Chase Elliott once more looked like he was on track for his first NASCAR Sprint Cup win, and once more suffered a late-race setback that cost him that shot.
Elliott held the lead in the NASCAR Sprint Cup race with less than 10 laps remaining at Chicagoland Speedway on Sunday afternoon — and then a caution came out and everything changed.
The leaders opted to pit during the caution created by Michael McDowell, who had a tire failure. Furniture Row Racing's crew put Martin Truex Jr. out in front of Elliott on the stop. And while Ryan Blaney, Kasey Kahne and Carl Edwards opted not to pit, they had nothing for Truex on the restart.
Truex wove through the field quickly for the win, while Elliott was battling to get back to his bumper as those that stayed out were his path. Elliott finished third, a solid performance in the opening Chase race and one that keeps him in position to advance to the Round of 12. But it wasn't the outcome one had expected just a few moments earlier.
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Elliott had led by more than a second for most of the closing laps. He is seeking his first win in the Cup ranks and was handily holding off Truex, who had been strong earlier in the race.
Then he found himself facing a late restart, something that ended his effort to win both races at Michigan this season. Sunday, though, it wasn't the restart itself that would challenge him, but rather his position on it after losing the spot on pit road and having a handful of drivers stay out.
Your leader @chaseelliott pits & loses one position in the race off pit road to @MartinTruex_Jr. #TMNT400 pic.twitter.com/9dhWHUO4kx
— NASCAR on NBC (@NASCARonNBC) September 18, 2016
Still, Elliott put the race in perspective and pointed out that he wasn't surprised to see the late caution.
"We've all watched this stuff long enough, we know these races don't go green that long typically," Elliott said. "We know that we see late-race cautions way more often than not. That's a part of racing from short‑track racing all the way up to this stuff.
"I've learned over the years, you just got to expect it from my seat, from the crew chief's seat, from the pit crew's perspective. You just got to be ready for it, embrace it when it happens, suck it up and try to figure out how to make it happen after it does."
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Elliott, 20, took over the ride from Jeff Gordon this season. And with Gordon on his pit box at Chicago, he made the most of his opening run in the Chase.
Elliott led 75 laps in the race, second only to his Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jimmie Johnson's 118.
He pointed out that he and his team were proud of their effort and the speed they had at Chicagoland on Sunday. And now they're sixth in the Chase standings with two races to go before eliminations begin.
The @NAPARacing team shakes hands with @chaseelliott post race. pic.twitter.com/uxqaVePfjv
— Hendrick 24 Team (@Hendrick24Team) September 18, 2016
Still, he admitted giving up a lead late isn't an easiest thing to handle. But he's learning from it — and ready to move on to the next Chase race.
"There is no easy outcome," he said. "You know, it's unfortunate. You hate to have it happen. As you get faced with these situations more than once, I think you learn. You learn from situation to situation.
"But like I said, I felt like we did a good job as a team today trying to control the things that we could control. And you can't control when a caution is going to come out. Granted, you can expect one a lot of the time, but you can't control when it's going to happen, and you certainly can't control how many guys are going to stay out on tires and try to make something happen at the end of a race. That's just a part of life, part of racing."
Elliott's next chance to win comes Sept. 25 at New Hampshire. The Chase's first round ends Oct. 2 at Dover, and four drivers will be pared from the field.