FORT WORTH, Texas —Chase Elliott left Texas last spring with his first victory after 42 races and 18 months without one. The Dawsonville-native is back at NASCAR Cup race at Texas with another long winless drought, this one 37 races and nearly 13 months since crossing the finish line under caution after taking the white flag as the leader there.
“Definitely not a conversation you want to be having, but nonetheless, I think we’ve been going in the right direction,” said Elliott, who is fourth in the NASCAR Cup standings, with six top-10 finishes and none outside the top 20.
The sport’s most popular driver shouldn’t be hard to find on the track Sunday, when he will drive a gold car to help NAPA Auto Parts mark its 100th year as a company. NAPA has been his primary sponsor since he was racing in the Xfinity Series in 2014.
Elliott's win last year was the eighth at Texas for Hendrick Motorsports, twice as many as any other team.
Hendrick has won three of the last four there with different drivers each time. William Byron won the track’s last fall race in 2023, two years after Kyle Larson won a playoff race and the non-points All-Star race.
“It’s not the best race track, but it’s unique enough that it’s different and it’s a challenge. There’s that positivity to it. They didn’t do a good job with the remodel of it,” Larson said, referring to a 2017 total repave with significant changes to Turns 1 and 2. “I mean you can still have success somewhere and not love it. But, yeah, I don’t hate it either.”
Austin Cindric will start on the second row at Texas after a week of celebrating a win at Talladega and a lot of attention paid to an expletive-laden radio rant directed toward him by his own teammate during Team Penske's first win of the season.
There also was the conversation with Joey Logano, who was furious midway through the race when he didn't get the help he needed in his Ford from Cindric, which allowed rival Toyota driver Bubba Wallace to win the second stage and earn valuable bonus points.
“Definitely needed, right? I mean, I think you’ve got to talk about that. You’ve got to talk about what happened on track. I think that’s a lot more of the substance of the conversation,” Cindric said Saturday.
"I feel like I’ve got pretty thick skin, and I also feel like I know Joey fairly well, so I’m not overly concerned or have too many emotions at all about what was said," he said. "But I think for us, sorting out where we both stood on track and what we can do in the future to be better there and capitalize on those opportunities.”
They are back on the track Sunday at Texas, the 1 1/2-mile track where Cindric qualified third for the 11th Cup race this season.
“All good for me, man,” Cindric said when asked if the teammates were good.
Carson Hocevar earned his first Cup pole with a qualifying lap of 191.659 mph in the Spire Motorsports Chevrolet. The 22-year-old Hocevar is the youngest pole winner ever at Texas Motor Speedway, which will host its 45th Cup race. His 56th career Cup race will start on the front row with Cup points leader William Byron (191.564 mph), also in a Chevy.
Cindric ran a qualifying lap of 191.523 mph. Logano will start 27th, two spots ahead of defending race champion Elliott.
Logano said this week that he probably “spouted off” more than he should have against his teammate during the Talladega race, and that it came in the heat of the moment.
Among the reactions this week was Baseball Hall of Famer Chipper Jones criticizing reigning NASCAR champion Logano in a series of social media posts. Jones congratulated Cindric, called Logano selfish and celebrated Logano being disqualified for failing postrace inspection.
Cindric said he knows who the former Atlanta Braves slugger is even though he doesn't follow much baseball.
“But to have something like that with eyes on our sport, a Hall of Famer is really cool,” Cindric said. “The rest of it’s a lot of noise. But it’s cool to have someone like that behind me.”
As for that Braves cap Cindric keeps in his truck, that isn't about being a fan of the MLB team, and he didn't wear it at all this week.
“Well, the funny thing is, that’s like my neutral hat ... because I don’t want to walk around like advertising, ‘Hey, I’m a NASCAR driver’ if I can help it,” he said. “So it’s usually either that or my Colts (cap) that I snag in my truck.”
Odds and Ends
Larson at +375 is the betting favorite to win Sunday, per BetMGM Sportsbook, followed by Byron at +550 and Tyler Reddick at +700. ... Kyle Busch’s 35th race at Texas will come two days after his 40th birthday. He has four wins at Texas, where he has led in 20 different races overall, a track record. His 1,069 laps led are second only to Jimmie Johnson’s 1,152.
