Another race and another second-place finish for Chase Elliott, who was the runner-up in Saturday night’s Toyota Owners 400 at Richmond Raceway.
Elliott followed race winner Kyle Busch across the finish line and has now finished second eight times in his Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series career as he continues pursuit of his first series win.
The mark is a family affair for Elliott. His father Bill had eight runner-up finishes prior to his first win at Riverside in 1983. The record for most runner up finishes prior to a win is 12 by James Hylton.
“Yeah, it wasn’t pretty for sure,” Elliott said of surviving a series of late restarts. “We had a big fight from our Napa Auto Parts and Napa Brakes team tonight. Just we have a lot of work to do I still feel like to get to have the speed that we need and the car driving like we want it to or like I want it to at least.
“But our restarts fell into our hands there at the end having short runs kind of played into our favor and was able to move forward because of that. So, circumstances were on our side tonight, which is not normal, so I’m happy about that.”
The finish was a definite shot in the arm for Elliott after a rough stretch including an L1 penalty after Texas and an early race accident last week in Bristol. He’s hoping his Richmond run will give the Hendrick Motorsports No. 9 team something to build on going forward.
“Yeah, I mean I think it’s been a steady work in progress,” he said. “We certainly have work to do and we know that. The results tonight, I don’t feel like… I think if we looked at the results we would feel okay about it, but I think in reality we shouldn’t feel okay about it. We need to go back and really focus on getting better.”
