Chase Elliott adds another championship to family trophy case

With an uncatchable car and an unblinking nerve, Chase Elliott completed a new, next-gen championship chapter of his family’s racing fable Sunday. Far away from where it all began in the north Georgia hills, Elliott dominated NASCAR’s Season Finale at the Phoenix Raceway to become the third youngest (at 24) to ever win a series championship.

With the win, Elliott joins his father as a NASCAR series champ, Bill having claimed his way back in 1988. Thirty-two years after the siren atop the Dawsonville Pool Room sounded to mark Awesome Bill from Dawsonville’s title it wailed again to announce his son’s victory. The circle of life in racing is very loud.

And wasn’t it a familiar adjective Chase shouted into his radio immediately after crossing the finish line:

“Awesome. Awesome. Awesome.”

Follow up later by this: “This is a dream. I’m just hoping I don’t ever wake up,” he said in his post-race interview.

The Elliotts become the third father-son championship pair to win series titles, joining Lee and Richard Petty and Ned and Dale Jarrett.

“When I’m dead and gone and my dad is dead and gone, he and I will share a championship with the last name Elliott forever. I don’t think it gets any cooler than that,” he said Sunday night.

Quickly overcoming a pre-race penalty that shuffled him from the pole to the rear of the 39-car field, Elliott was a classic front-runner Sunday. It was obvious early he had the alpha car built for the front of the pack. Just as it was obvious from the way he made his way back to the front, outdueling each of the other three final four drivers racing for the championship, that he was just as well-suited to win between the ears as beneath the hood. When it was all done, Elliott led 154 of 312 laps, including the final 42 laps over the 1-mile track.

Conveniently enough, the four drivers running for the title also were the top four in Sunday’s race. Taking the checkered behind Elliott were, in order, Brad Keselowski, Joey Logano and Denny Hamlin.

Finishing fifth, but among the first to congratulate Elliott, was seven-time champion Jimmie Johnson, running in his final NASCAR race. Asked what he’d most remember from the last of his 687 career races, Johnson, a teammate and friend of the young Elliott said, “Chase Elliott winning his first championship. I’m so happy for that guy. Great friend. Great family. To watch him grow up, to be around him and to give him some advice from time to time has been really meaningful to me. Today I think more about him winning the championship than anything.”

Elliott began the day in arrears, or more precisely, in the rear.

His No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet failed pre-race technical inspection not once, but twice. Upon third review, Elliott made it through inspection, but faced the penalty of going from the pole to the rear of the field at the start of the race.

Prior to the start, he seemed not one little bit bothered by the penalty. Expressing confidence in crew chief Alan Gustafson, he shrugged it all off with a, “if you’re not pushing, you’re in the wrong business.”

Nor were his competitors celebrating the penalty. “Cup races are so long it’s not really a big deal, and stage points didn’t really matter for this race. I just didn’t feel like it was a big deal,” Keselowski said.

All parties were correct in their assessment. For it took Elliott only the first 50 laps to weave through the lesser cars and join the championship chase up front.

Some of the hardest racing of the day came about a third of the way through, when Elliott roared up on Logano’s left rear quarter panel and made himself quite a nuisance. On lap 79, he passed and took his first lead of the day.

As Keselowski faltered on the final pit stop of the day and Hamlin never did quite get up to speed, it was pretty much solely an Elliott-Logano debate at the end. With 42 laps to go, Elliott took the lead for the last time from Logano.

“I saw Joey was pretty loose there I felt like I needed to get to him while I could,” Elliott said. “I thought he was going to get a little better (the longer the race went).”

Elliott was never seriously challenged from that point, as he cruised to his fifth victory of the season, and his second straight, following up the win at Martinsville that vaulted him into the championship four.

Only 24, Elliott is the youngest series champion since Jeff Gordon won the first of his four titles in 1995. “I never would have thought this year would have gone as it has,” Elliott said. “NASCAR series championship? Are you kidding me? Unreal.”

This was a year Elliott put down social media, put down his phone, curtained off the distractions of the modern world and focused hard on the job at hand. “That’s one thing I felt our whole team did a better job of, just boiling down to the things that matter. And ultimately, it’s how good of a job did we do building that car, how prepared am I coming into a race weekend and how did we execute. And I feel those three things we put more emphasis on than we ever had. I was more mentally locked in than I’ve ever been and I think the results showed.”

There was a passing-of-the-torch feel to the moment with Johnson finishing just behind the four championship contenders and so eager to endorse Elliott’s title. Afterward, the old champion provided context and meaning to this moment for the latest champion named Elliott.

“It really does change your confidence as a driver, as a leader of a race team,” he said of that first championship. “It positions you differently in the fans’ space. There is a bunch of credibility that comes with that.”

“Not that Chase needs any fans but I’m sure there might be naysayers out there, a big moment like this cements you in everybody’s head as the real deal,” Johnson added. “It’s one thing to win races. It’s one thing to be fast. But to get it all done and win races and be fast and win a championship is the most difficult thing to do in our sport. For him to have a championship at this age, to be so young, there’s no telling what the win total will be for him or his championship total.”