LDN - Sports

Ingram: Elliott shoulders a painful loss

[October 03, 2017] By Jonathan Ingram, The Sports Xchange

There's a saying in major league racing that goes like this: "Sometimes a driver has to lose a race before winning the first one."

It's another way of saying, "He'll get it next time."

Both bromides stink compared to celebrating in Victory Lane.

Chase Elliott, who came within a lap of winning his first Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race, was almost beyond approach after losing to Kyle Busch in Dover. But as usual, he stepped up to the post-race inquiries from TV reporters and writers.

The questions were about as welcome as a kick in the shins followed by a couple of karate chops to the Adam's apple. But Elliott answered them.

One of the challenges for professional athletes is hearing the same questions over and over. On this day, the final race of the opening round of 16 in NASCAR's playoffs, there really was only one question.

Why didn't Elliott change his lines on the steeply banked Dover International Speedway as Busch gradually chipped away at his 4.5-second lead and then passed him on the outside approaching the white flag?

Elliott didn't flinch.

"It was all just lap traffic dependent," he said in the post-race interview in the media center. "I thought if I had a clean track, I could have run as fast as he did, but I didn't, and I should have done something different. So that's just on me, and he did a better job than I did. At the end of the day that's what it comes down to."

It couldn't have been anything other than an arduous trip home for Elliott while sorting through those final laps in retrospect. Hindsight isn't always necessarily easy. After losing races on restarts and on pit road snafus, the first victory for Elliott will have to be earned yet again.

An elated Busch, who has now won four of his last nine starts, found it fairly easy to move between the higher groove near the wall and the bottom edge of the 1.0-mile bowl known as the Monster Mile.

"I was on the top side and I wasn't making up any ground on him, so I went back to the bottom, and I wasn't necessarily making up any ground on him there at the bottom, either," Busch said. "I got within a half a second and kind of stalled out, but then it seemed like (Elliott) caught the 31 (of Ryan Newman) and a couple other cars in front of him and it kind of slowed his lap times down. And so, I went back to the top to get the clean air and get the momentum rolling, and it just seemed to help me and gave me the speed that I needed."

Both Busch and third-placed Jimmie Johnson, Elliott's teammate at Hendrick Motorsports and an 11-time winner at Dover, said that usually the guy working the lower groove is going to be faster and tougher to pass. But that's not how it always works in the playoffs. If Newman holds his position as the last car on the lead lap in front of Elliott and the caution flies with two laps remaining, he might have had a shot at continuing to the next round. As it was, Newman missed by two points -- or two positions.

"I think Chase weighed his options out and knew that the bottom is where 90-some percent of these races have been won, if not 95 or more, and stuck with that," said Johnson. The first to talk with Elliott after the race, Johnson said a few expletives were heard from the young driver.

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Risk and reward at an average speed of 160 mph are not the easiest variables to calculate. But the risk weighed more heavily on Elliott. On older tires than Busch, he could lose a lot of time in a single lap in the higher groove if it proved problematic for his car. Or he could lose enough tire rubber to cost him dearly if his Chevy was already slightly loose. Or, he could hit the wall.

Even grandmothers in Dubuque know that Newman is tougher to pass than a kidney stone. If Elliott tried to pass Newman on the outside unsuccessfully without knowing exactly what to expect from his own Chevy in the higher groove, then what? Surely that would bring the wolf -- Busch -- alongside his door.

So, Elliott chose the lower groove and the higher percentage as the laps wound down. He led 59 consecutive laps before Busch got by. He didn't suddenly change his groove as Busch swept around the outside of Turn 4. That only would have resulted in the Kevlar front bumper horn and his Chevy would have been unsettled enough by the oncoming Busch to make it easy for the veteran to complete a bump-and-run to the inside.

Like his champion father Bill before him, William Clyde Elliott II played a relatively safe percentage rather than put other drivers or himself at risk. He banked on eking every bit of speed from his own mount. Unfortunately, he ran out of winning lap times.

Busch, who began winning in the Cup as a teenager, couldn't resist a little advice to his friend Chase, whom he competed against in Late Model events like the Snowball Derby.

"He could have just tried to blitz them on the top and get around them sooner," Busch said under prodding from journalists. "But other than that, I think he was just so focused on what he had all day long, making the bottom work, that he just stuck with it."

Even if Elliott was being informed by his team of Busch's high lines, it was a question of confidence. Guys like Busch and Johnson have learned how to make swift work of slower cars or those turning similar lap times. It's the hallmark, in many respects, of the greats. Get it done.

Elliott, in his 70th career start in the Cup series, almost had the medium percentage play work in his favor. He didn't try what he considered a risky pass and refrained from throwing a block once his crisis peaked in the form of Busch's Toyota steamrolling up alongside in the high groove.

At times, it's easy to forget that Elliott is a mere 21 years old.

He handled himself like a pro. He got hog-tied by circumstance and his own learning curve about leading a race with the checkers in sight. He got beat by the guy whose considerable driving talent is now odds-on to make him a two-time champion by the end of the 2017 season.

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