Rick Hendrick and his team made all the right calls in earning first NASCAR victory of the season
MARTINSVILLE, Va. (AP) — Alan Gustafson ignored the phone call while packing a suitcase for the Sunday morning drive to Martinsville Speedway. Then he saw whom he’d missed — NASCAR Cup Series team owner Rick Hendrick .
“I better get on it,” Gustafson said with a chuckle. “As soon as I got in the car, I called him right back. ” The founder of Hendrick Motorsports had a message that he wanted the crew chief for Chase Elliott to deliver to his team, and it set the tone for their first victory of the season .
“He just basically was super positive,” Gustafson said. “The quote from him was: ‘This is a marathon, not a 10K race. We’re in it for the long run.
Regardless of the way it starts, it’s about the way it finishes. ’" That certainly was the case at Martinsville, where Elliott started 10th and was hardly a factor as Denny Hamlin led the first 292 of 317 laps from the pole . But Gustafson made the critical call for an early pit stop that vaulted the No.
9 Chevrolet to the front, and Elliott led the final 69 laps for his 22nd career win despite having the sixth-fastest car, according to Racing Insights, a NASCAR analytics firm. His victory in the seventh race is the earliest in a season for the 2020 Cup champion, who now enters an off week with some peace of mind. “That was one of the first things I thought about,” Elliott said of winning early.
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