven-time champion.