RICHMOND, Va. – Sunday at Richmond International Raceway, Chase Elliott’s career-high Sprint Cup Series finish meant all five Hendrick Motorsports drivers finished the race in the top 16.
“Overall I felt like we had a really solid day,” Elliott said. “Really the whole weekend for us here on the Sprint Cup side was solid.”
It started with two practice sessions on Friday, in which Elliott said the No. 25 team “had a good car,” particularly in race trim. It continued when the rookie made the second round of qualifying for the first time in his Sprint Cup career, ultimately earning a 16th-place start.
And it ended Sunday – after the race was postponed from Saturday night due to inclement weather – with a 16th-place result.
“We would have loved to just stay on the lead, run all the laps and just put together a solid race and minimize our mistakes, and I felt like we did that today and I think that's something to be proud of,” Elliott said of his goals for his second career Cup race. “You always get greedy and want more, and we certainly had a great car really today, and I thought we were battling right there on the edge of that top 10 there at points.”
Elliott reached 11th place twice, and noted that the car was especially strong during long, green-flag runs.
“We could really, really run well and run some guys down late into a run,” he said. “Unfortunately it always comes down to the short runs at these things.”
Elliott said his biggest regret from the race was not relaying to the No. 25 NAPA AUTO PARTS Chevrolet SS crew which adjustments he would need to make the car successful on a short run to end the race.
“I was a little disappointed though there at the end that I fell back and then couldn’t get going at the restart,” he said. “But overall, everybody on our NAPA team did great this weekend.”
It came a month after Elliott’s Cup debut at Martinsville, where he was forced to take his car to the garage area and ultimately finished with a 38th-place result.
What was the big difference this time around?
“I have no idea,” Elliott said. “I wish I had an answer for you. I don't really know. You know, like I said, I felt like at Martinsville, too, we had a good car. I didn't do my job like I needed to there, and got us in a wreck 60 laps into the race, and that's not the thing to do.
“Fortunately we were able to run laps today.”
And those laps had the rookie knocking at the door of a top-10 finish before bringing home his 16th-place result – more than 20 spots higher than his debut.
“Expectations are we still just want to put together solid races and try and stay on the lead lap of those things,” Elliott said. “You try to race with some competitive cars, and I thought we did that today.”
“We’ll try to get better and hopefully try to have a better effort at Charlotte.”