Chase Elliott wins the 3rd race in “The Chase” takes the Charlotte Royal (9-29-19)

By: Becca Cottingham

Headline Photo Courtesy: NASCAR.com

A beautiful day for road coursing racing in Charlotte, North Carolina. The drivers will take on seventeen turns at the Roval. Drivers will be putting everything on the line as it is a elimination race for the Monster Energy Cup. Opening laps have Alex Bowman spinning out. Martin Truex Jr, missed the chicane so he stopped to not be penalized. Bubba Wallace also missed the same chicane and he did not stop so he was to serve a pass through penalty. This is going to be a huge issues for a lot of drivers. Drivers are racing the track at this point. A caution happened with five laps to go and it will probably change some pit strategy. This will also take away William Byron’s five second lead. We had a huge wreck at the restart since everyone was checking up to make it into the first turn. This is different during the regular race versus restarts. There were six drivers involved in the incident. This accident will bring us to the end of stage one with Kyle Larson winning.

Kyle Larson made a huge mistake on pit road and has to serve his penalty. While we had several drivers who opted to stay out. However, tires have been key and drivers who stayed out. Kyle Larson had to stay on pit road for an entire lap. We have had another driver spin out but was able to get the car restarted and keep green. Joey Logano pitted under green and because of where he came out he did not have enough heat in his tires yet for grip. Bubba Wallace and Alex Bowman got into it and Alex just bumped him put him into the wall. With this caution we have seven laps left to go. Chase Elliott has moved through all corners while passing at least one if not more cars. With the restart he had multiple drivers he had to pass to pick up the win for stage two.

We had a large issue again at the restart but everyone got through without a caution. We did end up with a caution with Daniel Hemric spinning out. Ryan Blaney had a rear strut break. Then Chase Elliott launched and locked up the tires and slammed into the wall. We got restarted and contact happened between the 18 and 42. This caused some major damage on Kyle Busch’s car. Kevin Harvick is leading, but the driver who has swept the last two races in the Chase is in second. Kevin Harvick has been able to hold him off so far. We did have Matt Tiff spin out and almost took out Ryan Newman. However, no caution was thrown but both Matt and Ryan have grass on their front end. Ricky Stenhouse Jr locked up his rear tires but spins out then stalls. The caution has flown which shall be interesting as restarts have caused a lot of issues. Ryan Newman stalled out leaving the pits and it shall be interesting as he is now below the cut line again. They entered the first turn three wide with an aggressive move by Clint Bowyer. We have a huge lock up by Ryan Blaney who managed to save the car. Ryan Newman got shoved and almost missed the chicane which would have made him sever a penalty. In the in field we had multiple drivers get sideways. Multiple cars through the grass. Denny Hamlin got loose and lost his car. Thankfully no major damage on any of the cars. Kevin Harvick had another extremely clean restart. We had two back to back cautions that brings us to the tenth caution. Drivers are not holding back with less than twenty laps. Chase Elliott has fought his way back to the third position and seems to be the fastest car on the track. We then had Garett Smithly lose part of his car and spread fluid through a large part of the track. Also during the red flag, Kyle Busch took his car to the garage. We had a huge restart and Chase Elliott got out out front. Ryan Newman and Aric Almirola were fighting for their position. Alex Bowman after a really rough race moved up and made up ground with five drivers between him. Chase Elliott was able to pull off the win.

Next Race:

Oct 6 at 2:30pm at Dover International Speedway “Dryden 400”