Second time's a charm: Chase Elliott impresses with solid run in Richmond

By foxsports
Published

Defending XFINITY Series champion Chase Elliott's trek to the Sprint Cup Series took another positive step after Sunday's Toyota Owners 400 at Richmond International Raceway.

Making just his second Sprint Cup start, Elliott stayed out of trouble and finished the day where he started, 16th.

The result was much better than Elliott's first Sprint Cup outing at Martinsville Speedway, where he was involved in an incident early in the race and finished 38th.

Still, the 19-year-old son of Hall of Fame driver Bill Elliott was left wanting more from Sunday's results on the 0.75-mile speedway.  

"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, and we had great speed on the longer runs," said Elliott. "Expectations are we still just want to put together solid races and try and stay on the lead lap of those things. You try to race with some competitive cars, and I thought we did that today."

Elliott has three more Sprint Cup races planned for the 2015 season before moving into the No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports ride full time in 2016. Those starts will come at Charlotte Motor Speedway, Indianapolis Motor Speedway and Darlington Raceway. 

Continuing to learn the intricacies of racing in the Sprint Cup Series, Elliott believes Sunday's race in Richmond was a step in the right direction.

"Overall I felt like we had a really solid day. Really the whole weekend for us here on the Sprint Cup side was solid," he said. "I thought we had a good car throughout practice, was able to run well in race trim, and our real struggle was trying to go fast for qualifying. Guys made good adjustments for qualifying to get us in the show, and our car today had great long‑run speed.

"Unfortunately these races never ran to the long run. It's always going to be a short run to the finish, and I didn't tell them to do the right things for that last stop to run a short run. Lesson learned, and we'll try to get better for the next one."