{"id":16899,"date":"2018-04-29T19:42:15","date_gmt":"2018-04-30T00:42:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/?p=16899"},"modified":"2018-04-29T20:58:01","modified_gmt":"2018-04-30T01:58:01","slug":"chase-elliott-wonders-what-if-following-third-place-finish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/2018\/04\/29\/chase-elliott-wonders-what-if-following-third-place-finish\/","title":{"rendered":"Chase Elliott wonders \u2018what if\u2019 following third-place finish"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service<\/em><\/p>\n

TALLADEGA, Ala. \u2013 Chase Elliott<\/strong> climbed out of his No. 9 NAPA Auto Parts Chevrolet on pit road, downed a bottle of water, spoke with his crew and pretty much was left to wonder, \u201cwhat if?\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

\"\"

Chase Elliott, driver of the #9 NAPA Auto Parts Camaro ZL1, makes a pit stop on his way to a 3rd place finish Sunday, April 29, 2018 in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race at Talladega Superspeedway in Talladega, Alabama. (Photo by Alan Marler\/HHP for Chevy Racing)<\/p><\/div>\n

The talented 22-year old finished third in Sunday\u2019s GEICO 500<\/strong> at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway. But unlike other victory near-misses \u2013 he\u2019s had eight career runner-up finishes, including one just last week \u2013 Elliott conceded this time he was a victim of circumstance. He was the lone Chevy in a top-five scoreboard of Fords at a track when you need a dancing partner to partner with toward the finish line.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s tough,\u2019\u2019 Elliott said. \u201cYou would think those guys want to win the race around me, but they just ride and ride and ride and they have to know in their minds they are waiting too long, even for themselves.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought maybe one of them would get greedy and want to win, I certainly did. I knew if I went by myself it wasn\u2019t going to work. For what it was, it worked out pretty good.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

Team Penske\u2019s Joey Logano scored his first victory in over a year and was followed across the line by Stewart-Haas Racing Ford driver Kurt Busch. Elliott was third with Busch\u2019s teammate Kevin Harvick right behind and defending race winner Ricky Stenhouse Jr. driving his Ford to fifth place.<\/p>\n

While maneuvering the frantic final laps, Elliott hoped that someone up front would pull out of line with him and at least make a determined run at Logano. It never panned out, however.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Jamie McMurray, driver of the #1 DC Solar Camaro ZL1, races to an 28th place finish with Chase Elliott, Jr., driver of the #9 NAPA Auto Parts Camaro ZL1, who finished in 3rd place, AJ Allmendinger, driver of the #47 Kroger Clicklist Camaro ZL1, who placed a 34th finish, and Kyle Larson, driver of the #42 Credit One Bank Camaro ZL1, who finished in 40th place Sunday, April 29, 2018 in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race at Talladega Superspeedway in Talladega, Alabama. Larson was sidelined in an incident on Lap 71. (Photo by Alan Marler\/HHP for Chevy Racing)<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cFor us we just never got anything going, I feel like, until the end,\u2019\u2019 Elliott said of his day. \u201cI was able to come in and put on tires towards the end of the race and have a little better rubber than those guys around me, which was nice and I made some good moves to get up inside the top-five.<\/p>\n

\u201cLast few laps was really trying to make a run and do something there at the end. Those guys were being awfully patient with one another. I was very surprised. I mean, it was more than obvious that they were not going to help me move forward.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

Elliott did move forward in terms of his season, however. After a frustrating 33rd place finish in the season-opening Daytona 500 and another DNF at Las Vegas two weeks later (34th place) the Hendrick Motorsports driver has been playing a determined game of catch-up in the standings.<\/p>\n

He has four top-11 finishes in the last fives weeks \u2013 including, now, his back-to-back efforts of second (at Richmond) and third (at Talladega). He\u2019s ranked 18th in the points standings \u2013 tying his highest mark of the season \u2013 and is only five points behind 16th-place Ryan Newman and eight points behind 15th<\/sup>-place Ricky Stenhouse Jr.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor us trying to gain some points back, we needed a good finish [today],\u2019\u2019 Elliott said. \u201cWe are trying to dig out of a bit of a hole right now. So need runs like we\u2019ve had the past two weeks. So we\u2019ll move on.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

The series races at the famous Dover International Speedway one-miler next week where Elliot has never finished worse than fifth place in four Cup starts, including a best of second place in the fall race last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service TALLADEGA, Ala. \u2013 Chase Elliott climbed out of his No. 9 NAPA Auto Parts Chevrolet on pit road, downed a bottle of water, spoke with his crew and pretty much was left to wonder, \u201cwhat if?\u2019\u2019 The talented 22-year old finished third in Sunday\u2019s GEICO 500 at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16903,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[500,209,16,208],"class_list":["post-16899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nascar","tag-chase-elliott","tag-geico-500","tag-nascar","tag-talladega-superspeedway"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/1McMurray28th9Elliott42Larson40th47Allmendinger34thTalladega13-1.jpg?fit=2400%2C1114&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7hzTZ-4oz","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16899"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16904,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16899\/revisions\/16904"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}