DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Chase Elliott may have finished as the runner-up in the 63rd Daytona 500, but going into the final lap Elliott was fourth in line and never really felt like he had a chance to win.
The defending NASCAR Cup Series champion hoped to have help from fellow Chevrolet driver Austin Dillon down the stretch, but as the laps ticked off, Elliott felt his shot growing dimmer and dimmer.
Finally, with the white flag in the air and knowing he had to take some sort of a shot, Elliott tried to take a run down the backstretch but was stifled when Dillon ducked low to try and move forward himself.
That left Elliott little choice but to stay tucked in behind McDowell’s rear bumper as McDowell pushed Brad Keselowski into the back of leader Joey Logano’s Ford, turning Logano and Keselowski around in front of the pack in the middle of the third-turn banking.
McDowell and Elliott avoided the fiery melee that ensued and attempted to settle the race among themselves before the yellow flag waved with a quarter of a lap remaining.
NASCAR officials scored McDowell as the winner after a full cool-down lap, with Elliott classified as the runner-up as the Daytona 500 ended with a crash on the final lap for the second consecutive year.
What frustrated Elliott the most after the race wasn’t his finishing position, but how long the rest of the pack waited before trying to make any sort of move to try and win The Great American Race.
“We were definitely trying to work together (just) like the other manufacturers were, at least as long as we could. The top was just so fast and, unfortunately, there just wasn’t another good option,” said Elliott. “Thursday night (in the Duels), I thought there was an option for the bottom and a few good cars could make ground, and you had a choice (of what lane to run). But in the 500, the top was ridiculous and it made it to where nobody wanted to pull out of line until the very last lap.
“At that point, that’s just what you had to work with,” Elliott added. “We were so afraid that (because) there were only a few Chevrolets left there at the end, that even if we all got bunched up, I wasn’t sure whether or not it was going to be enough. Obviously, everybody else was thinking the same thing because everybody was content to ride around the top until the very last second.
“I just didn’t think it was going to be enough for guys to jump out any sooner than that (final) lap to go to make anything happen.”
Coming off his maiden NASCAR Cup Series championship, Elliott’s second-place finish marked his best result in six Daytona 500 starts, as well as his first top-10 finish in NASCAR’s most prestigious event.
But the disappointment of missing out on the Harley J. Earl Trophy was clear on the face of someone who has become not only one of the leading personalities in NASCAR, but one of its most driven-to-succeed competitors.
“I didn’t really know what to do,” Elliott said of his mindset in the waning moments of the race. “I felt like my hands were tied. I hate that (feeling).
“There just wasn’t an option to better your result (at the end), so we didn’t, aside from that crash.”