Chase Elliott has been down this road before. It’s a familiar one, but that doesn’t make it easy. One year ago this very weekend, as an 18- year-old rookie, Elliott was juggling a plateful of responsibilities and finding time between a surging racing career and his high school graduation.
Now nine races into his sophomore campaign driving the No. 9 NAPA AUTO PARTS Chevrolet for JR Motorsports in the NASCAR XFINITY Series (NXS), Elliott is again balancing a double-duty weekend of a different sort. In addition to defending his NXS championship at Iowa Speedway this weekend, Elliott will make his third start in NASCAR Sprint Cup competition, piloting the No. 25 Chevrolet SS for Hendrick Motorsports in the Sprint Showdown race at Charlotte Motor Speedway on Friday night. The demands of the weekend will have Elliott making a 1,024-mile journey between Newton, Iowa and Charlotte.
Elliott’s weekend will start in Charlotte with the Sprint Cup Showdown. If he wins one of the two 20-lap segments, Elliott will punch a ticket to Saturday night’s All-Star race and then make the journey to Iowa Speedway for a pair of NXS practices. Elliott carries a strong record into Iowa, where he has tallied one top-five and two top-10 finishes in two starts.
If eligible for the All-Star race, Elliott will fly back to Charlotte following final NXS practice at Iowa, which concludes at 12:25 p.m. CT, allowing him barely four hours to spare before the mandatory driver’s meeting for the All-Star race. If everything goes according to plan, Elliott’s JRM teammate and fulltime late model driver Josh Berry, will be on standby to qualify the No. 9 entry Saturday afternoon in Iowa in Elliott’s absence.
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