SPARTA, Ky. -- Ranked higher in points than all three of his veteran teammates, Chase Elliott enters the Kentucky Speedway weekend as Hendrick Motorsports' most consistent wheelman this season, but remains hungry for Victory Lane as he sits in the middle of a competitive Chase Grid battle.
On Day 3 of the tripleheader weekend and fresh off a top-10 finish in Thursday's opening practice, Elliott looked ahead to Saturday's Quaker State 400 (7:30 p.m. ET, NBCSN, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
"That's our goal, is to try to get to Victory Lane and I feel like I have a team that can do that. ... (I'm) just trying to get the job done," Elliott said during Friday morning's press conference.
"If we can get some stickers on our car," Elliott continued, "that would be a big goal for us and what we want to do."
The 20-year-old rookie sits in eighth place in the driver standings, sandwiched between Coca-Cola 600 victor Martin Truex Jr. -- seventh -- and six-time Sprint Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson -- ninth -- and is ranked highest among the rest of the Sunoco Rookie of the Year candidates.
However, with 11 different winners in 2016 and Tony Stewart shaking up the field following his Sonoma win, Matt Kenseth , who won at Dover, believes it could be anyone to see Victory Lane before September's playoff opener at Chicagoland Speedway.
"There's certainly way more than 11 cars, teams and drivers out there that are capable of winning races if everything goes right on any given day," the Joe Gibbs Racing driver said before Friday's first practice session.
"There's a lot of people out there that don't have a win this year that are plenty capable and could get a win before the Chase starts. ...
You never know what's going to happen."
Elliott has never raced as a Sprint Cup Series driver at Kentucky, but he has four appearances at the 1.5-mile track as an XFINITY Series driver. Elliott's best finish was fourth, accomplished twice (in the fall races in 2014 and '15).
This time Elliott, like the other drivers, will encounter a new racing surface after Kentucky underwent a repave prior to this weekend's events. The track also added mismatched banking in the corners.
But Elliott didn't seemed fazed by the changes at Kentucky.
"Yes, the majority of us have never seen this place before, but we are all still trying to achieve the same things that we try to achieve each week," Elliott said. "It is different. The surface is a little different than it was when we raced here last, but the world has not quit turning. We are still trying to do the same things."