It’s easy to look at Chase Elliott’s hot streak last summer and have little doubt he’ll win a race soon to make the playoffs this season. But Elliott cautions about taking what he did a year ago and assuming it will be repeated this summer.
Even so, he goes into Sunday’s Cup race at Atlanta Motor Speedway (pre-race coverage begins at 6:30 p.m. ET on USA Network), as the defending race winner.
That victory last July came during a five-race stretch that saw Elliott finish no worse than second. He won at Nashville, finished second at Road America, won at Atlanta, finished second at New Hampshire and was declared the winner at Pocono when Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch were both disqualified after their cars failed post-race inspection.
Elliott could use a similar streak now. He enters Sunday night’s race 24th in the season standings, 55 points out of what would be the final transfer spot after missing seven races this season because of an injury and a penalty.
Elliott is not relying on what he did last summer to get him through this summer.
“We had a good summer stretch, but a lot has changed since then,” he said Thursday. “I think a lot changed really last fall when we started running not as good.
“I think, personally, the setups and just the direction that the garage went in was a pretty large departure of what we had success with through the early stages of the season and through the summer months. Changes with the tires and all kinds of little things that I think added up.”
After entering the playoffs as the regular season champion, he had five finishes of 20th or worse and seven finishes outside the top 10. He did make it to the championship race but finished fourth in the standings.
“I think some of those same struggles have rolled over into this season,” Elliott said. “I feel like the good news is we’ve been trending in a good direction, and I feel like the areas I’ve struggled in I’ve made a little progress over the last month or so. We’ve had some solid runs at tracks that I was expecting to remind me more of our struggles last year. So that was good.”
Elliott’s third-place finish last weekend at Chicago marked his third consecutive top-five result. That’s his best run since last summer’s stretch of first- and second-place finishes.
“I think our team is in a really good place,” Elliott said. “We just need a little bit of pace. I’ve been saying that over the last couple of weeks.
“I think a lot of that falls on me to extract that pace, to know in the early stages of the event or in our short practice session to say, ‘Hey, I need this, this and this to go better.’
“I think all those things are on me, to make sure that I’m giving the information that needs to be given to help lead our team in a better direction in those crucial moments.”
2. Pressure building
Eight races remain until the Cup playoffs begin, and Brad Keselowski understands the challenges ahead.
Joey Logano passed Keselowski on the final lap to win at Atlanta in March. That’s been Keselowski’s best chance to win this season. He enters this weekend 14th in the playoff grid. Bubba Wallace and Ty Gibbs hold the final two playoff spots.
Keselowski said he expects multiple new winners before the playoffs begin and that could put him or RFK Racing teammate Chris Buescher on the cutline.
“I would not be surprised to see two new winners,” Keselowski said last weekend at Chicago. “Hopefully, we’re one of them. But, if that’s not the case, we have both of our cars on the bubble, which is not a good place to be.
“So, we look at these next (eight) weeks, and we’d like to win. But, that’s every week. In absence of that, we need to be really perfect. We need to capitalize on the opportunities in front of us and avoid any pitfalls or mistakes. Looking at that, it’s a tense few weeks.”
Adding to the challenge is that the Fords have struggled at some tracks. That could make it harder for Keselowski and other drivers with the blue oval on their car to win before the regular season ends. Also, two of the final eight races of the regular season are at road courses. Keselowski has never won a Cup race on a road course.
“We know that’s not going to be easy,” Keselowski said. “We know that’s a big challenge. We’re still in this mixture of emotion where we’re significantly proud of the progress we’ve made in most given weeks. We’re in a spot to be one of the best Ford cars.
“We know that the Fords are not where we want them to be. But we can’t let that be our excuse. We need to control the things we can control. I think as a company, the respective teams have done a pretty good job of that. Upgrades that have been made to Chris’ team and car over the last two or three months are really showing off some investments we made there… and pit crew and other hard assets. So now we have two cars that are really in a good spot to contend.
“We just need a little bit more vehicle speed. The vehicle speed can be frustrating. Some of it you control. Some of it, you don’t. I’ll be interested to see how the next few weeks play out. There is always an opportunity to improve those things, and they show up in different moments.”
