Rookie tries to be youngest title winner in NASCAR national series history
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Plenty of history remains up for grabs for Chase Elliott as the NASCAR Nationwide Series season winds down. That doesn’t mean he’s overthinking matters.
The 18-year-old phenom enters the year’s penultimate race with a 48-point edge over JR Motorsports teammate Regan Smith. If Elliott loses no ground in the standings after Saturday’s DAV 200 Honoring America’s Heroes (4 p.m. ET, ESPN) at Phoenix International Raceway, he’ll be crowned champion with one race remaining.
If Elliott can cash in on his commanding lead — either in the desert or at the Homestead-Miami Speedway finale the following weekend — he’ll become the youngest title winner in any of NASCAR’s three national series and the first rookie champ since the series’ formative years. He’d also be the first to win the title and Sunoco Rookie of the Year honors in the same season. A championship would also put the Elliotts as the fourth father/son combo to win NASCAR national series championships as Bill Elliott, 2015 NASCAR Hall of Fame inductee and Chase’s father, won NASCAR’s premier series championship in 1988.
While the scenarios for clinching the crown are fairly straightforward, Elliott isn’t making the task ahead more complex that it needs to be. At the same time, the teenager said he grasps the importance of the potential accomplishment.
“It would be phenomenal. It would mean the world to me, and not just me, but our team and our sponsors, NAPA and everybody that makes it happen,” Elliott said last weekend after adding six points to his lead at Texas Motor Speedway. “We’ll give it our best shot to do so. We’d still like to have another win or two before the year is out, so that’s our main goal. The biggest thing about the points, I think, is keeping it as simple as knowing you get the most points for finishing highest up at the end of the day. I think that’s about as simple and as much as you need to worry about it.
“So we’ll give it our best shot each week and hope for the best and wherever it unfolds, it unfolds.”
While an Elliott championship isn’t a lock, a first Nationwide title for the JRM operation virtually is. Richard Childress Racing‘s Brian Scott ranks third, a distant 63 points off the top, meaning he’d need a monumental collapse from both Elliott and Smith in the next two races to overtake them for the crown.
Elliott Sadler, 68 points behind in his last year with Joe Gibbs Racing, and RCR’s Ty Dillon, 75 points off the lead, are the only other drivers with a mathematical chance at the championship.
On the team owners’ side of the Nationwide standings, the battle at the top tightened up after Kyle Busch‘s victory last weekend at Texas. The triumph helped the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 54 Toyota team move closer to Team Penske‘s No. 22 Ford, driven to a second-place finish in Fort Worth by Joey Logano.
With two races left, the Penske No. 22 leads by 26 points. Busch will again be behind the wheel at Phoenix, where he’s won three consecutive Nationwide races and seven times overall in the series. Brad Keselowski — a four-time winner in Nationwide competition this year but winless at Phoenix — will pilot the Penske No. 22 this weekend.
Last season, Penske’s No. 22 prevailed in the season-long team owner championship hunt by just one point over the Gibbs No. 54.
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