Chase Elliott didn't seem like a rookie driver as the 2016 Sprint Cup season began. He certainly didn't race like one.
The son of Hall of Famer Bill Elliott, he seemed to be a combination of natural-born talent and a driver willing to listen to those around him and learn from their advice.
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But Sprint Cup racing can turn on a driver — and fast.
For Elliott, the past few weeks have been a crash course in how quickly things can turn.
He knows he must fix things. He knows what he needs to do. But knowing that and making changes in the heat of the moment are tough on anyone. Imagine what it's like for a 20-year-old in his first full season of Cup competition. One with his history in the sport who is replacing four-time champion Jeff Gordon in the Hendrick Motorsports No. 24 car.
It's certainly no easy task, this business of turning things around when the pressure is on.
"Oh, it's just poor decisions on my behalf I think, is the biggest thing," Elliott said about his recent string of setbacks after the race at Pocono. "So, the best way to fix it is obviously to see it at first and notice it and just go to work and like I said, rethink my approach. It's definitely not working. We've had good cars. We had a good car today.
"I felt like we were a step in the right direction from where we had been the last couple of weeks, which I felt like was a good sign. I just didn't do my part. I need to rethink things and try to do a better job and put us in a better position. It's not bad luck. It's just me putting us in bad spots."
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He opened the season as the youngest pole winner for the Daytona 500, but then crashed just 19 laps into the race. His second setback came at Las Vegas, where he crashed into the sliding car of Matt Kenseth. But surrounding that were eighth-place finishes at Atlanta and Phoenix. He settled in and hit a streak of relatively consistent top-10 finishes.
It wasn't a perfect run — some drivers were less than pleased with how Elliott raced at Talladega in finishing fifth — but it was enough to put him pretty solidly in contention for a berth in the Chase for the Sprint Cup. Win or no win.
He finished in the top 10 in 10 of 12 races in a streak from Phoenix to Michigan — where he was runner-up. He had been fourth after leading laps at Pocono the previous week.
He headed to Sonoma sitting sixth in the standings — ahead of several drivers who had wins that would put them into the Chase.
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And then the trouble started.
A series of bad finishes put him closer and closer to the cutoff. Most of the rookie class struggled at Kentucky, with a crash leaving Elliott 31st. Then he tangled with fellow rookie Ryan Blaney and crashed with Logano in Monday's rain-delayed race at Pocono to finish 33rd.
The latest stretch — six races with a top finish of 15th — dropped Chase to 13th in the standings. With two drivers that are outside of that group having wins, he's in real danger when it comes to making the Chase. Tony Stewart has a win and will make the Chase if he stays in the top 30 in the points. Chris Buescher has a win and must move into the top 30 to do the same.
Those drivers push Elliott ever closer to the bubble.
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Clearly, he's feeling the pressure.
"I had a bad segment of events prior to that [contact with Ryan Blaney] and I was trying to stop the bleeding doing all I could do," he said. "I felt like we were falling back. We were losing too many spots and I had to do something to try to keep from continuing to fall back and lose all that track position.
"Like I say, I hate to put anybody in a bad spot. I'm glad nothing happened there. But obviously that didn't work out later on."
My mistake today, hate it for my guys and the 22 team... We'll regroup for Watkins Glen. Congrats to @Chris_Buescher, that was cool to see.
— Chase Elliott (@chaseelliott) August 2, 2016
Now, he's working on refocusing — and turning things around so that he can move back into contention in races. And lock into the Chase field over the course of the next five races. He's getting ready to head to Watkins Glen after testing at the track on July 26-27. His expectations there?
"I'm just going to try to focus on the fundamentals of road-course racing and do that correctly," he said. "The rest should take care of itself."