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Chase Elliott was running around the top 10 in Sunday’s season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway when a stack-up on pit road ended his day as a contender. On the radio, the Hendrick Motorsports driver put the blame on the rule that makes drivers enter pit road single file.
The field was coming down pit road under caution when cars stacked up, and Elliott’s No. 9 Chevrolet took damage to the front. He could not recover and finished 22nd.
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‘I Need to Understand Here’
Right after the contact, Elliott wasn’t sure who caused it.
“Did they stop or did I [expletive] something up? I need to understand here,” Elliott said.
His team told him he wasn’t at fault and suggested Ryan Blaney, who was leading the field down pit road, had checked up the line.
“You didn’t do anything wrong. They were playing games; it’s like the 12 (Blaney) is trying to check everybody up or something.”
Elliott: Single-File Rule ‘Is the Reason That Just Happened’
Elliott said the incident would not have happened without the rule requiring drivers to line up single file on Homestead’s narrow pit lane.
“You know, I just want it to be known that their dumb [expletive] of making you be in line here, of all places, is the reason that just happened. … Scared the [expletive] to death … to see up the road and plow in the back of the people stopped,” Elliott said.
Spotter Trey Poole let him know other cars were damaged too.
“No consolation, doesn’t help anything, but we’re not the only one. A lot of people suffered damage in that. Not everybody came to fix it,” Poole said.
Elliott made it clear that didn’t make him feel any better.
A Strong Start, a Tough Finish
The finale capped a frustrating second half for Elliott. He won the seventh race of the season at Martinsville in March, the earliest win of his Cup career, and added a second win four races later at Texas. After 11 races, he was third in the standings.
By the start of the Chase, he had slipped to eighth. Between Texas and the Chase, he had just one top-five finish, a fifth at Richmond.
The Chase didn’t go much better. Elliott had two top-five finishes in the 10 races, a third at Phoenix and a second at Martinsville, and led just one lap.
The 30-year-old from Dawsonville, Georgia, finished 12th in the final standings.
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