Chase Elliott down to final chance to make Cup playoffs

WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. — Chase Elliott faces an unenviable task after he ran out of fuel during Sunday’s Cup race at Watkins Glen.

He must win next weekend’s regular-season finale at Daytona International Speedway to make the playoffs.

“To show up there and be in a must-win situation is like going to Vegas and having to hit the nearest slot machine for the jackpot,” Elliott said the day before. “That’s just silly.”

He’s in this scenario after failing to win this season, along with missing six races due to a snowboarding accident and one race after NASCAR suspended him for wrecking Denny Hamlin in the Coca-Cola 600.

Only one spot remains in the 16-driver playoff field after Kevin Harvick and Brad Keselowski each clinched spots Sunday. Bubba Wallace holds the final playoff position.

Elliott has not missed the Cup playoffs in seven previous seasons. He's made it to the title race each of the past three seasons, winning the crown in 2020. But history won’t matter at Daytona just as it didn’t at Watkins Glen for the winningest active Cup driver on road courses.

Sunday’s 32nd-place finish wasn’t just the result of running out of a fuel but a series of events this weekend that led to the car stalled on track.

Elliott’s qualifying performance was sub-par. He took the blame for his 15th starting spot Saturday.

“Hopefully, I can figure out how to drive the vehicle faster,” he said after qualifying.

With the possibility of few cautions in the race — cautions are no longer thrown for the end of stages at road courses — and not having the pace that contenders had, the team couldn’t rely on steadily moving through the field.

A different strategy had to be employed, but it would come with risks.

“To win, you have to have very little margin,” crew chief Alan Gustafson said. “That’s what winning is. You’re going to make sure you exploit everything to the highest percentile possible.

“So anytime you’re trying to push, you’re cutting margins. So that gets riskier and riskier.”

Gustafson had Elliott pit on Lap 17 of Sunday’s race, ahead of most of the field. Teams needed only two pit stops to make it the 90 laps.

By pitting earlier than most, it gave Elliott a clear track. That allowed him to gain time on competitors who would pit with other cars and not have as clear of track. That slowed their time.

The strategy worked. Elliott was 13th before pitting. After the cycle finished, he was sixth.

But pitting earlier than most, Elliott had to stretch his fuel further over the 2.45-mile course to get to Lap 55.

The message had been clear from Gustafson on the radio to Elliott. He had three laps of fuel in the reserve tank. Gustafson told Elliott to let him know when he flipped the switch for the reserve tank. Once Elliott did, he could go past pit road twice and would have to pit the next lap.

Elliott’s car came to a stop at the inner loop about a mile from his pit stall on the lap he was to pit.

Asked if it was a miscalculation or fuel line issue, Gustafson said: “That’s internal stuff. I’m not going to go over our internal struggles in the media. I’m not going over internal stuff in the media, and I’m certainly not going to educate everybody else on the problem.”

Elliott was not made available to the media after the race.

But there wasn’t much to say. The team’s radio was silent after Elliott crossed the finish line. Gustafson and an engineer were the only two people atop the team’s pit box at that point. A lone Elliott fan stood nearby and crew members watched a race pass by with teammate William Byron scoring his series-high fifth victory of the season.

Gustafson walked back alone to the team’s hauler, while Byron celebrated.

Two months ago at Nashville, Elliott looked ahead to the challenge of making the playoffs after missing so many races and embraced it.

“I’m looking forward to it,” he said at the time. “As bad as the year has been to a lot of people, I feel like it’s kind of fun. We’ve got 10 weeks left and you either get in the show or you don’t. The playoffs are kind of like that. When you get in those last 10, you either have to run well the next week or you go home. So it’s kind of that way now. For me, I kind of enjoy it.

“I’m kind of looking forward to just the challenge and seeing if we can figure it out.”

He and his team have one last chance.

It has been 30 races since Elliott last won, scoring a victory at Talladega in the playoffs.

If he is to have a chance at a second Cup title this year, that streak must end next weekend at Daytona.