Chase Elliott is ‘hopeful’ about ‘putting together another strong run’ in Sonoma like he did in 2021
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Chase Elliott
NASCAR will hit the Sonoma Raceway for the annual Toyota/ Save Mart 350, the 1.99 miles road course race in California, this coming Sunday. The race will mark the cup competition debut of the newly paved track and the track debut of Next-Gen cars. The 16th round of Cup racing will surely be producing fireworks as the playoffs are getting closer.
Going into the Sonoma Race Hendrick Motorsports, the NASCAR Cup front runners for a long time will be the center of attention as the team has recently been struggling to get out of the race with top finishes though all of their four drivers are consistently topping the speed charts. The team has been winless since Chase Elliott’s Monster Mile win whereas Kyle Larson who is the defending champion is coming close to winning every race and only see his bad luck taking it away.
Chase Elliott will be coming into Sonoma hoping to get back to the winning ways and get the win that he lost last year to teammate Kyle Larson as the champion finished ahead of him. The fan favorite river has a lot of things going his way especially the fact that he is the active cup driver with most road course wins. But Chase Elliott might not be all confident coming into the race as he has been finishing outside the top 20 in the last three races after a consecutive 5 top 10 finishes. Now the 2020 champion has come forth expressing his thoughts on the coming race at Sonoma.
Find out what Chase Elliott said
Chase Elliott acknowledged that the Sonoma Raceway has been a big challenge for him in the past adding he had his best outing ever last year at the track. He went on to say that his No:9 car was really good at the track and that he was proud of the efforts put forth by the team. Chase Elliott added that having driven the car already in COTA he hopes to secure a strong finish at the end of the race as off last year.
“Sonoma (Raceway) has been a place that has been a pretty big challenge for me in the past. Last season, I felt like it was the best I’ve ever been there. We were pretty good late in the race and I was really proud of that effort by our NAPA team. With having one road course race down with this new car and having some learnings from COTA (Circuit of The Americas), I’m hopeful that we can put together another strong run like we did last year,” Chase Elliott said.
Chase Elliott’s crew chief Alan Gustafson believes the COTA ride helped them ‘move forward’
The No:9 team crew chief Alan Gustafson acknowledged that his team lacked clue heading into COTA earlier this season as they didn’t know what to expect and there were so many unknowns about the car alongside the new things. Since they failed to test drive the car in any Road Curses last time around made the COTA race tough.
“Heading into the first road course race of the year at COTA (Circuit of The Americas), we didn’t really know what to expect. There are so many new things with this car, so many unknowns. We didn’t really get the chance to test on a road course before the season started. Chase (Elliott) had the opportunity to drive the car at Charlotte (ROVAL), but we weren’t there because we were in the middle of the playoffs,” Alan Gustafson said.
He went on to say that it was a steep learning curve for them at COTA and added that going through the experience was good. The crew chief went on to say that the experience helped them to move forward learn things and find ways around the unknowns. Alan Gustafson added that he is hopeful about getting a run better than COTA at Sonoma which can help them at future road courses.
“So, it was a steep learning curve for our team at COTA and I think going through that experience was good. It certainly helped us move forward. We’ve still got to learn some things, but now I think can start working our way down the list of unknowns that we need to figure out. Hopefully, we have a better run than we did in COTA and be able to go off that for the remainder of the road courses this season,” Alan Gustafson added.
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