FORT WORTH, Texas – The word Chase Elliott kept coming back to was unfortunate.
It was unfortunate his engine choked eight laps in at Dover International Speedway four weeks ago, forcing Elliott to exit early and finish in dead-last 38th. It was unfortunate once again his engine failed in the first practice at Martinsville Speedway last weekend, requiring Elliott to start competition from the rear after a complete change. And it was unfortunate in that following race his axle broke on Lap 180 of 400, leaving him 36th and 55 laps down when the checkered flag waved.
“Like I said, it is unfortunate,” Elliott said Wednesday at Texas Motor Speedway. “And I think if you’re going to fail something, now is not the time to fail it.”
Both incidents were during round openers in the NASCAR Playoffs. Dover kicked off the Round of 12. Martinsville started the Round of 8, which continues Sunday with the AAA Texas 500 (3 p.m. ET, NBCSN/NBC Sports App, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
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A scant three points and a runner-up performance at Kansas Speedway squeaked Elliott into the latest three-race set. Now, though, the driver of the No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet sits eighth in the standings and 44 points below the cutline with two races to go until the Championship 4 is set.
“We can’t break parts,” No. 9 crew chief Alan Gustafson said at Martinsville. “You can’t win these races if you don’t finish them. Certainly can’t gain any points if you don’t finish them.
“Yeah, we gotta finish races. We can’t continue to do this. This is not acceptable and we’re not going to get very far if we don’t finish, so that’s a lot to clean up in my opinion.”
Elliott survived but did not thrive in Wednesday’s pair of practices at Texas, coming in 26th at 185.293 mph for the first and 15th at 187.039 mph for the final. He, along with the rest of the field, will qualify Saturday at 7:05 p.m. ET (CNBC/NBC Sports App, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
When it comes to the 1.5-mile Texas track, Elliott’s best run in seven starts through 3.5 seasons is fourth in fall 2016. His worst is 13th earlier this season, in which he did lead a career-high 35 laps, though. Elliott has tallied two top-five and five top-10 finishes, ultimately good for an 8.0 average finish in Forth Worth.
“All you can do, in my opinion, is do the best you can do, right?” Gustafson said. “Optimism, stats, history – all that (expletive) does not matter. It doesn’t pay any points. You’ve got to go, and you’ve got to perform.”
And, like Gustafson already noted, actually complete races.
There have been 10 instances this season where Elliott has not completed every lap. He has turned 8,754 of the 9,342 laps run through 36 events. That cranks out to be 93.7%.
OK, but of the 588 he missed, 448 (55 at Martinsville, 392 at Dover and one at Richmond Raceway) have been during the NASCAR Playoffs alone. Now that’s 76% within seven postseason races.
“I think that it’s unfortunate,” Elliott said. “But it’s not like somebody is back there putting stuff together and thinking, ‘Look, this is going in the 9 car. I want to mess that up.’ That’s not the mentality, and that’s not how this stuff works. It is unfortunate, but it is what it is.”