Chase Elliott looks for momentum
NASCAR driver broke through with Cup win
Now it’s clear that Chase Elliott can win a race.
Can he win a championship? During all the hand-wringing over Elliott’s struggles to win for the first time on the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series and his string of eight runner-up finishes without a victory, his 2017 run in the playoffs sometimes was forgotten. He almost made the Final Four last season, barely missing a chance to race for the title at Homestead-Miami Speedway despite his winless status.
After wiping that zero from racing’s most important column with a thrilling win over Martin Truex Jr. last Sunday at Watkins Glen International, Elliott’s focus now is improving his week-to-week performance as the playoffs approach. The playoff opener is scheduled for Sept. 16 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
Next up is Sunday’s Consumers Energy 400 (2:30 p.m. ET, NBCSN) at Michigan International Speedway, where Elliott has five top-10 finishes in five races. Three of his runner-up finishes were logged at MIS.
The “almost” tag stuck to Elliott like industrial glue.
“I definitely think there were some opportunities to win that I didn’t capitalize on,” he said. “But looking at the way we ran last fall, I was pretty confident in the fact that if we had things going the right direction that we could run with those guys. In my opinion, we showed that pretty well.
“I don’t think anybody really expected us to go and battle as far as we did into the Chase and to be pretty dang close to making it to the Final Four if we had been able to finish one off there (at Phoenix in the season’s next-to-last race, where he finished third). All of that doesn’t really matter, but it definitely motivates you to want to do better and come back stronger when you do have those rough days.”
Elliott’s journey this season has been colored by the continuing struggle of Chevrolet teams to adapt to the Camaro. His win was only the second by Chevy this year.
“I think we’ve been getting better for whatever reason,” Elliott said. “I think we still have room for improvement. I’m not at all saying that we’re out of the woods, but I think that the past few weeks we’ve been getting a little bit of momentum.”
He could make a bit of history with a victory Sunday. Not since 1964, when Billy Wade did it, has a driver scored his first two Cup wins back-to-back.
Although Elliott finally scored Sunday, the list of noteworthy drivers who remain winless this year is still long. It includes series champions Jimmie Johnson, Brad Keselowski and Kurt Busch plus Kyle Larson and Denny
Hamlin.
Despite being winless, Keselowski, Busch, Larson, Hamlin and Johnson are in good shape to make the playoffs. With four races remaining, Alex Bowman, Elliott’s and Johnson’s teammate, sits in the final spot above the playoff cutoff, 62 points ahead of Ricky Stenhouse Jr., the first driver who would miss the playoffs as the points currently stand.
Johnson is one spot — and 40 points — in front of Bowman.
Of course, if another winless driver breaks through with a victory in the final four regular-season races, that would change the number of playoff spots available through points.
Of the winless group, Larson perhaps has the best shot at victory Sunday. Three of his five career victories came at Michgian, and 141 of his career total of 150 laps led at the track were logged in the past four races.