MONSTER ENERGY NASCAR CUP SERIES
TEXAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY
AAA TEXAS 500
TEAM CHEVY PRESS CONF. TRANSCRIPT
NOVEMBER 1, 2019
CHASE ELLIOTT, NO. 9 NAPA AUTO PARTS CAMARO ZL1 Media Breakout Session Highlights:
ON THE FIRST PRACTICE SESSION, HOW WAS YOUR CAR?
“It was okay. Not a lot of pace, I didn’t feel like, from a speed-standpoint, so just trying to weigh out as we always do at these places now, how fast you want to go versus how you want your car to drive and you hope you can have a little bit of both. And, whoever can have a little bit of both tends to be pretty good. So, just trying to balance that out. It’s hard to tell, I feel like, until you can get all the information gathered and kind of go from there.”
WITH 10 PLAYOFF RACES IN NASCAR, IT’S MORE THAN OTHER SPORTS. EVERY WEEK, YOU FIND YOURSELF ALMOST IN A DO OR DIE SITUATION. TALK ABOUT THAT GRIND OF RACING SO LONG WITH SO MUCH PRESSURE. TWICE, YOU’VE COME THROUGH AND GOTTEN A WIN OR CLOSE TO IT WHEN YOU HAD TO
“Yeah, our season is definitely long, for sure. That’s a known fact. But, I think these last 10 weeks are the most important weeks of the year. But at the same time, the way the points format is laid out, you have 26 weeks to eight make the first nine easy on you or hard on you and it kind of depends on how you do in those first 26. As we’ve seen, the points system worked this year. Guys that have an abundance of wins come into these final 10 races, or first nine of the last 10, and they don’t seem to find themselves in must-win situations and that’s not my luck.”
WHERE DO YOU SEE DRIVER CODE AS FAR AS NON-PLAYOFF DRIVERS AND HOW THEY SHOULD RACE PLAYOFF DRIVERS?
“That’s tough. I mean, obviously you’re going to have guys out there that want to win. I don’t know. I don’t know what you do about that, really. You certainly can’t expect a guy just to pull over for you and unless you win, he’s certainly won. You want respect from a non-playoff guy, but at the same time, some of those guys are fighting for their first wins and I know how that feels and how hungry that they are for a win. That certainly, I can see a little bit of both sides of it, for sure.”
ARE YOU CONCERNED AT ALL ABOUT THE NUMBER OF FAILURES YOU’VE HAD AT THIS CRITICAL JUNCTURE?
“Well, it’s certainly been unfortunate, for sure, to say the least. But, I have confidence that we’ve put enough effort and emphasis on the failures and I think if we can get things corrected; like I said, it is unfortunate. And I think if you’re going to fail something, now is not the time to fail it. You never want to break stuff and obviously, you don’t ever break anything on purpose. But, I do know there has been a lot of emphasis put in things and trying to make it better. And after you do break something and have a problem, that’s all you really can do moving forward. Me sitting here saying something bad about somebody or a department or this or that….first off, I’m not going to do that and then second off, that’s not going to help anything moving forward. So, we’ll just try to attack it and all do better as a group and hope we don’t break things down the road.”
WHEN THAT HAPPENS, DO YOU ASK QUESTIONS OR JUST LET THE CREW CHIEF DO THAT? A LEADER OF THE TEAM, DO YOU ASK YOURSELF, TOO?
“I certainly ask questions just out of curiosity-sake, you know, what happened here or there. But, just, I think, more just in conversation and being curious about what’s going on.
“If it’s mechanical, it can break. That’s just part of it. We all get in our cars every day and drive up and down the road and I would say the majority of us probably take for granted that something’s not going to break or tear-up or you’re not going to have a flat tire and have to pull over on the side of the road and fix it or this or that. So, if it runs, it can break and that’s part of it.”
ON THE PHOENIX RACE NEXT WEEK AND WITH THE FLIP-FLOP OF THE START/FINISH LINE, HOW MUCH MORE INTENSE ARE RESTARTS THERE?
“They are definitely different. You can be really brave and sometimes make something work. Other times, you get really aggressive and you find yourself right back in the same spot your started in. You weigh that out, when it’s time to do that and when it’s not. We’ve seen guys make up a lot of ground on restarts and the closing restarts in the past couple of races….I’m trying to think, but nonetheless, there’s a time and there are different opportunities that I think it can work better than others and it just depends on the situation and who’s in front of you and what kind of gap there is to the people around you and all kinds of situational things that you just have to make split second decisions as to what feels right and what’s not.”
ON TEAMMATE JIMMIE JOHNSON NOT MAKING THE PLAYOFFS THIS YEAR
“I see Jimmie just like I’ve always seen him, really. He has always been driven to want to be good and I don’t feel like that’s any different right now than it ever has been. I would love some of his Texas magic, for sure. He’s been really good here. It would be nice to have some of that. It’s been a bit of a struggle here since the repave for us.”
ON RACING AT TEXAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY
“I always look forward to coming here. I look forward to going everywhere, really, for the most part. So, it could be a lot worse. So, just trying to figure out how to be good here. It’s been a struggle, I feel like, since they repaved it for us. We haven’t had very good runs here since then. We’re trying to get our head around that a little better and trying to just do a better job. Like I said, that’s been the struggle point since we had some good runs here in my rookie year and that second year, I think I had a couple of top 5 runs and a couple of cars I think we were able to contend with those guys up front. And since they redid it that has not been the case. So, it’s been hit or miss, for sure.”
HIS MINDSET ON THE LAST THREE RACES OF THE SEASON
“For us, just trying to keep our season alive. You want to be able to go to Homestead and race for a championship. There’s only gong to be four guys that have that opportunity, right? So, for us, we’re in a tough spot from a points-standpoint that we’ve pretty much got to go win, either here or Phoenix or both or something spectacular happen for us to move on. So, that’s the cards we dealt our self after last week and we’ll see how it plays out.”