Late pass by Busch leaves Elliott with runner-up finish at Michigan
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BROOKLYN, Mich. — There wasn’t so much of a silver lining Saturday afternoon for Chase Elliott, not after a surprise spring into the late-race lead and slight fade to second place, matching his best finish of the NASCAR XFINITY Series season.
“I’ll be honest,” Elliott said. “Second does not feel good — to me, at least.”
A win remains an elusive thing for the defending series champion, 13 races into the XFINITY season. Elliott led four laps — his first since another runner-up finish at Iowa Speedway last month — but was unable to hold off eventual Great Clips 250 winner Kyle Busch, who drove past him with four laps remaining to make his return to the series a victorious one.
Though Busch was coming in with some XFINITY Series rust, idle since February as he recuperated from severe leg injuries in the season-opening race at Daytona, Elliott said he was by no means green in his second XFINITY start of the year.
“He’s obviously really good at what he does,” Elliott said of Busch. “I really don’t have an excuse for you. Yeah, he outran me.”
Elliott opened at a slight deficit after a miscalculation during qualifying kept him from making a lap in the last round, leaving him with the 12th and final starting spot among the final group. From there, the 19-year-old JR Motorsports driver pushed his No. 9 Chevrolet to the fringes of the top five in the first 20 laps.
With the good fortune of an even-numbered running position during a handful of late-race caution periods, Elliott found himself in the more advantageous outside lane to make up even more ground on restarts during the race’s second half.
Elliott was lined up in the second row for the final restart with 10 laps left. When front-runners Joey Logano and Kevin Harvick tangled and sailed up out of the groove in a battle for the lead during the 117th of 125 laps, the teenager — with a front-row seat for the fracas — took advantage to grasp the lead for the first time all race.
“It can happen at any given point. We see that every week,” Elliott said of the contact in front of him. “When you have a car on your outside, the car on the inside is at a large disadvantage, especially depending on how much he crowds you so that can happen. I didn’t really foresee it happening, not with those two, but you’re racing hard for a win and people make mistakes. They made a mistake, but they didn’t wreck and that’s the difference there.”
After the parting of the Logano-Harvick seas, Elliott had clear sailing in front but a fast-closing Busch making headway toward the front. Once the Sprint Cup regular placed the youngster in his mirrors, Elliott radioed crew chief Ernie Cope to say he was wide-open on the throttle but powerless to keep Busch at bay.
With the benefit of hindsight, Cope said post-race on pit road that he second-guessed the amount of downforce he had in the JRM No. 9, saying he needed a slightly smoother race trim to keep pace.
“We just need a little bit,” Cope said. “We’ve kind of changed our philosophy with how we’ve been running the car, and this is a step in the right direction. We just need to keep going that direction.”
That direction heads next weekend to Chicagoland Speedway, site of an XFINITY stand-alone event. Since next weekend’s 300-miler won’t be held in conjunction with the Sprint Cup Series, the amount of top-level double-dippers traveling to the Illinois track will likely be greatly reduced, potentially providing more opportunity for an XFINITY Series regular to visit Victory Lane.
Rather than seeing Chicagoland as a ripe race to pick, Elliott said he would rather welcome the competition from Sprint Cup moonlighters.
“I would much rather outrun people who are here at a companion event, to be honest with you, just so I don’t have to listen to questions like that after a race up there,” Elliott said. “That’s just me. I enjoy racing companion weekends. I think it’s good for everybody and definitely makes you feel better if you are able to outrun all the guys at those races.”