Photo Credit: Mike Holloway/OnPitRoad.com
Chase Elliott may have started the race from the rear of the field, but that didn’t deter him away from a great result as he’d post his best career finish in the Duck Commander 500.
“It was a solid night,” Elliott said. “Obviously I hated to have to start in the back, but I think having a good qualifying effort allowed us to get a good pit selection. I think that helped us to try to gain spots throughout the night, but the biggest thing was just having a good car. I was really happy with it, especially on the long run, and we made some gains throughout the night to try to help our short run speed. I thought we did that.”
Elliott would start 40th, tail end of the field, as a result of his Hendrick Motorsports team changing the transmission following Friday’s practice. Elliott would quickly begin to make his way up through the field, moving up to 13th by lap 100, before moving eventually up to just outside of the top-five.
With 47 laps to go, Alan Gustafson would make a strategy call, putting only two right-side tires on Elliott’s No. 24 NAPA Auto Parts Chevrolet under the caution pit stops, while the rest of the leaders took four tires.
Gustafson would realize on the restart it wasn’t the best call, given the amount the tires fell off, bringing Elliott back down pit road under caution with 42 laps to go for four tires. The decision to head back down pit road didn’t result in much conversation on the radio, per Elliott, due to Gustafson having to make a quick call.
“Once the caution came out, I think pretty much the first time we came back, pit road was open,” he said. “Those crew chiefs are put in a position they’ve got to make a call in a hurry, and they have all — they definitely have my respect because I respect them for what they do because that’s tough, tough spot to be in, but as I’ve said, we’re a team. I’m going to support his decision, right, wrong or indifferent, so I was happy we did it, and we tried to make the most of it.”
Elliott would quickly make his way back to the top-five on the restart, running as a high as fourth, before being passed by his teammate Jimmie Johnson in the late stages to finish fifth.
He wasn’t the only Hendrick Motorsports car in the top-five, either, as the organization had three of their four drivers up front with Dale Earnhardt Jr. finishing second and the aforementioned Johnson fourth. Kasey Kahne would finish eighth to place all four Hendrick Motorsports cars in the top-10 for the first time since last year’s event at Texas.
“I definitely think it was a solid night. It’s not a perfect night,” he said. “We would love to turn all four cars in the top 10 to all four cars in the top 5, and I think that’s a goal we have to shoot for. I think we have a team and people that are capable of doing that, so we want to keep working at it. I think as I said before, we’re — for us, we’re excited to run in the top 5. We’re also not content, and we want to be contenders, and running fifth isn’t a contender. You’ve got to be up a little higher.”
While it marks the third top-10 this season for the Dawsonville, Georgia native, he knows that he still needs to keep getting better to move further towards the front.
“Definitely still have some work to do on my end, and we’ll keep digging at it,” he said. “We’re definitely not content. We know we have some work to do, and we’d like to be contenders. So we’re going to keep working at it.”
