Chase Elliott during Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Martinsville Speedway. (Photo: Wayne Riegle | The Podium Finish)
RIDGEWAY, Va. — Chase Elliott nearly broke a 41-race winless streak on Sunday, but settled for third place as part of a 1-2-3 finish for Hendrick Motorsports during its 40th anniversary celebration.
The 28-year-old from Dawsonville, Georgia, led three times for 64 laps and nearly had a crack at beating teammate William Byron in NASCAR Overtime. He ultimately burned out his final set of tires over the final 100+ laps before a late caution.
“It was a solid day for us, for sure. Nice to lead some laps, [tires] certainly fell off a little more than I wanted to at the end of those runs,” Elliott said on pit road after the race. “Most of the restarts went well. That last one I had just hurt the rear tires so bad on that run before I was really worried about getting going and having enough grip to make it work. Nonetheless, happy for William [Byron] and happy for everyone at Hendrick Motorsports. Really special to have all of our folks here and their families.”
Elliott ended up qualifying third, and in a race when track position became crucial, he kept his No. 9 Chevrolet Camaro toward the front. He remained in third at the Lap 80 stage break and dropped back one position to fourth at the end of Stage 2.
Out of the gate in the final stage, Elliott got past Denny Hamlin, who won the second stage, for his first lead of the afternoon. He led 59 circuits and ended up swapping leads again with Hamlin before the Joe Gibbs Racing driver got by for good on Lap 258.
But ultimately, a pit call — and not one that necessarily went wrong — put Elliott behind his HMS teammate down the stretch. Byron pitted first among the leaders on Lap 297 to gain a slight advantage with fresher tires. Once crew chief Alan Gustafson saw Byron pit, he called Elliott for service on the UniFirst machine.
Elliott blended back in line for the lead once the cycle finished. But Byron charged past him with 73 to go and pulled away.
“[William] was super good, and credit to him because he passed his way all the way to the lead,” Elliott said. “It wasn’t like he did it on pit road or anything. He just flat-out drove by us all. After that cycle, then he came back out, I saw him coming and I’m like ‘Man, this is gonna be tough. He’s, he’s way better than anybody else I’ve been around all day.’ He did a great job with whatever they had working.”
Chase Elliott during NASCAR Cup Series qualifying on Saturday at Martinsville Speedway. (Photo: Wayne Riegle | The Podium Finish)
Byron seemed destined for an easy third win of the season, but for the second race in a row, a caution came out with two to go. John Hunter Nemechek crashed and went up in flames, setting up an overtime battle.
Because Byron was the leader, he chose to restart on the bottom. Elliott tried to hold his ground up top and slid behind him after passing through Turns 1 and 2. He tried to move Byron up the track through Turns 3 and 4 before attempting a diamond back on the other end. Ultimately though, Byron had the breathing room he needed over the final quarter-mile.
Larson ended up finishing second after leading 86 laps from the pole.
“Got into [Turn] 3 and tried to root him up off the bottom, and once you get the power down to get up underneath him, I just couldn’t do it,” Elliott said, recalling the final laps. “I tried to run in really hard into [Turn] 1 and roll a little bit of a diamond, and couldn’t make that stick either.
“We were all trying to win, there’s just too much at stake for winning these races. I felt pretty good that one of us was going to win the race, unless we crashed each other, which I wasn’t crashing. I wasn’t worried about me crashing, I don’t know about the rest of them, but I wasn’t worried about that. Gave [Byron] a shot there, tried to win the race and it didn’t work out. But one of us won it. The ifs, ands, buts don’t really matter at this point. William was able to get it done and we got a nice 1-2-3 for HMS.”
Elliott recorded his second top-five in a row and his third top-10 in the last four races. He sits sixth in driver’s points.
The NASCAR Cup Series returns on Sunday, April 14 at Texas Motor Speedway. The race is set for 3:30 p.m. ET on FS1, PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
