05/04/26 10:51:00
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05/04 09:00 CDT Chase Elliott had never before won 2 Cup races this early in a
NASCAR season
Chase Elliott had never before won 2 Cup races this early in a NASCAR season
By STEPHEN HAWKINS
AP Sports Writer
FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) --- Chase Elliott never before had won two Cup races
this early in a NASCAR season.
After first winning at Martinsville at the end of March, the most popular
driver in the series opened May in Victory Lane at Texas. That 1 1/2-mile track
is growing on Elliott after he had not been much of a fan of the repave and
reconfiguration done there nine years ago.
"I think having a win early at Martinsville ... I said it to you guys then and
there, it's not like, oh, hey, the pressure is off, we have a win," he said
Sunday at Texas after another 1-2 finish ahead of Denny Hamlin. "It's man, we
have a lot longer period of time to build on that. That's genuinely where my
mind was at."
And still is after already getting another victory.
Elliott has the two wins and five other top-10 finishes this year, and Alex
Bowman has consecutive third-place finishes for Hendrick Motorsports after
missing four races because of vertigo. And it was Bowman who provided the
decisive push for his teammate on the final restart with four laps left Sunday.
When crew chief Alan Gustafson came on the radio at the end of the race
proclaiming Elliott a two-time Texas winner, the driver's initial feeling was,
"I'll be damned. I'd have never thought."
Now 30 years old and 11 races into his 12th Cup season, Elliott joined
five-time winner Tyler Reddick as the only drivers with multiple wins this
year. The soonest before that Elliott had two wins in a season was 17 races
into 2022, when he went on to match the career-high five wins he had during his
2020 championship season.
"I knew it right at Martinsville, we've never won a race this early, much less
to now have two this early," Elliott said. "I'm proud of our team for that,
because anytime you can check off new boxes in this sport when you've been
doing it for 10-plus years is cool, and it's hard to do. "
Elliott led a race-high 87 of the 267 laps at Texas for his 23rd career
victory. That came two years after ending a 42-race winless streak in the No. 9
Chevrolet with an overtime victory there.
"The 9 just performed flawlessly," said four-time Cup champion Jeff Gordon, now
vice chairman of the Hendrick team.
"One of our strongest races that we've had in quite some time," Elliott said.
Elliott moved up a spot to third in the season standings, only eight points
behind Hamlin but still trailing Reddick by 117. The other two Hendrick
drivers, Kyle Larson (eighth) and William Byron (10th), are in the top 10 while
Bowman is stuck in 34th after the four missed races.
On the final restart Sunday, Elliott had control and chose to start on the
inside of Hamlin. Bowman was behind his teammate, and gave him the push of
momentum onto the backstretch to clear for the lead he kept to the checkered
flag.
That winning move came through Turns 1 and 2, the part of the track where the
banking was reduced and racing surface widened during the repave in 2017. Turns
3 and 4 were left in their original form, making the ends of the track
different for the first time since Texas Motor Speedway opened in 1997. Elliott
is far from the only driver to express his displeasure about those changes.
"Yeah, you know, I've trashed this place for years, and I didn't like what they
did to the racetrack in reconfiguring Turns 1 and 2. ... I thought it was a
really strong track (for me), and then it turned into not a strong track at
all," Elliott said. "Those things combined I think just put a bad taste in my
mouth."
Two wins in three trips to TMS certainly have eased that feeling for Elliott.
"When you run better, it grows on you little by little," he said. "For as hard
of a time as I've given (the track), for some reason it likes me. It loved me
back. I didn't like it, but it liked me. So I'm learning to come around a
little bit."
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AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing
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