Chase Elliott, in the NASCAR Cup Series championship four for the first time, will continue his bid for a first Cup Series title from the pole in the Season Finale 500 at Phoenix Raceway on Sunday. His pole comes a week after he advanced his championship quest with a win the previous weekend at Martinsville Speedway.
“I feel like when we’ve been at our best, I feel like we’ve competed with the best in the series,” Elliott said. “I think if we do the right things, make the right calls throughout the week, the right adjustments and tweaks on the car from that first race, there’s no reason why I don’t think we can go and have a shot.”
Elliott’s appearance in the championship four is the first for Hendrick Motorsports and the first for Chevrolet since 2016, the season Elliott’s teammate Jimmie Johnson won his record-tying seventh title.
“As much as I know that our partners, Mr. [Rick] Hendrick, everybody wants us to do really well, I want to do good,” Elliott said. “I want to do good, anyway. Our team wants to do good. We want to perform; we want to win, too. I’m talking about just the guys that are on track and fighting the fight. There’s nothing outside of that that is going to make us want to go and perform any more than we already do.”
The four drivers remaining in the championship hunt will start in the first four positions, or first two rows, of Sunday’s starting grid. Elliott will have former series champion Joey Logano next to him on the front row.
Logano is the most recent winner at Phoenix, winning there before NASCAR’s early-season break because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Logano’s Team Penske teammate and another former champion, Brad Keselowski, will start third and share the second row with Denny Hamlin. Hamlin is the defending winner of the fall race at Phoenix.
“I think we can win any given week, for sure,” Hamlin said. “The short tracks haven’t been great for us all year, but you just never know. Last year, we went there and nearly lapped the field, so who knows how it’s going to turn out. One race, winner take all, you never know.”
The third Penske driver, Ryan Blaney, will have the best starting position among the drivers not in the championship hunt, starting in the fifth position and sharing row three with Alex Bowman.
Brothers Kurt Busch and Kyle Busch will start in the seventh and eighth positions in the fourth row, with Stewart-Haas Racing teammates Clint Bowyer and Aric Almirola rounding out the top-10 on the grid.
Bowyer and Almirola’s SHR teammate and regular-season champion Kevin Harvick will start just outside the top-10 in 11th position in his bid for a 10th win at Phoenix.