3. Parity in Cup
In the 36 races (equal to a full season) since last July’s Cup race at Atlanta won by Chase Elliott, there have been 18 different winners.
No driver has won more than four times during that span. Nine drivers have won multiple times during that time.
Those with four wins in the last year are: Christopher Bell and Kyle Larson.
Drivers with three wins during that stretch are: Elliott, Tyler Reddick, Joey Logano, Kyle Busch and William Byron.
Drivers with two wins in the last 36 races are: Kevin Harvick and Martin Truex Jr.
Those who have won once in the last year are: Austin Dillon, Erik Jones, Bubba Wallace, Chris Buescher, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Denny Hamlin, Ryan Blaney, Ross Chastain and Shane van Gisbergen.
That leaves drivers who are winless in the last 36 races to include: Brad Keselowski (13th in points), Ty Gibbs (16th), Daniel Suarez (17th), Michael McDowell (18th), AJ Allmendinger (19th) and Alex Bowman (20th).
4. Single-file restarts
One of the adjustments NASCAR made this past weekend at Chicago was to have the Cup start and restarts all single-file. Originally, that was done because the race started in wet conditions.
Even as the race progressed, NASCAR kept the single-file restarts. That, along with putting the restart zone ahead of the final corner, helped prevent the field from crashing in the first corner as happened at Circuit of the Americas this year and the Indianapolis road course last year.
Todd Gilliland admits he benefitted from the chaos of the double-file restarts at Indy and COTA. At Indianapolis last year, he was 10th on the next-to-last restart and went on to finish fourth. At COTA this year, Gilliland was 23rd on the second of three overtime restarts and went on to finish 10th.
The idea of going to single-file restarts at Chicago did not thrill him. After going through it, his opinion changed.
“As the younger guy that’s never really watched a race with single-file restarts, I remember when we talked about it and threw around the idea I was like, ‘Man, that seems kind of lame to me,’” Gilliland said. “It seems like you take the excitement out of the race and, for me, an opportunity.
“I think if you’re the leader, a single-file restart is great, but as a guy trying to improve their spot and make an aggressive move, double-file definitely gives you a better opportunity for that. But on the flip side I really thought the single-file restarts went really smooth this weekend and got us back into the flow of a race much quicker, which was definitely unexpected.”
5. Chicago Xfinity ending
NASCAR’s decision to end last week’s Xfinity race at Chicago before it reached the halfway point raised questions from some fans. Justin Allgaier said he didn’t see a better solution with all that NASCAR faced while also trying to get the Cup race in and being done in time for construction crews to start taking the track down so key roads could be opened as soon as possible.
Allgaier’s main concern was that NASCAR awarded points for the second stage even though that stage was not completed.
“I hate that we have an asterisk by the event because it was such a great event,” said Allgaier, who finished third to winner Cole Custer. “I personally was disappointed that we awarded stage points for the end of stage two. I felt that was a free bonus point that necessarily wasn’t earned by Cole. Not picking on Cole. Those were points that ultimately were able to put him ahead of us in points when we didn’t even get to the end of the second stage
“I was probably more disappointed on that. Ideally there would be a way to do something different as far as that goes. None of us wanted to end the race that early, but the circumstances were that Monday wasn’t really an option if the Cup Series got (postponed) to Monday.”
Allgaier is fourth in the standings heading into Saturday night’s Xfinity race at Atlanta (7:30 p.m. ET on USA Network). Custer is a point ahead of Allgaier.
Allgaier also addressed if it would have made sense to have sent the Xfinity cars on track Sunday to run two laps in the rain to get to the halfway mark and then call the race.
“If there was a shot to go back racing, I would be very disappointed if we didn’t try,” Allgaier said. “But I would rather the race end the way it did than to send us around for two laps under caution.
“The fans were incredible this week. If we go back green, TV’s going to do everything they can to put us on TV. If you do all that effort, if you put all that time and energy into and we only go two laps of caution and we call it, that’s not good for anybody. That’s not a good look for our sport. That’s not a good look for NASCAR. That’s not even a good look for our teams.
“As much as I wanted to get the race in and as disappointed as I was, just going out there making two laps of caution seemed like a ridiculous idea.”