Champ Elliott: NASCAR star goes for 2nd Cup championship

PHOENIX

— Chase Elliott was supposed to be the star during his season as both NASCAR’s reigning champion and its most popular driver. He wasn’t even the top guy at his own organization.

Beat all season by Hendrick Motorsports newcomer Kyle Larson, Elliott gets a final shot Sunday to defend his run as NASCAR’s champ. The star teammates are trying this weekend to emerge as the best in NASCAR — and earn bragging rights at Hendrick — as they race for the championship at Phoenix Raceway in a winnertake-all finale.

Joe Gibbs teammates

Racing Denny

Hamlin and Martin Truex Jr. also are in the final four. But who comes out as the top dog at Hendrick, winner of 16 races this year and NASCAR’s winningest team, is one of the more intriguing layers of the first soldout finale since the race was in Florida.

Elliott delivered last year on the expectations heaped on him as the son of a Hall of Fame driver to not only make his first championship race, but win the whole thing to earn Hendrick its first championship since Jimmie Johnson’s record-tying seventh in 2016. The No. 9 team got hot late in the playoff stretch and won three of the last five races, including the Phoenix finale under a format that rewards late-season success.

Hendrick Motorsports won 16 of 35 races this season, nine from Larson in his NASCAR comeback. Elliott has won two races, and it was team boss Rick Hendrick who just this week used victory totals (Hendrick driver Alex Bowman four wins; Hamlin two for Gibbs) when asked for response to Hamlin calling Bowman “a hack.”

That would put Larson up 9-2 over Elliott in Hendrick’s eyes. Surely that must gnaw at Elliott, who now could lose his Cup reign a day short of a full year as champion.

( AP)