Road course success continues for Elliott
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 race at Road America on Sunday to wrap up a playoff spot. The Hendrick Motorsports driver 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,
25, 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 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.
“All these people were chanting ‘Burnout!’ at me,” Elliott said. “I wasn’t going to say no. So I did. I blew the back tires off of it, then ran out of gas and had to have a push.”
Elliott, the 2020 series champion, gave Hendrick Motorsports its seventh victory in its last eight Cup races. Hendrick had its six-race winning streak snapped last weekend when Kyle Busch won at Pocono for Joe Gibbs Racing.
Hendrick drivers have won 10 of the 20 Cup Series races so far this year.
Elliott needs only two more roadcourse victories to catch Jeff Gordon, who has the record with nine.