Elliott comes up short again, but "expected" a caution to come out

Elliott, 20, appeared ready to earn the Sprint Cup Series win of his career as he had a sizable leader over Martin Truex Jr. as the opening race of the championship Chase drew to a close at Chicagoland Speedway.

But with four of 267 laps remaining, Michael McDowell blew a tire which brought out a caution, send the race into overtime and vastly changed the lineup.

Ryan Blaney, Kasey Kahne and Carl Edwards remained on the track, while the remaining lead-lap cars pit for new tires. Truex was the first of those to exit pit road and lined up fourth on the restart and Elliott fifth.

Truex managed to clear the slower cars more quickly by driving the top groove and grabbed the lead as the white flag flew. He held off Joey Logano to win while Elliott ended up third.

“I was pretty sure a caution was going to come out – it’s a fact of life. I’ve raced long enough to know that these races just don’t go green for that long period of time and we see more late-race cautions than we do not,” Elliott said on pit road after the race.

“That’s just the world we live in. It’s expected and you have to embrace it and I feel like we did a good job controlling the things that we can control today. We can’t control when the cautions will come out or who will stay out on tires.

“That stuff’s just life. You have to move on.”

Coming down pit road under that last caution was a “no-brainer,” Elliott said.

“I think you had to come get tires. I think our hand was forced there, for sure. In that situation, you want to be on offense and not defense,” he said. “You got to recognize this is Week 1 of 10 and once the caution comes out you have to recognize you want to be in a good position to try to move forward (in the Chase).

“You don’t want to play defense and get yourself wrecked.”

Despite not picking the up the win, the finish puts Elliott in a strong position to advance to the second round of the Chase with two races.

Also a good sign for Elliott – all four Hendrick Motorsports cars ran strong in Sunday’s race despite the organization being engulfed in its longest winless streak since the 1994 season.

Jimmie Johnson led the most laps (118) but was sidelined late in the race by a pit road speeding penalty and finished 12th. Kahne ended up seventh and Alex Bowman, substituting for Dale Earnhardt Jr., was 10th – his career best finish in the series.

“I think it’s encouraging. I’m happy that we were solid this weekend as a company,” Elliott said. “Jimmie was fast. Our car was fast all weekend and I hope we can carry that forward.”