The Victory Lane celebration at Watkins Glen International was a pivot point for Chase Elliott and crew chief Alan Gustafson. Finally, after 99 races and eight runner-up finishes together, the duo is victorious.
Now they turn their attention to a stretch run, which includes the playoffs, in which they might be even more competitive.
Elliott’s average finish of 9.8 in races with less than the average number of restarts ranks fourth among Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series regulars, trailing Kyle Busch (3.9), Kevin Harvick (5.3) and Martin Truex Jr. (6.7), three early and obvious favorites for the championship. A faster car would help close that three-position gap to Truex in races heavy on long runs – Elliott’s No. 9 ranks just 10th this season in Central Speed — and while midseason upticks in speed are rare, Elliott’s team managed to accomplish the feat in both 2016 and 2017. The No. 9 Chevrolet ranked sixth in regular-season speed last year; it ranked fourth in the playoffs.
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Elliott utilized that speed last year to lead a combined 295 laps, nearly 53 percent of his yearlong total, at Dover, Martinsville and ISM Raceway in Phoenix during last year’s playoffs, three tracks he’ll visit again this fall. Two of those facilities — Martinsville and ISM along with Bristol, which will host a regular-season race on Aug. 18 — comprised three of Elliott’s best single-race adjusted pass differentials during this season’s first half.
The track type on which Elliott is at his best as a passer, 2-mile tracks, is represented twice prior to the playoffs; he’ll return to Michigan this weekend, a track on which he’s thrice finished second, and Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Sept. 9. He scored an adjusted pass differential 15 spots better than his average running position’s expectation in June’s race at Michigan.
MORE: Post-Watkins Glen playoff watch | Elliott’s win was in the numbers
Gustafson’s pit strategy calls should assist Elliott in the event any speed gains don’t quite shore up the difference between the car and those of the vaunted “Big 3.” The crew chief is retaining his driver’s running position on 80 percent of green-flag pit cycles — the series average is 67 percent — with a 22-position net gain on oval tracks to show for his effort.
Ninety percent of Gustafson’s stops under green this season were conservatively timed, or around the time when most teams elected to pit. He pitted outside the norm twice at Texas to mixed results; the team retained a top-three spot during the race’s second green-flag pit cycle after short-pitting, but lost five positions when long-pitting later in the race. It’s unclear whether he’s tabled unorthodox strategy for later use, but Texas does make an appearance in the playoffs.
Perhaps the biggest hurdles for Elliott and crew are the 1.5-mile tracks, of which there are four between now and the end of the season. One of them is Homestead-Miami Speedway, the track tasked with crowning the series champion in a winner-take-all scenario.
Elliott’s Chevrolet ranks 13th in Central Speed on intermediate tracks specifically, and the driver hasn’t found much success navigating through traffic at 1.5-milers. Through seven races on the track type in 2018, his adjusted pass differential sits at minus-18 spots, 35 positions worse than the expectation of his average running whereabouts.
There’s reason for optimism, though, considering his effort on the same tracks in 2017.
Based on his running position on intermediates last season, he was expected to secure an adjusted pass differential of plus-31; he earned a plus-156, a wild overachievement befitting a driver who ranked second in overall passing. A repeat of such a development could transform him into a serious championship threat, a notion that seemed unlikely to most fans after he averaged an 18.1-place finish through the season’s first eight races.
Last Sunday’s win at Watkins Glen was a big day for Elliott and the Elliott faithful, but there may soon be more to celebrate.
David Smith is the Founder of MotorsportsAnalytics.com. Follow him on Twitter at@DavidSmithMA.