DARLINGTON, S.C. - Chase Elliott and the No. 17 HendrickCars.comteam took advantage of a late restart at Darlington Raceway.
Elliott earned a fourth-place finish in the Xfinity Series race on Saturday, gaining a few spots on pit road after a caution flag flew with just a handful of laps remaining. It was Elliott's second Xfinity start of the year he won at Charlotte earlier in the season.
"Really proud of the effort, though," Elliott said. "Pit stops were great and that was what earned us a good finish there at the end, was the boys on pit road."
It was a busy day of racing for Elliott, who also took part in NASCAR Cup Series qualifying for Sunday's Southern 500. Elliott qualified 20th for that race, third among the Hendrick Motorsports drivers. Kyle Larson earned the fourth starting spot, William Byron will line up eighth and Alex Bowman will start 27th.
Elliott qualified 16th for Saturday's Xfinity Series event and it was a slow climb forward from there. He ran eighth at the time of a late caution, brought out by an AJ Allmendinger crash, but between a quick pit stop and a few good moves on the restart, was able to climb to fourth.
"Honestly, used a lot of the event to try and work on myself and better myself for tomorrow and really appreciate the opportunity from (crew chief) Greg (Ives), everybody at Hendrick Motorsports, HendrickCars.com, Rick (Hendrick), everybody for letting me do that," Elliott said. "That's a nice luxury to have, not everybody has that.
"I feel like I picked up a couple of things that will hopefully help us tomorrow."
Sunday's Southern 500 is slated for a 6 p.m. start and the race will air on USA Network.