Chase Elliott told what he must do at Martinsville – Sports News
The NASCAR Cup Series Playoff outlook is bleak from Chase Elliott’s perspective, with the 2020 champion far adrift of the remainder of the Round of 8 contenders heading into the finale at Martinsville Speedway.
The 29-year-old, who crashed out of the YellaWood 500 in a mass wreck, heads to the Xfinity 500 62 factors beneath the cutoff line, with simply two spots nonetheless up for grabs after the Joe Gibbs Racing duo of Denny Hamlin and Chase Briscoe reached victory lane at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and Talladega Superspeedway, respectively.
With such a gaping factors chasm to traverse, 2014 champion Kevin Harvick has made it clear on his newest podcast that Elliott, in addition to his fellow title hopefuls, can don’t have anything else on his thoughts in Martinsville than taking the checkered flag.
“The four guys that are out and the two guys that are in, all have to race like they’re in a must-win,” he stated on the ‘Harvick’s Happy Hour’ podcast, happening to emphasis that Elliott, and the Team Penske duo of Ryan Blaney (-47) and Joey Logano (-38) are “definitely in a must-win” scenario.
Then there’s JGR’s Christopher Bell (+37) and Hendrick Motorsports’ Kyle Larson (+36), who, whereas above the cutoff line, may but be leapfrogged at the ultimate hurdle, with Hendricks’ William Byron additionally nonetheless very a lot within the combine at -36.
Harvick added that at this stage, he was “reluctant” to counsel that both Blaney or Logano are “out of it,” following their glorious performances at New Hampshire in late September, with Blaney taking the win and Logano in fourth.
“They’re never out of it and really nobody’s ever out of it because of the quality of competition and the quality of teams and cars, the level that they race at in the Playoffs, from preparation and everything that goes with it,” Harvick stated. “So, I think that any of them could win. They’ve obviously done that there before. But I think they all have to race to win.”
Blaney and Logano’s report at Martinsville backs Harvick’s resistance to rule them out of competition, with the previous having gained the final two fall races in Virginia, whereas the latter gained there in 2018 and has completed within the highest 10 on all however one event since then.
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Despite this, Blaney was removed from optimistic about Martinsville after his late tumble down the pecking order at Talladega led him to a Twenty third-place end, commenting, “So what, we’ve won there twice?” as per NASCAR.
“It’s up and down, you never know what’s going to happen year after year. The people that have been saying, ‘Oh, Blaney is going to win Martinsville.’ It’s ——-. It’s hard. I don’t know what speed we’re going to have. It’s nice that we’ve won there a couple of times, but we’ve got to dig down deep for this one.”
As for Logano, who completed sixteenth, he remained a little more upbeat, saying, “It’s not a bad track for us. I mean, it’s simple in what to do. At this point, it’s all or nothing.”
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