DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – While it didn’t come without a late challenge, Chase Elliott continued to be the undisputed king of the road in the NASCAR Cup Series with his third-straight road course win on Sunday.
After victories last season at Watkins Glen (N.Y.) Int’l and the Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL, Elliott added another trophy by driving to the checkered flag first in the Go Bowling 235 – the first race in NASCAR’s premier series held on the 3.61-mile Daytona (Fla.) Int’l Speedway road course layout.
Elliott won the first stage of the 65-lap race by staying out to the stage break at lap 15, then set up his win by pitting just before the end of the second stage at lap 30.
From there, the strategic die was cast, despite a 31-minute lightning delay and a caution flag with six laps left after Kyle Busch crashed on the backstretch of the 2.5-mile superspeedway layout.
Elliott stayed out all the way, only giving up control of the race briefly when he made his final pit stop on lap 49. Once he cycled back to the point on the 53rd lap, Elliott led the rest of the way for the win.
In all, the Dawsonville, Ga., native led three times for a race-high 34 of 65 laps. Once he got clear of Hamlin on the final restart with three to go, Elliott fended off all of Hamlin’s advances masterfully.
“We had kind of made our decision there when we pitted for that last time (on lap 49). I think whoever was going to win the race was done pitting at that point in time,” Elliott noted in victory lane. “I just needed to have a good restart and get going. I probably used it up a little more than I should have, but I was just trying to keep it balanced front to rear and I felt like I could mess that up pretty easy if I didn’t hit my marks.
“Hindsight being 20/20, I would have liked to have had a little more there in the tank at the end with Denny (Hamlin), but luckily was able to close it out.”
Hamlin got close to Elliott’s bumper coming through the final chicane, but didn’t have enough to move the No. 9 NAPA Chevrolet up the race track to challenge and ended up second with his No. 11 FedEx Toyota Camry.
“I just would like to have stayed closer to him (Elliott), to put a little pressure on them on (corner) entries,” Hamlin noted. “My entries were my strong point against him, but I was giving up four car lengths, so he could kind of drop the entries the way he wanted to make sure he got a good exit. I just wasn’t quite clean enough the last two laps, but I definitely give myself a chance in those last couple of corners. I felt like I did as much as I could to get to them and I tried to do it the right way.”
Martin Truex Jr. finished third, despite a pit-road speeding penalty that sent him to the tail of the field for the start of the third stage. Jimmie Johnson finished fourth and Chris Buescher was fifth.
Clint Bowyer crossed sixth ahead of Kaz Grala, who finished seventh in his NASCAR Cup Series debut, replacing Austin Dillon at Richard Childress Racing after Dillon tested positive for COVID-19.
William Byron, Joey Logano and road-course expert Michael McDowell filled out the top 10.
A race that many feared would be a crash-fest going into the day on Sunday turned out to be a relatively clean affair, with the only caution for incident being Busch’s crash on the backstretch on lap 60.
Aside from that, the lap-15 and lap-30 stage breaks and the lap-36 lightning delay were the only yellows.
The NASCAR Cup Series returns to action Aug. 22 and 23 with twin 312-mile races at Dover (Del.) Int’l Speedway.