JOLIET, Ill. – Chase Elliott didn’t earn his first Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series (MENCS) win in Sunday’s Tales of the Turtles 400 at Chicagoland Speedway, but the Hendrick Motorsports driver certainly turned in a championship-caliber performance in the first race of the post-season playoffs.
While Martin Truex Jr. scored his fifth win of the season, Elliott’s No. 24 NAPA Chevrolet earned a season-high second place finish and along the way picked up a crucial stage point after winning Stage 2 of the 267-lap race. It was the first stage victory for Hendrick Motorsports organization since Sonoma (Calif.) Raceway.
“Just a much-improved day from where we’ve been, which is nice,” said Elliott. “Obviously would have been great to battle with Martin a little bit more. We didn’t have anything for him. From where we’ve been to where we ran today was a major, major step in the right direction, frankly where we need to be, where we deserve to be, to the potential we can run.”
Knowing that without a late-race caution that never materialized, Elliott had the second-best car in the field and earned his first top-five finish since a third at Kentucky Speedway in July.
Should have that race caution flew, Elliott believes he may have had an opportunity to swipe the lead from Truex for a few laps, but that’s now left as just an afterthought.
“If you could get in front of him on a restart or something, sure, I think you could stay there for eight, ten laps,” offered Elliott. “But I wasn’t going to fall in line behind him after a
restart and pass him in eight laps without something lucky happening for me.”
Elliott attributes his strong at Chicagoland to an uneventful day on the track. But if push comes to shove, the 21-year-old will take those type of days every weekend through the playoffs it means getting to the Final Four at Homestead-Miami in mid-November.
“It was nice to see that we can do it if all things are clicking in the right way, car is driving good, pit stops are good, race execution was nice.”
Sunday’s performance was Elliott’s 15th top-10 finish of the year and comes at an opportune time. With three cars in the playoffs, Elliott’s performance led the way ahead of Hendrick Motorsports teammates Jimmie Johnson and Kasey Kahne and could set the tone on who may carry the playoff flag for the powerhouse team.
“A lot of things change from year to year,” explained Elliott. “We haven’t run as good through the summer months as we did last year. I did feel like we peaked about this time last year. But this isn’t last year, so it really doesn’t matter.
“This is this year. We need to be better than what we’ve been in the past. I thought that was an improvement today. Obviously, have some work to do to get to that bunch that won the race. Aside from them, I think we were competitive to the rest of the field.”
When asked if Sunday’s finish was an indicator of how his No. 24 team would run at the other mile and a half tracks in the playoffs, Elliott was hopeful – but not necessarily ready to commit.
“It’s encouraging,” he said. “There are also a lot of races that are not mile and a half’s that matter, that are important as well. It was nice to have pace and some good drivability today in our car here at Chicago. A lot of the rest of the mile and a half’s that we go to, I guess aside from Homestead, are a little more grippy than this one.
“I’m not sure what that will have to do with our pace or not. We’ll see when we get there.”
With his seventh top-five of the year, Elliott secures sixth in the playoff standings 33 points ahead of Austin Dillon in the 12th place cutoff spot returning to New Hampshire, where he earned a 11th place finish in July.
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
