Before last Saturday, Chase Elliott had never finished higher than 15th at a restrictor-plate track.
Restrictor-plate tracks were the kryptonite to the 19-year-old heir apparent to Jeff Gordon, who performed like Superman everywhere else.
In his 47 career starts before Daytona last weekend, Elliott had only finished outside the top 10 a mere 10 times. Four of those results came at restrictor-plate tracks.
On Saturday at the 2.5-mile superspeedway, Elliott finished third.
“Daytona and Talladega haven’t been too good for us this year or last,” Elliott said. “Happy to have a decent finish and to bring the NAPA Chevrolet home in one piece. I didn’t do anything special when those wrecks took place, I just happened to be in a fortunate spot and avoided them.
“Definitely haven’t been on that end much, especially at Daytona, so it was nice to get a top five because we certainly needed it.”
On Friday night, Elliott will attempt to build on his strong showing with his first win of the season in the NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Kentucky Speedway (7:30 p.m. ET on NBCSN).
He finished 12th in his Kentucky debut last June and followed the performance with a fourth-place showing at the 1.5-mile track in September.
Elliott will try to add to his Xfinity Series-leading 12 top 10s and further close the 34-point gap in the standings between him and front-runner Chris Buescher. The JR Motorsports driver moved past Ty Dillon in the standings after Daytona to grab the second spot.
Elliott believes he needs to start visiting Victory Lane to successfully defend his Xfinity Series crown.
“The best way to gain points is to win races,” he said. “I think we need to do that to get it done this year. We were able to do that last year and I think we can do that this season.
“We just have to get after it and really do our jobs the second half of the season. If there’s any part that counts, this is it, so we need to go get it done, try to capitalize and hopefully get some good strong finishes to try to put ourselves in contention to win races.”
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