NASCAR All-Star Race at Bristol: Takeaways from Chase Elliott’s win

The NASCAR All-Star Race was sort of like an insane fever dream. There were fans in brightly colored T-shirts, cargo shorts and face masks sprinkled around the stadium, loosely attempting to social distance. There were colored LED lights peeking out from underneath the rear of the cars, and there was — in more normal fashion — a Chase Elliott victory.

“There’s no feeling like it,” Elliott said on FS1 after his first All-Star Race win at Bristol Motor Speedway. “This speaks for itself. Bristol is an electric atmosphere unlike any other.”

Elliott won three of the race’s four stages. He used track position to his advantage in the final, 15-lap shootout to maintain a slight lead over Kyle Busch, who edged into the conversation two laps into the last stage, and held his spot for a second place finish. Kevin Harvick finished in third.

“I got a good restart,” Busch said on FS1 after the race. “I think I went from 12th all the way up to fifth or something.”

But it was Elliott who won the $1 million dollar prize and his first All-Star Race win in five starts. He joked that he would use the money to send “about 14 pallets” of Mountain Dew to Ryan Blaney’s house “and see what he does with that.”

Earlier in the day, the drivers exchanged tweets about their respective Body Armor and Mountain Dew sponsors.

“I drink my @MountainDew with my gloves off...” Elliott tweeted in response to a promotional tweet by Blaney for Body Armor.

“You should probably drink it with the thickest rubber gloves you can find,” Blaney responded. “All the chemicals in it could burn your skin.. Don’t even want to know what it does to your insides.”

Elliott walked away with new jokes for sixth place finisher Blaney. And NASCAR walked away with new data.

The sanctioning body tried things for the non-points race. Some ideas worked, and others didn’t. Overall, the racing was solid and the cautions were surprisingly few at the “World’s Fastest Half-Mile.” There were only five caution flags thrown for the 140-lap event.

“I think you have to expect (bumping) in any event, especially this one,” Elliott said. “There’s no points on the line or anything. The goal is to get far enough away where they don’t have that option. Luckily it worked out that way tonight.”

The choose rule, for example, didn’t impact the on-track product throughout the evening. Drivers were in favor of it before the race, and it became clear that leaders favored the top lane off the restart, then the bottom lane dominated. Ryan Blaney won the first stage of the race, but Elliott was able to pass him by stage two off a restart and maintain the lead through the finish.

“With the short race tonight, not having an option besides the bottom, just kind of took all those things away of tools that you had to try to race and make your car faster,” Harvick said. “Tonight the (No. 9 car) hit it.”

Most of the evening’s drama happened before the main event, when Bubba Wallace crashed into the wall off a spin from Michael McDowell during the qualifying Open race. Wallace exited the race and later left a piece of his destroyed car in front of McDowell’s garage.

“Just disrespect,” Wallace said on FS1 after the incident. “People say I’m one of the nicest guys in the garage. I can’t (wait) for the God-fearing text that he is going to send me about preaching and praise and respect. What a joke he is.”

Drviers Aric Almirola, William Byron and Matt DiBenedetto advanced to the main event by winning the three stages of the Open, in that order. Fan Vote winner Clint Bowyer also advanced to the All-Star Race. Almirola finished ninth, Byron in 12th and DiBenedetto finished in 13th. Bowyer finished in 15th.

And finally, the underglow lighting, which wasn’t nearly as exciting as it was hyped up to be. The colors oozing from under the car fell flat. Harvick said he wished his would have fallen off.

“The only person who seemed to like it was my eight-year-old,” Harvick said after the race.

Beyond each of the new elements and testing tweaks, the All-Star Race and its novelty this year was about returning the ceremony of racing for NASCAR fans. Elliott’s cruise to Victory Lane quickly became predictable, and the race, like the lights, were over in a flash. (It won’t take NASCAR long to dump those.) Fan reintegration, however, will be a much more complicated topic.

This story was originally published July 15, 2020 at 10:53 PM.

Alexandra Andrejev

The Charlotte Observer

NASCAR and Charlotte FC beat reporter Alex Andrejev joined The Observer in January 2020 following an internship at The Washington Post. She is a two-time APSE award winner for her NASCAR beat coverage and National Motorsports Press Association award winner. She is the host of McClatchy’s podcast “Payback” about women’s soccer. Support my work with a digital subscription