Elliott loses crew member as NASCAR delivers | Sports News

Chase Elliott was dealt a pair of crushing punishments previous to delivering a dominant efficiency in NASCAR Cup Series qualifying.

To make issues worse, the No. 9 car chief — Matt Barndt — has moreover been ejected from the race weekend. Along with Elliott, Chris Buescher’s No. 17 RFK Racing Ford and Timmy Hill’s No. 66 Garage 66 Ford additionally did not go inspection twice.

The slight hiccup did little to gradual down Elliott, as the Dawsonville, Georgia native posted a single-lap time of 29.319 seconds in qualifying en path to claiming the third beginning spot for Sunday’s NASCAR occasion. Entering the 293-lap race, he ranked fifth on the Cup Series leaderboard by means of 5 races — simply 87 factors behind chief Tyler Reddick.

Despite main solely 13 laps this 12 months, Elliott has routinely managed to navigate his approach to the entrance of the pack. Last week, he snaked by means of the sphere in Stage 3 of the Pennzoil 400 earlier than securing a second-place end and 40 factors at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Elliott will hope to hold over his current success to Darlington, a monitor the place he’s traditionally struggled. “I love this place. I love coming over here,” he informed reporters. “It’s such a cool racetrack. It has not been a good racetrack for me at all. I want it to love me back really bad.

“We’ve put a lot of effort into trying to improve here. And I hope that this weekend is a step in the right direction. We’ve had times where I thought, man, we’re moving the needle in the right way here. So yeah, I thought last week was really solid. So, hopefully build on that and build on our experiences from Phoenix to piece together a really solid weekend here would be nice.”

Though Elliott has already amassed three top-10 finishes and two top-5s this season, he conceded that Chevrolet’s redesigned Cup Series physique model continues to be taking some time to get used to. “You’re talking itty-bitty little details of what we were even allowed to change, and how you could move the needle inside that box,” he defined.

“It’s just a really small area to work in. So, I don’t know that you can change it as much as you once could. But any subtle difference is a difference. And we haven’t really been to all the different tracks.

“I think until we get one full pass on all the places that we visit in a season, I think there will remain some questions that we don’t have answered. But last week, I thought, was just a really good reminder of, hey, we’re close. If we put it all together — Phoenix, like I said, had room for improvement. But I thought last week was really close. And I think we can make that better.”