After dropping to the back for the initial green flag of the Season Finale 500 at Phoenix Raceway on Sunday, Chase Elliott raced to the front and, eventually, the win. Elliott’s latest win was his second-straight and his fifth of the 2020 NASCAR Cup Series season, but more impressively, it made him the 2020 Cup Series champion.
“I just, man, I’m at a loss for words. This is unbelievable,” Elliott said. Oh my gosh, we did it. I mean, we did it. That’s all I’ve got to tell you. Unreal. Championship crew chief, Alan Gustafson, is now a NASCAR Cup Series champion and very deserving. I just can’t say enough about our group. I felt like we took some really big strides this year, and last week was a huge one. To come out of that with a win and a shot to come here and have a chance to race is unbelievable.”
With the 2020 championship, Elliott and his father, NASCAR Hall of Famer Bill Elliott, became the third father-son pair to win NASCAR premier-series titles, joining Lee and Richard Petty and Ned and Dale Jarrett.
The four title contenders finished in the top-four, with Team Penske teammates Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano in second and third.
“I would have loved to have a late-race yellow, for sure,” Keselowski said. ”I thought we were pretty fast, there, at the end. It’s tough. We got behind, there, with some track position, and I fought really hard to get it back. We didn’t get it all, but got most of it. We were right there with the Discount Tire Ford and just came up one spot short.”
Denny Hamlin finished fourth.
“No one has won more than we have over the last two years,” Hamlin said. “Daytona 500 two years in a row, the final four two years in a row. I’m pretty proud of what this team is doing and what we are building toward. Proud of the effort. We will come back and do it again next year. I’m looking forward to it. We will win as many races as we possibly can to get ourselves back to Phoenix, again, with another shot, but I’m proud of this whole Joe Gibbs Racing FedEx team for giving me cars that are capable of winning every week.”
Jimmie Johnson was best of the rest with a fifth-place finish in his final race as a full-time Cup Series driver.
“Oh, my gosh, to share a moment like that in Jimmie’s last race and to win and to lock the championship, those are moments you can only dream of,” Elliott said. ”You know, and this is a dream. I’m just hoping I don’t ever wake up.”
After getting off pit road first after yellow-flag pit stops following the conclusion of the second stage of the race on lap 190 of the 312-lap race, Elliott led most of the remaining laps. After giving up the lead during a cycle of green-flag pit stops with about 50 laps remaining, Logano cycled to the race lead. But with just over 40 laps remaining, Elliott retook the lead and ran up front the remaining distance.
“Yeah, just waiting on the caution, as always. You know, I saw Joey was pretty loose, there, and felt like I needed to get to him while I could. I knew I’d been kind of tight on a longer run, and he was probably going to get a little better. Just unbelievable. I mean, I just never would have thought that this year would have gone like it has. I mean, NASCAR Cup Series champion. Are you kidding me? Unreal.”
Elliott was the official pole sitter, but after his car failed pre-race inspection twice, he was required to start in the back. Meanwhile, Logano retained his starting position on the front row and led until Elliott passed him for the top spot on lap 120.
“I just didn’t have the speed at the right time,” Logano said. ”Early in the race, our Shell Pennzoil Mustang was really fast and nothing anyone did wrong. Our pit crew was on it. Our strategy got us out front, there, at the end, but the 9 [Elliott] seemed like he lit off, there, pretty good, there, and that last run was able to go really fast, and then, got another vibration, there, towards the end of the run and lost the turn and was still a little free off. We were close. Everyone executed and did their job and that’s what we should be most proud of and also is how far we’ve come from the beginning of the season to now as a team. There’s a lot to be proud of. It stings not winning. I’m not gonna lie; it hurts, but at the same time, we’re stronger because we went through it.”
Elliott was inside the top-10 of the running order by a lap-30 competition caution. By lap 50, he was third. Once Elliott raced into the top-five, the four championship contenders ran first through fourth most of the race.
“We were a little off handling, but overall car speed, we just didn’t have enough,” Hamlin said. “Our next best teammate was 10th, so as an organization, we have got to get a little better, especially on the short tracks. It seems like we were a little bit off all year, and that was all it had; that’s for sure. I was pushing for everything I had. The FedEx Camry just didn’t quite have enough today, and we ended up fourth.”
After a lengthy green-flag cycle of pit stops that began just before lap 130 and ended with Elliott cycling back to the lead on lap 151, the yellow flag waved for the only time for an on-track incident because of a James Davison wreck.
Kurt Busch restarted with the lead after taking only two tires during the caution, but when the race returned to green, Elliott retook the lead and Keselowski second. Elliott and Keselowski battled back and forth for the lead in the remaining laps of the second before Keselowski took his stage-winning lead on the last laps of the stage.
Other drivers finishing in the top-10 included Ryan Blaney in sixth, Kevin Harvick in seventh, Matt DiBenedetto in eighth, William Byron in ninth, and Martin Truex Jr. rounded out the top-10.
