His fifth-place finish in Friday night’s Sprint Showdown preliminary left him out of Saturday night’s main event and made the travel prospects a moot point, but the 19-year-old would’ve happily preferred the alternative — his first appearance in the All-Star Race and more track time ahead of what he hopes will be his first Coca-Cola 600 next weekend — no matter how bothersome the logistics.
 
"I would’ve loved to have come back and run tomorrow night," Elliott said. "I think the more laps we can get before next week would’ve been helpful, but obviously not an option. But we’ll try to go to Iowa and have a good run there. Hopefully we can go out there and compete with some good cars and try to get a win."
 
Elliott still learned plenty in his first drive in a NASCAR Sprint Cup machine at Charlotte, moving up steadily from an 11th-place starting spot to snag a top-five finish by edging Austin Dillon at the checkered flag in the 40-lap All-Star tune-up. He’ll miss out on the chance at 110 more laps in the Saturday night feature, but hopes to carry the lessons over into Coca-Cola 600 qualifying, where he’ll have to make the 43-car field on the basis of speed.
 
"Hopefully, just how to race here," Elliott said when asked what he had gleaned from his Showdown start. "This race race is so short, it’s hard to move forward. You really need to qualify well, and I didn’t do a good job there today. I think just a little bit of comfort there in qualifying will be important for next week and just learning a little bit of how to race here.
 
"I know the lane is going move around a lot next week. I’m sure it’ll move up to the wall and you’ll see some guys really run up there for a long race like that, so hopefully we can have a good qualifying effort next week, get in the show and have a good run."
 
Crew chief Kenny Francis has been atop the pit box for all of the Sprint Cup starts that have made up Elliott’s warm-up for a full-time run in NASCAR’s premier series next year, when he’ll take the place of four-time champ Jeff Gordon in the Hendrick Motorsports No. 24 Chevrolet. Though Friday night’s Showdown consisted of two short 20-lap runs for two remaining All-Star berths, Francis preached patience over the team radio during the pace laps, another lesson that the teenager took to heart.
 
"If you’re not, you overrun the car and you overrun the tires and you end up just losing time," Francis said. "So it’s a fine line of how to be patient, but you don’t want to be overaggressive and end up losing ground. It’s a tough deal, but he’s good at it."
 
Patience or not, Elliott still stormed from 11th place to a top-five finish in the final 20-lap segment, despite being boxed in during his pit stop in the halftime intermission.
 
"To drive to fifth from wherever we started in 20 laps, I thought was pretty decent," Elliott said, "So, I was happy with that and how our car drove, the adjustments that Kenny made from how the thing drove in practice to how we raced, I thought was good and I learned a lot."
 
Had Elliott snagged one of the final spots in the All-Star Race, he was prepared to fly up to Iowa Speedway for Saturday’s practice and qualifying ahead before returning to Charlotte and then flying back to Iowa for Sunday’s 3M 250 (2 p.m. ET, FOX Sports 1, MRN Radio, SiriusXM), the 10th of 33 XFINITY races this season. As it stands, he won’t have extended double-duty this weekend, but aims for an even longer doubleheader next weekend in XFINITY (300 miles) and Sprint Cup (600 miles, NASCAR’s longest race).
 
The Sprint Showdown was a late addition to Elliott’s Sprint Cup schedule, with the decision to field the Hendrick Motorsports No. 25 Chevrolet made just 10 days earlier. With Elliott’s first taste — albeit an abbreviated one — of an All-Star weekend in the books, Francis said the team’s goals were met.
 
"The biggest thing is just get him some comfort for next week, so he’s not coming here cold turkey," Francis said. "He’s actually got some expectation of what he’s going to come up against. I think he’ll be way further ahead next week, so that was the main goal for tonight."