Chase Elliott, No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet – Sidelined by damage sustained in an accident in the final stage.
Elliott on the accident that ended his race early in the final stage:
“The No. 22 (Joey Logano) got position on me. I thought I was doing the smart thing just trying to get back to the bottom. I guess I thought I was clear back down in line. I visually saw the gap, so I just tried to get back in line and I got a huge shot from behind. I’m not sure if the No. 42 (John H. Nemechek) got pushed in there or he wasn’t expecting me to come back to the bottom or what the reasoning was, but nonetheless, it happened and it’s done.”
It looked like you had turned things around. You had restarted 10th on that last restart. How sketchy were the tires out there, and what did you learn over the course of the first part of the race?
“It was super sketchy. It was hard to know how hard to push. Our No. 9 NAPA Chevy was really good for a few laps, and then I felt like we struggled. We had spent the majority of the night in the back of the pack, just trying to get ourselves back in position and back on the lead lap. Once we did and we got back up towards the front, I just felt like we needed some balance adjustments there once we started running the pace of the leaders. We were working on it and making it better.”
How did the tire wear force you to change your style of driving?
“I don’t know that it forced you to change your style as much as it was just where you were running and how much pace you were pushing. We were in such a terrible position getting trapped a lap down early. We were probably a little late to realize that we needed to stop. But on the same token, if it goes green, it probably would have worked out OK for us. Being in the back of the pack versus being upfront was certainly a big difference in how I was driving the car. We were working on our balance and it was slowly getting better.”
GM PR