Chase Elliott has a win and the best average finish at Dover International Speedway among active drivers, but he says there’s still room for improvement.
Elliott, who heads into the Drydene 311 doubleheader weekend fresh off his third consecutive road course win, has finished in the top five in six of his eight starts at the 1-mile oval.
“We’ve had some really good cars there and had some had some good runs,” Elliott said. “I feel like we need to be just a tick better. I feel like we’ve consistently been really strong, but not consistently just dominant. So I would like to see us kind of get over the hump and be just a tick better to really assert ourselves there more often, you know, in that first place instead of that third, fourth consistently.”
Last fall, Elliott recorded his only DNF and finish outside the top 12 at Dover when an engine issue ended his day on Lap 8. The early exit raised his average finish to 8.6.
One of the biggest challenges at the high-speed, high-banked track is being able to move around to pick up positions. Elliott has led in three of his Dover starts for a total of 294 laps. He led 145 laps from the pole in the 2019 spring race.
“Everybody gets really stuck to the bottom and it can become hard to move and do things,” Elliott said. “So it seems like as a run goes along the guys are really fast are able to move up to the top make some runs to pass people and not get stuck. I think my biggest challenge has been we’ve been fast, but a lot of times we’ll catch people and kind of get stuck.”
Dover: Starting Lineups | Schedule
Dover will mark the third doubleheader weekend of the season following Saturday and Sunday races at Pocono Raceway and Michigan International Speedway.
“Ultimately you have what you have when you get there from an overall general package perspective,” Elliott said. “In that sense it is kind of like just one weekend with double the points in a lot of ways. So, I think you treat it as that in my opinion.”
With three races remaining in the regular season, Elliott sits fourth in the projected Playoff standings with two wins. As the Playoffs approach, Elliott looks for more improvement on the ovals, particularly the 1.5-mile tracks.
“I certainly thought we could run better at Kansas than what we did so that one was an eye-opener I think for me and our whole group to be like, hey, you know, we need to we need to really hunker down and get better,” Elliott said. “Just focusing on that mile-and-a-half package, what we need to do to be better. Obviously that’s the chunk of the final 10.
“Dover is good opportunity to hone in on some of that stuff. But you know when we get back to Darlington, I think will be interesting and kind of see where we stack up there. We had a great run there in the in the spring races, but a lot has changed since then and I feel like we need to improve to have those kinds of runs again.”
Motor Racing Network will have live coverage of Saturday and Sunday’s Drydene 311 at Dover starting at 3 p.m. ET each day.
