Elliott chases his way to win in Wisconsin
Started 34th, but prevails at road course, heads to playoffs
ELKHART LAKE, Wis. — Even a start near the back of the pack couldn’t prevent Chase Elliott from continuing his uncanny success on road courses.
Elliott started in the 34th position but still found a way to win the NASCAR Cup Series at Road America on Sunday to wrap up a playoff spot. The 25-year-old Hendrick Motorsports has seven career Cup Series victories on road courses, putting him in sole possession of third place in NASCAR history.
“I really have no idea,” Elliott said about his success on road courses. “I feel like it’s just good cars. Our team as a whole has been good at road courses the whole time too, Kyle (Larson) won at Sonoma. I feel like drivers are only as good as what they have to drive. Fortunately I feel like I’ve got the best stuff and just got to make it work.”
Elliott started so far back because a couple of cautions hampered his qualifying attempts on Sunday morning.
It ended up not mattering as Elliott won by 5.705 seconds over Christopher Bell. Kyle Busch was third, followed by Kurt Busch and points leader Denny Hamlin.
Kyle Busch took a brief lead on a restart on the 46th of 62 laps, but Elliott caught up to him at Turn 11 and had passed him by Turn 12. The restart followed a caution that came when Anthony Alfredo spun off course.
Elliott stayed in front the rest of the way. His only trouble came as he was celebrating his victory.
After he’s already done one celebratory burnout on the front stretch, Elliott heard fans asking him to do another. Elliott said afterward that “I don’t know if I ever felt that much peer pressure in my life to do a burnout.”
So Elliott did a second burnout and wrecked his tires in the process.
INDYCAR: In Lexington, Ohio, on the final lap of warmup before the IndyCar race at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, Josef Newgarden heard “an audible vibration” in his engine that concerned him enough to alert his team.
Had he cut his warmup one lap short, another race weekend might have been ruined.
Team Penske and Chevrolet pulled Newgarden’s engine ahead of Sunday’s race, saving him from a potentially disastrous third consecutive defeat. Instead, he snapped his streak of late race misfortunes and won for the first time this season — earning the first IndyCar victory of the year for Team Penske on the same weekend the storied organization celebrated the 50th anniversary of its first win.
Newgarden led all but seven of the 80 laps.