Repeat hopes more reasonable after Daytona, heading into Kentucky
Fresh off his best ever NASCAR XFINITY Series finish at Daytona International Speedway, Saturday night’s third-place driver Chase Elliott humbly and repeatedly insisted his result was as much about good fortune as it was strategy or maneuvering.
“It was completely, just luck of the draw as to where I was running when those wrecks happened, that’s the reason we missed it, absolutely nothing I did,” Elliott said. “We lucked into it.
“The thing about it is this race rewards the same points as the others and that can be really good or really bad. For us unfortunately it was really bad the first two times this season (at speedways), so really happy to finish today and getting a top five was really big.”
The 19-year-old should give himself more credit, but he’ll gladly take that third place and move on to Kentucky Speedway, where he hopes to launch a real run for his second straight XFINITY Series championship.
Elliott’s work Saturday night in Daytona Beach moved him into second place in the championship standings, 34 points behind leader Chris Buescher entering Friday night’s race in Kentucky. It equals the JR Motorsports driver’s highest ranking of the season and puts him in good position to defend his title as he prepares to move up into the Sprint Cup Series in 2016, taking Jeff Gordon‘s seat in the No. 24 Chevrolet with Hendrick Motorsports.
It’s actually a familiar title scenario for Elliott.
Last year, he arrived in Kentucky ranked third, 11 points out of the championship lead. He cut that to four points with a 12th-place finish (and rough nights for his closest competitors) then took over the points lead three races later with a victory in Chicago.
Although Elliott has an impressive seven top-five and 12 top-10 efforts in 15 starts in the No. 9 NAPA Chevy, he is still looking for his first win of the season.
The series is two races into a challenging 16-week run of competition, and Elliott has five top-eight finishes in the last six races. Buescher’s best finish at Kentucky is seventh.
“The best way to gain points is to win races,” Elliott said. “I am confident we can do that. We have to get after it and really do our job the second half of the season. If there’s any part that counts, this is it. So we need to get it done and capitalize. That starts this weekend at Kentucky where we had one pretty solid run the last time we were there.
“You’re coming into a long stretch, the second half of the season and it’s a lot of racing, a lot of hard weekends, a lot of traveling for your guys. But a lot of your luck is created before you leave (the shop) and we need to make sure we stay on top of that side before we leave and go out there and try to win some races.”