Top-10 Streak Continues for Elliott and NAPA Team at Bristol

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In: Xfinity Series News

Chase Elliott, driver of the No. 9 NAPA AUTO PARTS Chevrolet, finished sixth in Saturday’s Drive to Stop Diabetes 300 NASCAR XFINITY Series race at Bristol Motor Speedway (BMS).  It was Elliott’s sixth consecutive top-10 finish, as he now trails leader Chris Buescher by 12 points just seven races into the 2015 season.  Joey Logano led all 300 laps in a dominate effort on his way to capture his 23rd career XFINITY Series victory and second of the 2015 season.

After qualifying in the 13th position, Elliott battled a tightness issue on his NAPA KNOW machine early in the going, which dropped him back to 18th position by lap 12.  On top of that, came another bit of adversity for the 19-year-old Dawsonville, Ga. native, his radio frequency was down.  This created a communications dilemma between Elliott, his crew chief Ernie Cope and spotter Earl Barban.  Once the lap-57 caution came out, Cope brought Elliott in for fuel, a chassis adjustment and four tires.  Under the caution Elliott was able to unstick his radio communications button to alleviate the issues the team faced during the race’s first 45 laps. 

Under caution on lap 177, Cope radioed to the NAPA team they had just used their last set of new tires.  He reiterated that the entire field was in the same boat as them as the team started to weigh various strategy scenarios with 100 laps left in the contest.  As Elliott was running his fastest lap times with under 75 laps to go, Elliott dropped back to sixth place, allowing his JR Motorsports (JRM) teammate Kevin Harvick to pass him for fifth place on lap 261 as the team was banking on another caution flag to fall.  The intent was to restart in either the fourth or sixth outside position as it proved to be the faster line around the .533-mmile high-banked oval.

As predicted a caution flag would fall with just 20 laps to go, but unfortunately for Elliott and the NAPA team, Harvick would come to pit road  moving Elliott up to the fifth and inside position on the race’s final restart with 13 laps to go.  Elliott held on to his NAPA Chevy as he was able to fight off a charging Harvick, who was closing quickly with newer tires, for a sixth-place finish.   

Joey Logano bested Daniel Suarez, Buescher, Erik Jones and Ty Dillon to round out the top-five.

Chase Elliott, driver No. 9 NAPA AUTO PARTS team

“We had a nice performance collectively as a team today.  I thought with all things considered through practice yesterday and not really having the qualifying effort we had hoped to have today, I thought we stuck to it and got a nice points day out of it.  I appreciate all my guys efforts throughout the weekend.  This NAPA KNOW HOW team never quits and it showed this weekend at Bristol.  Our strategy at the end could have played out a little better for us, but fortunately we were able to hold the sixth spot on the race’s final restart and get out of Bristol with a decent points day.  I’m looking forward to keeping up the short-track racing, with Richmond next weekend.”

JR Motorsports PR

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