Chase Elliott gets his first crack at a NASCAR series championship Sunday in Phoenix, the first of many, one would figure, seeing how he is just 24 and blessed with great connections and a lead foot.
Although that doesn’t seem to be the prevailing opinion inside the No. 9 Hendrick Chevrolet.
Sometimes sons do listen to their fathers, you know. In this case, dad is Hall of Famer Bill Elliott, who won a NASCAR title in 1988, the veritable Pleistocene Era of racing when the method of identifying a champion was entirely different and may even have involved the reading of chicken bones. Anyway, Bill advised Chase just to appreciate the now and hang the future. And the lesson seems to be taking.
“From talking to dad,” Chase said Thursday, “the big thing he has mentioned is just enjoy these moments because these aren’t things you can take for granted. You can’t know when your last race win is, you don’t know what tomorrow brings. Nothing’s guaranteed, right? I’m just enjoying these moments, trying to embrace them.”
On Sunday at Martinsville, Elliott won the biggest race of his life, the victory lifting him into the group of four running for the series championship this weekend. In the race within the race at Phoenix, whoever among Elliott, Denny Hamlin, Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano finishes ahead of the others within the body of the full-field Season Finale 500 will emerge with the 2020 title.
Back in ’88, seven-plus years before Chase was born, Bill Elliott won his one and only (points-based) championship after finishing 11th in the season-ending race in Atlanta. In 2020, his son must outduel three drivers who between them have 14 wins this season and two previous series championships.
That meant little time for celebration for Elliott after breaking through at Martinsville. “I came home and went to bed,” he said. “I would have loved to come home and have a few beers and hung out, but we had meetings Monday morning and obviously a big week of prep going into this last event.”
“After a race like Sunday you wish you could slow down time and enjoy that moment and make it last a little longer,” he said. “But you can’t. So, you enjoy them as much as you can and put emphasis on that.”
Meanwhile in Dawsonville, the North Georgia cradle of the Elliott racing legacy, they are busy preparing for the weekend. The siren atop the Dawsonville Pool Hall that sounds each time an Elliott wins is primed for another prolonged wail. There is a watch party scheduled for the Georgia Racing Hall of Fame, naturally based in this capital city of the sport. They held a parade for Bill in ’88 after he won the title; and one is in the planning should Chase win Sunday, according to folks at the Hall.
In Las Vegas, in between counting presidential votes, they have had time to establish Elliott and Hamlin (+240) as slight favorites over Logano (+260) and Keselowski (+300). The betting public has not been put off by Elliott’s inexperience, seemingly won over more by his Martinsville momentum. Nor swayed by the fact that both Logano and Hamlin have two career victories each at Phoenix (none for Elliott or Keselowski), Logano winning there in March.
None of that interests Elliott. If it has nothing to do with gaining speed Sunday at Phoenix, he doesn’t really want to think about it. He is approaching this moment like a racehorse with blinkers on, seeing only straight ahead.
This strange COVID-19 season of a compressed schedule, no practice, no qualifying has nonetheless been a very fruitful one for Elliott. He has three wins and has cemented his status as the best left- and right-hand-turning driver on the circuit with victories on road courses at Daytona and Charlotte. He crashed through the barrier of round of eight into his first final. But don’t try to get him to call it a success just yet. “Our season’s not over. We’ll find out Sunday,” he said.
And don’t talk to him about legacy building and how a championship would be the cornerstone in that project, even at such a young age.
“I don’t know what it would feel like (to win a championship) or the emotions of it or what it would bring or wouldn’t bring because I never achieved that before,” he said. “To be thinking about those things and not the things that are going to make our car go fast on Sunday is just the wrong thing in my approach now. What is going to make us go fast, that is what matters on Sunday. That is going to be the thing that gives you a chance or it doesn’t. The rest of it now doesn’t matter.”
One man on the NBC call of Sunday afternoon’s race has a pretty good idea of what it’s like to carry a famous racing name into his own career, to achieve great popularity throughout the sport and to chase the validation of a championship. Only Dale Earnhardt Jr. never did win one.
This Elliott kid, with his mindset, just might, he figures.
“I’m interested in who Chase is this weekend,” Earnhardt said. “I feel like when he has been in most of these (big) situations, he has had some good results. I don’t worry about him making a mistake or crumbling under the pressure or doing something uncharacteristic.”
Earnhardt’s preview continued, “I feel like (Logano) might be the toughest of the group, mentally. I give him the edge in that group in terms of the mental side of it, but Chase ain’t far behind. And Chase might be ahead of him on performance this time. We might see Chase win a championship Sunday. I really think we might.”
If not Sunday, surely someday.
