Chase Elliott never before had won 2 Cup races this early in a NASCAR season
FORT WORTH, Texas — Chase Elliott never before had won two Cup races this early in a NASCAR season. After first winning at Martinsville at the end of March, the most popular driver in the series opened May in Victory Lane at Texas. That 1 1/2-mile track is growing on Elliott after he had not been much of a fan of the repave and reconfiguration done there nine years ago.
“I think having a win early at Martinsville ... I said it to you guys then and there, it’s not like, oh, hey, the pressure is off, we have a win,” he said at Texas after another 1-2 finish ahead of Denny Hamlin. “It’s man, we have a lot longer period of time to build on that.
That’s genuinely where my mind was at. ” And still is after already getting another victory. Elliott has the two wins and five other top-10 finishes this year, and Alex Bowman has consecutive third-place finishes for Hendrick Motorsports after missing four races because of vertigo.
And it was Bowman who provided the decisive push for his teammate on the final restart with four laps left. When crew chief Alan Gustafson came on the radio at the end of the race proclaiming Elliott a two-time Texas winner, the driver’s initial feeling was, “I’ll be damned. I’d have never thought.
” Now 30 years old and 11 races into his 12th Cup season, Elliott joined five-time winner Tyler Reddick as the only drivers with multiple wins this year. The soonest before that Elliott had two wins in a season was 17 races into 2022, when he went on to match the career-high five wins he had during his 2020 championship season. “I knew it right at Martinsville, we’ve never won a race this early, much less to now have two this early,” Elliott said.