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Chase Elliott Crashes Out Early, Still Advances In NASCAR Playoffs At Bristol

Jared Turner Written by Sports EditorJared Turner
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Chase Elliott

Chase Elliott had a nice buffer in the NASCAR Cup Series playoff standings headed into Saturday night’s elimination race at Bristol Motor Speedway. Turns out the Hendrick Motorsports driver needed just about every bit of it.

Elliott, who arrived at the Tennessee short track with a fairly comfortable lead over the first driver on the wrong side of the Round of 12 cutline, managed to hang on and advance despite crashing out early.

Alex Bowman, Austin Dillon, Shane van Gisbergen and Josh Berry weren’t so lucky. Coming into Bristol south of the cutline, none of the four made up the ground necessary to reach the next round.

Berry, in particular, didn’t fare well. The Wood Brothers Racing driver finished dead last in Thunder Valley.

Meanwhile, Elliott — NASCAR’s perennial most popular driver — squeaked his way into the Round of 12. That means he’ll be one of a dozen drivers still in the hunt for the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series championship when the next round gets underway next weekend at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.

What Made Bristol Such A Close Call For Chase Elliott?

For over half of Saturday night’s race, Chase Elliott seemed poised to comfortably point his way into the next round of the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs despite some early handling struggles that left him a lap down.

“Our car was really good for a few laps,” Elliott said. “And then I felt like we struggled. We had spent the majority of the night in the back of the pack, just trying to get ourselves back in position and back on the lead lap.

“Once we did and we got back up towards the front, I just felt like we needed some balance adjustments there once we started running the pace of the leaders. We were working on it and making it better.”

Then, just as Elliott seemed to be hitting his stride, the bottom fell out.

Drilled in the rear bumper in Turn 3 by John Hunter Nemechek, who had just been hit by Denny Hamlin, Elliott’s No. 9 Chevy turned straight into the outside wall. The car suffered enough damage for Elliott to immediately head for the garage. And with that, his night — at least the on-track portion of it — was over.

“I got a huge shot from behind,” Elliott said, recalling the accident that ended his race. “I’m not sure if the No. 42 (Nemechek) got pushed in there or he wasn’t expecting me to come back to the bottom or what the reasoning was. But nonetheless, it happened. And it’s done.”

Despite Setback, Hendrick Motorsports Driver Will Live To See Another Day

With just under 190 laps still remaining at the time of Chase Elliott’s exit from the race, he still had to sweat it out to see if his advantage over all four drivers on the wrong side of the cutline would hold up.

Thankfully for him, it did. Despite finishing next-to-last in the race, he ended up 11th out of the 12 drivers who advanced. The second-generation wheelman beat 12th-place Austin Cindric by six points and 13th-place Alex Bowman by 16.

Bowman, a teammate of Elliott’s at Hendrick Motorsports, is the only one of the four Hendrick drivers not moving on to the Round of 12.

“Just proud of everyone at Hendrick Motorsports for the fight,” Bowman said after finishing eighth at Bristol. “We obviously had a shot at it.”

As for Elliott, he will start the next round ranked seventh out of 12 drivers in the reseeded playoff standings. That’s better than where he finished the Round of 16, obviously. Since the standings at the start of the first three playoff rounds are reset based on playoff points earned up to that point in 2025, Elliott is moving up four spots.

But he’ll begin the Round of 12 with only a five-point edge over Cindric. The Team Penske wheelman is the first driver on the wrong side of the cutline for the Round of 8. Elliott is just four points up on eighth-place Bubba Wallace.

Those aren’t big margins at all for Elliott. Lucky for him, his cushion coming into Bristol wasn’t nearly as small.

Jared Turner Written by Sports EditorJared Turner
Jared Turner is a motorsports writer who has covered NASCAR for 20 years. He has interviewed over 20 NASCAR Hall of Famers and around 100 drivers, crew chiefs, and team owners, both past and present. He has also covered the sport for FOX Sports (where he was a two-time recipient of the FOX “X” Award for “Xtraordinary” job performance), NASCAR.com, Sporting News, NASCAR Pole Position Magazine, the SPEED network, and plenty of other online and print-only publications throughout his career. Notably, Jared has penned dozens of articles for NASCAR souvenir programs, including several featured prominently in Daytona 500 keepsakes. A Virginia Press Association award winner and former member of the National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA), Jared has racked up accolades both for his writing and his academic work. He studied both Communication and Psychology at Virginia Tech, where he was permanently enshrined in Phi Beta Kappa — the nation’s oldest and most prestigious academic honor society. Jared excels at feature writing and opinion writing, much of which stems from his dedication to all levels of racing.
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