“We didn’t think of it as a passing of the torch, but I tried to share some of my experience with him before the race,” said Johnson, who will race part time in the NTT IndyCar Series next season. “Chase doesn’t need my help. He’s plenty good on his own. I’m glad it worked out for him.”
Meanwhile, Elliott established himself as a driver who performs in the clutch.
“We put a lot of emphasis on the things that matter and really just didn’t care about anything else,” Elliott said. “There’s just so much distraction in the world. Everybody is tied to their phones and you can get ahold of anybody at any time. There are just so many things from the outside that can reach someone.
“That’s one thing that I felt like our whole team just did a better job of was boiling it down to the things that matter,” Elliott added. “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 do we execute it.
“Those three things we put more emphasis on than we ever have. I was mentally locked in better than I’ve ever been.
“I think the results showed.
“I look at the guys who have achieved this honor as guys who perform in the toughest of situations,” Elliott continued “That’s been an area that we haven’t done a great job of over my first five years, really up until last week. We had a tough situation, a perform-or-go-home type night there at Martinsville and were able to step up and really get the job done. I thought that was the piece of the puzzle that we haven’t had. I really felt like we had everything else that we needed and I really believed that.
“(Martinsville) was a big week. I think it was a great practice session and a situation that really helped guide us through today in preparation and execution.”
Elliott was literally born into the sport. His father, Bill, was one of NASCAR’s most accomplished and popular drivers. He was a two-time Daytona 500 winner and won the 1988 Cup Series championship, helping him earn induction into the NASCAR Hall of Fame.
Now, the Elliotts are the third father-and-son duo to have won the NASCAR Cup Series title. The others are 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,” Chase said. “I don’t think it gets any cooler than that, in my opinion.”
Meanwhile, Harvick, who dominated the middle portion of the season aboard his Stewart-Haas Racing Ford, struggled down the stretch and failed to advance to the Championship 4 at Phoenix Raceway.
“Look, these championships aren’t like when Petty and Earnhardt used to win them,” Harvick said after being eliminated at Martinsville. “You have to put them together three weeks at a time and it comes down to one race. It came down to one race for us tonight and we came up short.
“I’ve been punched in the gut a lot harder,” he added. “We won nine races, had a great year, and, like I said, the championship is kind of a bonus. It would be great to win it, obviously, but I’d rather go through the year and win races and do the things that we did and just came up short.”
Hamlin won his third Daytona 500 to open the season and won seven races, but still came up short in the fight to win his first Cup Series title.
“No one has won more than we have over the last two years — Daytona 500 two years in a row, final four two years in a row,” Hamlin said. “I’m pretty proud of what this team is doing and what we’re building toward. I’m proud of the effort.
“We’ll come back and do it again next year. I’m looking forward to it. We’ll win as many races as we possibly can to get ourselves back in Phoenix again with another shot.”
While Elliott was crowned champion, it was a season for the entire NASCAR community to celebrate.
The sanctioning body was the first major sport to return to action during a global pandemic and served as a model for the National Basketball Ass’n, the National Hockey League, IndyCar, Formula One, Major League Baseball, the National Football League and other sports in terms of ensuring public health while returning to competition.
“If you can get through a year like this and you’re NASCAR, certainly it bodes well,” said Keselowski, who finished second in the championship. “The only thing left was an asteroid strike.
“I thought it was really amazing what the sport was able to achieve, that we were able to get all the races in. To be here and have a great race for a championship, I think that’s really impressive. And NASCAR maybe doesn’t get enough credit for being able to pull all that off, considering the landscape.
“There’s no shortage of us, including myself, that are quick to criticize, but I think we should also be quick to applaud for everything that’s happened this year and then to be able to pull all this off, run all the races and do it at a high level.”
There is no debating that.