NASCAR Cup Series

Chase Elliott showed veteran poise as he advanced to the Round of 12

Published Oct. 3, 2016 9:41 a.m. ET

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Chase Elliott is moving on. The first-year Hendrick Motorsports driver clinched a spot in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Round of 12 with a third-place finish in Sunday's Citizen Soldier 400 at Dover International.

It was another impressive performance by Elliott and the No. 24 Hendrick team, backing up a third-place finish at the Chase opener at Chicagoland Speedway and a 13th at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.

Elliott ended the Round of 16 sixth in points among the 16 drivers, a strong opening effort and more than enough to advance the rookie in NASCAR's playoffs.

For the Round of 12, which begins Saturday night at Charlotte Motor Speedway, Elliott and the other 11 advancing drivers will all have their points totals reset to 3,000. So Elliott will start this round on even ground with his competitors.

While Elliott is still looking for his first race victory, he did what he needed to do in the first round of the Chase, namely, advance to the next one.

"It's been a decent weekend overall," said Elliott after the Dover race. "We've been working on our car throughout the weekend and I feel like we got it the best we had had it there two runs before the end, which I guess was a good time to try to get it with that long green flag run things kind of worked out for us to get a couple of extra spots that would have been hard to get otherwise."

As is his style, Elliott was fairly low-key after the run, but there's no question that he and his team have put together a more-than-credible season to date in his rookie campaign.

"I'm proud of the effort," said Elliott. "Really, really cool to move on this weekend, I'm proud of that. Like I said, this group has been doing a really good job.  I'm proud of all these guys and we are excited to get on to Charlotte."

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