TALLADEGA, Ala. -- Chase Elliott and the No. 24 team had a strong start to the 2017 season.
They captured the Daytona 500 pole for the second consecutive season and also logged strong finishes in Atlanta and throughout the West Coast swing.
However, the driver said that lately, their performance hasn't been what they would like it to be.
“I feel like over the past few weeks we really haven’t performed up to our potential as a group. I think anybody in our group would feel the same way. We’ve had some fast cars at times. We’ve had our cars driving good and then other weeks, not so much."
Coming off a 24th-place finish at Richmond International Speedway, Elliott will compete this weekend at the only other track on the NASCAR circuit where he currently holds a pole award: Talladega Superspeedway.
Last spring, the 21-year-old took home a fifth-place finish after starting on the pole and in the fall, finished just outside the top-10 in 12th.
Elliott said he feels as though this season's Daytona 500 was his best plate-race performance to date.
"I look at the way our car drove at Daytona and the speed that it had in it," the driver said. "I was really pleased with that. And, if it was the Daytona 497, I think we would have been all right. I’ve been really happy with our speedway program, in particular. I feel like we’ve made it better, really. I thought the 500 this year was our best performance on a plate track."
Elliott credits much of that to the additional track time he's been able to rack up.
"The more time you spend racing -- we got to race in the Clash this year, which was just more time on track. We got to race in the 150’s, which is more time on track, which never hurts. Any time you can get around those guys that win these things a lot, I think it’s helpful."
And as they head into this weekend at Talladega, Elliott and the No. 24 team will look to continue learning and bettering their finishes.
"As time has gone on, I’ve had some good opportunities to race around those guys and hopefully pick up on some things here and there," Elliott said. "And also try to learn things for yourself that you can file away and hopefully have one up on them at some point down the road as the end goal. Hopefully we can progress and do what we did at Daytona and try to make it a little bit better at the end of the day."
Sunday's race at Talladega Superspeedway will air on FOX at 2 p.m. ET.