Chase Elliott taking win-or-bust attitude into his playoff push

SONOMA, Calif. — When Chase Elliott stayed out as most of the field pitted late in the race Sunday at Sonoma Raceway, it might have given his fans a little hope.

Could Elliott steal a win? Could he answer the question of whether he would rally and make the playoffs earlier than many expected?

Elliott and everyone else knew it was a long shot as the dominant car of Martin Truex Jr. was restarting fourth, and his fresher tires gave him a significant advantage for the final 15 laps.

Truex passed Elliott in fewer than two laps, and Elliott eventually fell to fifth. 

But few would blame Elliott and his Hendrick Motorsports team for rolling the dice as the 2020 Cup champion faces an uphill climb to make the 2023 playoffs.

"I feel like the objective is pretty straightforward for us," Elliott said.

The NASCAR playoff field consists of the regular-season champion plus the next 15 drivers based on the number of wins with ties broken by points. Typically, there are spots for winless drivers with the most points to get into the 16-driver field.

There have been 10 winners in the first 16 races.

"I'm all-in on trying to win," Elliott said. "That's kind of our only way in now — and it was probably our only way in before, too.

"That's been my mindset since I got back from my injury, so honestly not really a lot changes from that standpoint."

Elliott isn’t the only one to have missed races this year because of injury or penalty, although he is the only driver to have missed races for both. 

Having competed in just nine races this year, Elliott sits 27th in the standings, 84 points behind the current playoff cutoff (Alex Bowman at 16th in the standings) with 10 races left in the regular season.

Prior to his 34th-place finish at Charlotte, where he wrecked Denny Hamlin and the one-race suspension he served for it in the June 4 race at WWTR Gateway, Elliott was just 63 points behind the cutoff with 13 races remaining. 

But now he faces more of a must-win situation. Catching Bowman would seem unlikely considering Bowman himself missed three races with a broken back and has averaged 6.4 more points per race this year than Elliott.

The driver ahead of Bowman in points is Bubba Wallace. If Wallace continues at his current pace, Elliott would need to average 32.8 points a race — a fourth-place finish with no stage points. Elliott is averaging 27.4 points a race this year.

Elliott is trying to relish the moment.

"I think it’s very feasible and kind of fun at the same time," Elliott said. "I’m kind of looking forward to the challenge."

Having suffered a broken leg while snowboarding prior to the third race of the season, Elliott hasn’t been able to get into much of a rhythm. He raced two events, sat out six, raced six, sat out one and then raced in Sonoma.

The Hendrick driver has led just 40 laps this year.

"I’m just trying to make some gains," Elliott said. "I thought we were starting to piece together some momentum in a couple of different areas — maybe not necessarily showing up in the grand scheme of things, but I was encouraged by some of the things that we were doing."

If there is anything that makes it a little easier for Elliott, it's that he can take the chances that he did Sunday and not sweat the consequences. He can take a win-or-bust attitude.

The drivers who are on the bubble need to worry about if there will be winners outside the top-16 in points, which could bump them out of the playoffs.

Bowman might be the exception as he has driven at a higher level than where he sits in the standings. At one point prior to his injury, he led the series standings. He also was docked 60 points for a technical infraction NASCAR found after Richmond.

"We should be fine," Bowman said. "But when you break a transmission [late in the race at Gateway] and give up a bunch of points and have stuff like that go on, it’s definitely not comfortable.

"But we had a massive points penalty and I missed a bunch of races and we’re still on the cutoff line. So if we just run how we should, we’ll be fine."

Other winless drivers with major penalties this year are more in situations like Elliott. Erik Jones had a 60-point penalty and is 141 points behind Bowman, while Chase Briscoe had a 120-point penalty and is 148 points behind Bowman.

Both of those drivers have won races since the start of last season. In fact, there are 11 drivers — Ross Chastain, Kevin Harvick, Chris Buescher, Wallace, Bowman, Daniel Suarez, Austin Cindric, Elliott, Austin Dillon, Jones and Briscoe — who have won since the start of 2022 who have not won this year.

Not on that list is Brad Keselowski, who currently has a 96-point cushion on the cutoff, but if a few drivers from outside the top 16 capture wins, he could be in jeopardy of making the playoffs.

"I’d be a lot more comfortable with a win," Keselowski said. "I think everybody would say that. ... We need to get some wins."

Keselowski also wouldn’t say that Elliott couldn’t rattle off strong races to find his way back into the mix on points if he doesn’t win.

"The Hendrick cars are really, really strong," Keselowski said. "They arguably have the best cars in the field on an average basis, so I wouldn’t put anything behind those guys for sure."

Thinking Out Loud

NASCAR decided not to have cautions at the stage breaks this year, and if there was an argument to have them, the Sonoma Raceway event Sunday might have been it.

But Sonoma is a more technical road course and one where drivers don’t have to funnel from three- or four-wide into a turn. Combined with the Next Gen car being better designed to maneuver on road courses and Cup drivers getting better at navigating these tracks, it was the perfect storm for a race to get strung out.

It would have been nice to have bunched the field back up (and have a set time when broadcasters would know they’d have commercials), but on most road courses, the cautions at stage breaks ruin the natural strategy and flow of a road-course race.

So far, NASCAR has a sample size of two events under this new rule. Evaluating the effectiveness of the new rule is still too early. The four remaining road-course races will give a better indication if it is something to continue doing for 2024.

In The News

• The NASCAR/Hendrick Motorsports entry into the 24 Hours of Le Mans completed 285 laps on the 8.4-mile course to finish 39th in the 62-car field. But the goal of finishing the race was accomplished as the car ran for about 23 of the 24 hours with an hour for drive line repairs. Driven by Jimmie Johnson, Jenson Button and Mike Rockenfeller, the entry was designed to expose NASCAR’s new Next Gen car to a new audience. The car was significantly modified to complete a 24-hour event.
• Road-racing star Kamui Kobayashi will make his NASCAR Cup Series debut in August on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course as he will drive the 23XI Racing No. 67 car. "This race will also serve as a great opportunity for our team to compete with and learn from a highly accomplished driver," 23XI Racing President Steve Lauletta said.
• Erik Jones tire changer Thomas Hatcher missed the Sonoma weekend and was being monitored for a concussion after a scary incident a week earlier at Gateway. Jones said his guys got a slow start getting around the car as Austin Dillon was coming into the pit stall in front of him, setting off the chain of events where Jones hit a tire his tire carrier was holding, and it flung the tire carrier’s other tire into Hatcher.

Social Spotlight

Stat of the Day

Martin Truex Jr.’s eight road-course wins in Cup ties him for eighth all-time.

They Said It

‘’I didn't know he was a DJ. Who would have thought?" —Martin Truex Jr. on meeting Shaq at Sonoma prior to his concert

Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including the past 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass, and sign up for the FOX Sports NASCAR Newsletter with Bob Pockrass.

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