There could be many factors and reasons what happened to Chase Elliott at Watkins Glen happened in the first place. During Stage 3, Elliott, desperate for a win to save his season and make it into the playoffs, was running inside the Top 10. But then he suddenly began slowing down until he completely came to a halt. He had run out of fuel. And his chances to win, if there were any in this race, to begin with, just went to 0.
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Soon after, the fingers and question marks went toward his crew chief Alan Gustafson, as many wondered and even blamed him for this mishap, which he attributed to false information at first.
Later on, in an interaction with the media, Gustafson remained less than open to getting into details regarding what happened to his driver, the most popular driver in NASCAR.
Alan Gustafson refused to discuss what happened to Chase Elliott at Watkins Glen
After the race, as several journalists tried to get his take on the incident, Gustafson declined to share any information regarding Elliott running out of fuel mid-race. The crew chief deemed it as “internal stuff” and claimed, “I’m not going to go over our internal struggles in the media, and I’m certainly not going to educate everybody else on the problem.”
He explained that in order to win, one has to have “very little margin.” “That’s what winning is. You’re going to make sure you exploit everything to the highest percentile possible,” he continued.
“So the time you’re trying to push, you’re cutting margins. That gets riskier and riskier.”
Alan Gustafson commented on Chase Elliott running out of fuel in the middle of the race at Watkins Glen.
📹 @PitLaneLT pic.twitter.com/afdUzDq3uj
— Frontstretch (@Frontstretch) August 20, 2023
Chase Elliott’s record at Daytona isn’t exactly good
Now that Watkins Glen is out of the equation in Chase Elliott’s quest to make it to the playoffs this year, he now has just one more opportunity, and that is at Daytona on Saturday. So now it’s worth exploring what Elliott’s record has been at Daytona over the years.
Of course, Daytona is a superspeedway and his fans would remember his win at Talladega last year in October, and his win at the same track in April 2019. But at Daytona in particular, where it will all come down in less than a week, his record hasn’t been encouraging. Elliott’s best finishes have been both runner-up in 2020 and 2021. Along with that, he has 0 finishes inside the top 5 and only 2 finishes inside the top 10.
This means he would absolutely need to do something he hasn’t done before, which is to win a race at Daytona in order to dig himself out of a situation that he hasn’t experienced before, which is to miss out on the NASCAR playoffs for the first time in the last 7 years.
