Chase Elliott’s hopes of bringing the Harley J. Earl Trophy back with him to Dawsonville, Georgia came to a halt not 50 miles into the race.
After becoming the youngest driver to win the Daytona 500 pole and capturing the checkered flag in Saturday’s XFINITY event, anticipation was high as the race began.
Elliott led the first three laps but as he was exiting Turn 4 on Lap 19, the No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet got loose, came down across the nose of Carl Edwards and slid down into the tri-oval grass. His car came to a halt after the nose dug into the ground and hit the drainage hole and destroyed the front of the car.
Elliott described what happened saying he “just got in (the) middle there a couple of laps before and got loose off of (Turn) 4 and just lost it. I hate it. It had been such a fun week and you hate to end the race before it even got started. Just disappointed for everybody. We will just have to look past it and get on for Atlanta.”
“That is the most important thing now,” he continued. “Can’t get caught up in what happened today, it is irrelevant now. We’ll try and get it fixed and make some laps. Then it’s on to Atlanta and if we can make some laps we will, and move forward from here.”
He returned to the race and finished in 37th 40 laps down.
