On rainy road course, defending champ Chase Elliott finally gets his win
By Bob Pockrass
FOX Sports NASCAR Writer
AUSTIN, Texas – Chase Elliott was the last of the four Hendrick Motorsports drivers to win this season, but he certainly made it a big one.
Elliott captured the inaugural NASCAR Cup Series race at Circuit of the Americas, increasing the Hendrick Motorsports win total to 268, which ties the all-time record set by Petty Enterprises. Elliott celebrated the win after NASCAR called the race 14 laps before the scheduled finish because of heavy rain on the 3.41-mile road course.
HMS has five victories in 14 Cup races this year, with two by Alex Bowman and one apiece for William Byron, Kyle Larson and now Elliott, the defending Cup Series champion.
"I couldn’t be more excited," Elliott said. "I’ve never won a rain race before, so it’s kind of cool. And I’m just super proud of our team for just continuing to fight."
Here are my three takeaways from COTA:
NASCAR calls it early
After a couple of scary wrecks during the second stage, as drivers had difficulty seeing amid the heavy rain, NASCAR stopped the race for nearly 21 minutes as it got excess water off the track.
When the heavy rains returned, NASCAR quickly opted to call the race.
"We were monitoring the visibility of the drivers on the back straightaway," NASCAR Senior Vice President for Competition Scott Miller said. "It was getting really, really tough to see again [with] lots of spray.
"We were going to make one attempt at running the air titans [drying system] back there like we had before to see if we could kind of get back going again, and it just didn’t [seem] like it was going to happen at all with the amount of water that was coming down. It was time to call it."
This was the first Cup race run almost entirely in wet conditions. NASCAR has had rain tires available for road courses for several years, but only occasionally had they been used for its top circuit.
Even Larson — who finished second and knew he likely would have won if the race had gone to the finish because Elliott would have run out of fuel — thought it was the right decision.
"Three laps in a row, I was starting to hydroplane down the backstretch," he said. "Selfishly, I'd like to have kept going, just knowing that he was going to have to pit and I would have been handed the lead and the win.
"But they made the right call. It was getting bad. They already had some pretty big wrecks and stuff throughout the race. I'm not at all upset with the call that was made to make the race official and end it."
As Kyle Busch quipped: "It’s been four hours, bro. Enough is enough. White flag. Wave it."
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Scary moments
Kevin Harvick had a hard crash into Christopher Bell, and then Cole Custer pounded into Martin Truex Jr. in a vicious hit amid the heaviest of rains during the second stage.
"We don’t have any business being out in the rain — period," Harvick said. "All I can say is this is the worst decision that we’ve ever made in our sport that I’ve been a part of, and I’ve never felt more unsafe in my whole racing career."
Miller said NASCAR doesn’t want to put anyone in harm’s way, and he didn’t think Harvick’s sentiments were shared by all the drivers, though in hindsight, he said NASCAR probably should have stopped the race earlier in the second stage.
"We will certainly learn from that," he said. "I would kind of own the fact that maybe we did let it go too long there before we did something."
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Hendrick's historic day
Hendrick Motorsports owner Rick Hendrick once wanted to hire Richard Petty as a driver. At that time 37 years ago, he never thought he would someday tie the Petty family for number of victories.
"Richard Petty was going to be my first driver. I thought we had a deal," said Hendrick, who started his team in the mid-1980s. "It didn't come together.
"To be able to, [with] the respect and admiration I have for him and Kyle, that whole family, it's a big deal for me to be just mentioned with him."
Last year, beyond Elliott’s five victories, the Hendrick organization managed just two other wins.
"We've got a lot of momentum now," Hendrick said. "We know it's going to be hard to keep this streak going. I've been through some good times, some bad times, at the top of the mountain, then couldn't hit our butt. We worked hard and kept going.
"I think the test of a real company is when you get in those lows. You don't point fingers, and you don't jump ship. You just work."
Bob Pockrass has spent decades covering motorsports, including the past 30 Daytona 500s. He joined FOX Sports in 2019 following stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @bobpockrass. Looking for more NASCAR content? Sign up for the FOX Sports NASCAR Newsletter with Bob Pockrass!
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