Chase Elliott ended his 42-race winless streak with a win on Sunday at Texas. The Hendrick Motorsports driver did so by outlasting Denny Hamlin and Ross Chastain on a couple of overtime restarts. What most fans don’t realize is the sport’s most popular driver finally ending his long drought almost didn’t happen.
That’s because in the final stage with 55 laps to go, the No. 9 team made what turned out to be its final pit stop of the day. During that stop, Elliott’s crew chief Alan Gustafson asked his driver to wait for his command before exiting his stall because they needed to get enough fuel in the car to make it to the end of the race. The driver didn’t follow orders.
“Hey, did you hear me under that green-flag stop to wait on me or no?” Gustafson asked his driver over the team radio a few minutes later during a caution.
“I did and I screwed that up,” Elliott replied. “I screwed that up.”
“Okay, we’re right on the number,” the veteran crew chief informed him. “This is going to be okay. I just wanted to make sure.”
“Yeah, I did,” the driver said. “I just got antsy and went.”
Chase Elliott Addresses Mistake in Post-Race Press Conference
After the race, Chase Elliott made his way to the media center to visit with reporters to talk about his win on the mile-and-a-half-track. During that session, the driver answered questions about the drought, how good it felt to be locked into the 2024 playoffs, and what it’s been like watching his HMS teammates William Byron and Kyle Larson win on a regular basis. I asked him what happened on that final pit stop and if he thought it might have cost him the race.
“Yeah, I thought I had messed us up there,” Elliott admitted. “And you know, thankfully, John (Gianninoto – gas man) got a great plug, got it filled up more than a normal cadence of a stop and I think we had a little bit of a holdup on the stop, which kind of worked in our favor, too.
“And it just worked out. And obviously the cautions, they’re a good thing until you go past the scheduled distance. And then at that point we were fixing to be in trouble. I’m not sure how many green-white-checkers we could have done but I thought — great, we’ll run out of gas here leading this thing. So glad we didn’t.”
Chase Elliott Benefitted From Former Hendrick Motorsports Driver’s Mistake
Interestingly, that wasn’t Elliott’s only good fortune in the Lone Star State. His first round of good luck came in the opening stage when Gustafson decided to keep the No. 9 out during the first green-flag pit cycle of the day while most of the other cars headed to pit road. On Lap 49, Elliott’s former HMS teammate and current Legacy Motor Club co-owner Jimmie Johnson got loose and spun, bringing out the first caution of the day. The No. 9 team had been running in the low 20s. After the caution, he restarted eighth and stayed up near the front of the field for the rest of the race.
While Elliott was the beneficiary of good fortune, his teammates weren’t so lucky. Alex Bowman was caught up in an incident on Lap 102 with Christopher Bell and John Hunter Nemechek and finished 37th. Kyle Larson, who started on the pole and dominated Stage 1 en route to winning it, fell victim to his pit crew around the halfway mark of Stage 2 when he unexpectedly lost his right-rear wheel. NASCAR assessed a two-lap penalty and the No. 5 team was never a factor the remainder of the race.
Byron, who is leading the series with three wins, ran inside the top 10 for most of the day and found himself in position to secure another top finish if not a win on the final laps in overtime, running in third position on that final restart before getting into the rear of Ross Chastain, which sent the No. 1 car for a spin. After some confusion by timing and scoring, the No. 24 team was ruled to have finished third behind Brad Keselowski.
It was another good result for Byron, but the big story for HMS on the day was Elliott’s win.
And to think, it almost didn’t happen because he got antsy.