‘The fight’ of Chase Elliott: NASCAR star talks his health, performance at Martinsville
Jeff Andrews called it “the fight that’s in Chase Elliott.”
Andrews had a front-row seat to Elliott’s return to the NASCAR Cup Series on Sunday at Martinsville. And of all the things that struck the president and general manager at Hendrick Motorsports about Elliott’s performance — it was that.
Elliott’s guts.
His resilience.
His “fight.”
“It was a tough race on him — tough race on any driver to come here after being out for multiple weeks,” Andrews said in the Martinsville Speedway media center. “And as I said earlier, we didn’t have the best race cars, and he and (crew chief) Allen (Gustafson) fought all day long together.
“Chase stayed with Allen with the team and worked hard. And at the end there, that came to light.”
After sustaining a fractured tibia in his left leg in early March that caused him to miss six races, Elliott made what felt like a 2023 debut in some ways at Martinsville. It was a triumphant one for the driver of the 9 car and for NASCAR — the codified star missing the series as much as the series missed him.
Elliott ultimately finished 10th. And that’s no small feat considering how tough Martinsville is on the car and the driver.
There was discussion in the garage prerace about how tough it would be on Elliott’s injured left leg, which would be put to the test with all the braking around the paper-clip-shaped short-track Martinsville demands.
Elliott’s evaluation of his health postrace?
“I feel fine,” he said on pit road, a towel over his shoulder, shifting his weight to his right side. “I’m certainly tired just because I’ve been sitting on the couch, like I said. But other than that, my leg’s stiff, my knee’s stiff, but it doesn’t hurt or anything like that. So I’m about where I thought I would be.”
Elliott started in P24 on Sunday. But a good long run at the end helped him rise up the field much like his fellow Hendrick Motorsports teammates (which included race winner Kyle Larson).
Elliott said the late push wasn’t a result of him being conservative at the beginning: “Nope, we were just that bad,” he said with a laugh.
“We definitely got better,” Elliott said. “Really the only run I thought we were even decent was that last one, so that was nice to get there. I thought we were in the ballpark at that point, just out of time. But it was really good to get a Top 10, so that’s something to be proud of.”
He added: “I think I could’ve performed better. I don’t think my leg was stopping me from performing better. Once we got our car to a decent place, we were just out of time.”
Elliott added that he didn’t do anything Saturday night after qualifying that he “didn’t expect” to do. He said he did stretches that kept his “range of motion up” so his knee and leg wouldn’t get too tight before the race and added that his knee is in “a nice position in the car.”
Overall, the 2020 Cup champion, in his predictable level-headedness, was content with his much-anticipated return.
“Like I said, to come away with a top 10, I thought that was something to be proud of, especially as bad as we ran all day,” Elliott said. “I mean, we were barely hanging on to the lead lap. Probably deserved to go a lap down there for a long time, so I was proud of that.
“Good fight. And way to finish strong. That’s always a good thing.”
This story was originally published April 16, 2023 at 8:06 PM.
