With 25 laps to go, Georgia native Chase Elliott looked to have put himself in position to possibly score the victory in Atlanta, Georgia, restarting in the third spot. He would get a good restart, getting underneath Joey Logano for the second spot. Then, it happened. The back of his No. 9 NAPA Auto Parts Chevrolet would twitch sideways just a touch, causing him to slide up the track off of turn two. In the span of a lap, the 19-year-old would fall back to eighth.
The defending series champion was resilient, though, fighting back to score a fifth place finish.
“I didn’t think it was good as we would’ve liked,” Elliott said. “I thought we were in a good spot on the last restart and got absolutely sideways in one and two. I guess it could’ve been a lot of worse. But I guess it was my mistake for trying to go too hard with those guys on the outside. I just was trying really hard to get by the 22 to have a shot. I feel like we had a fast car, but just didn’t get the job done myself.”
The finish marks a positive turn-around following the season opener at Daytona International Speedway, which saw Elliott score his first career “did not finish” (DNF) after getting involved in a pair of wrecks to cause heavy front-end damage to his Chevrolet. It also marks some much needed positive momentum with new crew chief Ernie Cope.
The pair is expected to find success as the year goes, in hopes of Elliott scoring his second straight series championship. One of those who believes the pairing will be successful is car owner Dale Earnhardt Jr.
“I felt like that Ernie having worked with Kevin knew what he needed to do to build great racecars, how hard he needed to work on the cars themselves to make them good, and his cars were always fast last year,” Earnhardt commented. “Ernie has wanted this opportunity to race for a championship and something that Ernie was seeking out himself, and I thought it’d be good for Chase. Making the change to bring Greg up to Cup was a difficult one for Chase. I know that they had a great rapport and worked great together. I know that Chase would’ve liked to work with Greg together throughout this year, but I felt like the change that we made with Ernie was a good one. It’ll bear fruit as the season goes on.
“We didn’t see a win today, but he got shuffled on the restart and made up the ground so the car has good speed. They’ll continue to work on communication and develop faster cars over the weekend. I feel pretty good about that one. Love to see them finish second to Kevin, if not win the race, but I think they got a little bit of ground that they have to make up with the trouble in Daytona. But they have a long year and I think that they can get it done.”
Next year will bring forth another change for Elliott as he will move up to the Sprint Cup Series full-time, taking over Jeff Gordon’s No. 24 Chevrolet. That will bring his next trip to Atlanta Motor Speedway, in which he commented that he will talk to Kevin Harvick before then about the line to run.
With Elliott running for Hendrick Motorsports and Harvick running for Stewart-Haas Racing, it puts them up as competitors, and you don’t necessarily help your competitors…..right? This brings forth the unique scenario virtue of the teams having a technical alliance with SHR using Hendrick chassis and engines.
“Well, when you look at the Cup side from the Hendrick Motorsports and Stewart-Haas side of it, everything is shared like we are teammates,” Harvick commented. “I can look at Jeff Gordon’s data. For Chase, that’ll be good because he can look at things and adapt and make it happen with himself in the racecar. When you get to the Cup side, it’s going to make easier with a guy like that because he’s going to have all that information to look at and understand, see the throttle traces, brakes, steering traces and speed traces and see exactly where you’re losing speed.
“Chase is going to do a really good job, and he’s really good at digesting information to understand where he’s off or doing something different. In the end, it’s something that you want to race the group of cars that you’re associated with and if you can narrow that down to that group of guys, so be it.”
