By: Zach Catanzareti, Staff Writer
With 23 laps to go in Sunday’s elimination race at Martinsville Speedway, Chase Elliott was looking at his second Grandfather Clock and fourth Championship 4 advancement.
And by the time of the checkered flag, neither of those happened.
Elliott, who was on an alternate strategy to most of the leaders, burst to the lead past Hendrick Motorsports teammate Kyle Larson to grab the race lead.
Nine laps later, however, another driver in Ryan Blaney was also in a rush to the front and overtook the No. 9 to win his way into next week’s championship finale in Phoenix.
Elliott had only a second-place finish to his name, but still credited crew chief Alan Gustafson for the pit call.
“It was a great call. It got us right there in the mix and we had an opportunity,” Elliott said. “I just I just made a couple mistakes there past halfway, got some damage on our car. That hurt a little bit. Just little thing started stacking up.”
The little mistakes were side effects to a powerful drive to the front, as he passed numerous cars to have a shot at advancement.
“I was pushing really hard to get to the No. 5 [Larson],” he said. “I just felt like Ryan [Blaney] had been really good and I was scared to give him an opportunity to get to the No. 5 first. I really wanted to try to get the lead. And then you never know… maybe a caution can come out or something.
“I was hanging on there at the end. I was pushing really hard to get to Kyle, I really wanted to control the race.”
Elliott scored an 11th top-five finish of 2024, his most since 2022, prior to his leg injury in early last year. HMS overall has only one driver up for the title next week, being William Byron.
“It didn’t work out for us. All I know is that we came up one spot short and that’s unfortunate,” he said. “[The race] was really solid. We’ll go to Phoenix and try to put together a good weekend because that is obviously an important deal.”