This year’s Toyota Owners 400 kick-started with three HMS drivers in the first two rows. Chase Elliott started second and finished fifth; his best finish of the year so far. It would take anyone by surprise to know that Sunday’s race at Richmond was the first time since the Daytona 500 in August 2022, that Chase Elliott led the first lap of a Cup race. Nevertheless, Elliott views his top-5 performance as something to build on in the weeks to come.
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“Overall a solid weekend. just really proud of the fight,” he said. “We kind of fell behind the mid-portion of the race and those last two or three runs, we had a little momentum; was able to pass some guys under green… hard thing to do nowadays, at least for me.”
According to the Dawsonville native, that last pit stop that the #9 team made when the caution came out really got him the opportunity to bag the respectable finish. “Nice to get a solid top-five and something to build on here as we get to Martinsville and beyond,” he added with renewed hopes.
Just like most other drivers, Elliott too deems Richmond as one of the toughest racetracks out there to pack speed on. But why so?
Elliott hints at the lack of consistency
Elliott’s performance at Richmond so far, is a mix of good and bad. There have been times when he has come inside the top 3 and there also have been times when he has fallen back to a P24. His last five finishes (excluding the most recent one) at the 0.75-mile racetrack look like this: 3rd, 5th, 14th, 4th and 12th. One might wonder, what is it that makes Richmond so untameable?
“It’s just really hard to find consistency to a point. There’s been trips up here where we’ve been actually pretty good and other trips have just been abysmal,” he admitted during a pre-race interview with Frontstretch. “But I look around the garage and that’s a pretty common trend…I feel like we might win or we might run 20th and there’s really no rhyme or reason as to why or what but just a really hard place to figure out.”
However, it’s perhaps not the toughest of all. After all, there have been multi-time winners at Richmond before; Kyle Busch (6) and Denny Hamlin (5), to name a few. “I wish I had a better understanding of what makes those guys so good,” sighed Elliott.
Now the question is will he be able to capitalize on his latest performance? Only time will tell.
