The 2020 NASCAR Cup Series Champion Chase Elliott has yet to secure a victory at the prestigious Daytona 500, something he has been unable to do throughout his decade-long Cup career. With ‘The Great American Race’ just eight days away, Elliott’s long-standing crew chief, Alan Gustafson, recently offered his insights on the importance of the event for their #9 team.
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Gustafson reflected, “I think for me, that is definitely a race I’d love to win but it’s never really haunted me because you look at some of the winners, and if you look at some of our other marquee events, those races really have more of a Hall-of-Fame win list – the Southern 500, Coca-Cola 600, Brickyard 400. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to win it.”
He added, “I do want to win it and obviously, I’m going to do everything I can to do that, but those aren’t the ones I lose sleep over at night.” But he acknowledged that as a competitor there are a lot of moving parts and it needs some amount of luck and a lot of fortunate circumstances need to happen to win the race.”
Elliott came the closest to winning a Daytona 500 in 2017, yet a slight deficit in luck played a role in the outcome. Starting from the pole, and winning in both duels, Elliott was well-positioned to secure his first Cup victory. However, he ran out of fuel merely three laps from the finish line, relegating him to a P14-place finish.
He later acknowledged his awareness of the dwindling fuel supply during the race’s critical final laps. Interestingly, he was not alone in the predicament; Kyle Larson and Martin Truex Jr. also found themselves in contention for the lead but they too exhausted their fuel reserves. This was because their crew chiefs held out hope for a caution that never materialized, despite a wreck-filled event.
The second time Elliott neared a Daytona 500 win was in 2021, engaging in a final-lap duel with Michael McDowell. However, a late caution flagged by NASCAR after the white flag foiled his efforts, and he could only reach a second-place finish. Throughout his career, Elliott has managed just one top-5 finish in his nine Daytona 500 starts.
Elliott shares his take on eluded Daytona 500 win
Both Busch and Keselowski have repeatedly expressed their desire to win the Daytona 500, a sentiment echoed by the 29-year-old Elliott as well, but with a slightly different mindset. Reflecting on his performance last year, when he finished P14, Elliott remarked that while securing a win would be tremendously meaningful, falling to win does not define a driver’s career.
As Elliott put it, “It would be a huge deal. For me, it’s a race that when I get done with this deal one day, it would be nice to have your name on the trophy and just to have said you won a Daytona 500, I think that would be a cool thing.”
With a fresh burst of momentum from winning the Clash race at Bowman Gray Stadium a few days back, it will be intriguing to see if Elliott can leverage the energy into a victory at Daytona this season.
