Chase Elliott meets his goal for Richmond

He successfully met his goal for Sunday's Toyota Owners 400 at the three-quarter mile Richmond International Raceway, finishing on the lead lap and completing all the laps.

But the defending XFINITY Series champ cracked a smile conceding, "You always get greedy and want more, and we certainly had a great car really today, and I thought we were battling right there on the edge of that top 10 there at points, and we had great speed, as I said, on the longer runs.

"Expectations are we still just want to put together solid races and try and stay on the lead lap of those things. You try to race with some competitive cars, and I thought we did that today."

Like most great drivers, Elliott, son of NASCAR Hall of Famer Bill Elliott, is his own toughest critic. He brought up his 38th-place finish last month in his debut at the tough Martinsville Speedway when he was involved in an early accident and suffered through the rest of the day churning laps.

He had no illusions moving up to Cup was going to be easy, however.

"The biggest difference is just the level of competition in these cars," Elliott said. "You know, the cars definitely drive differently. You're going faster I think is the most simplistic way to put it, and that requires different setup packages.

"These guys have done a good job of adapting to the changes over the off‑season they made to the rules and whatnot there. It's definitely a little bit different, but at the end of the day, the competition is just so much higher over here. You know, it makes it tough."

As Elliott referenced, he ran respectably just outside the top-10 for much of the afternoon. And it was certainly eventful. He made a green-flag pass for position on his XFINITY Series team owner, Dale Earnhardt Jr. with 50 laps remaining and managed to miss Tony Stewart's spinning car directly in front of him with about 40 laps remaining.

"Overall I felt like we had a really solid day," said Elliott, whose next race will be the May 24 Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

"Really the whole weekend for us here on the Sprint Cup side was solid. I thought we had a good car throughout practice, was able to run well in race trim, and our real struggle was trying to go fast for qualifying.

"Guys made good adjustments for qualifying to get us in the show, and our car today had great long‑run speed. Unfortunately these races never ran to the long run. It's always going to be a short run to the finish, and I didn't tell them to do the right things for that last stop to run a short run.

"Lesson learned, and we'll try to get better for the next one."

As he continues to learn lessons and compete for his second consecutive XFINITY Series title, Elliott is featured by Comcast in a new video series highlighting rising stars in the series where names are made.

"We created these videos as a part of our campaign to promote the NASCAR XFINITY Series and the quest of the young stars within the series to be the next NASCAR legend," Matt Lederer, senior director for sports marketing for Comcast, parent company of XFINITY, said. "It is important for us to promote the younger drivers, as their talent and desire is truly what makes the XFINITY Series appealing to fans. Comcast is excited and proud to support this unique series where drivers like Ty Dillon, Chase Elliott, Darrell Wallace, Jr. can make their names and compete alongside the top talent in the sport today."

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