Hendrick Motorsports’ Chase Elliott didn’t score any points in the first two stages of Sunday’s Cook Out 400 NASCAR Cup Series race at Martinsville Speedway, but he appeared to be in line to settle for yet another “good points day” with a top 10 finish.

Elliott and the No. 9 team, specifically crew chief Alan Gustafson, have been criticized over the past three or four years for simply settling for good results rather than racing for wins.

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Elliott’s overall performance has been solid from a consistency standpoint, but he entered the year with just three wins since October 2022. Pace-wise, he has been a far cry from where he was when he won the 2020 championship.

But on Sunday afternoon, Gustafson made what is probably the call of the year so far, and while the strategy was aided by a timely caution flag, that was exactly the point of the strategy call to begin with.

Alan Gustafson, Chase Elliott capitalize on track position at Martinsville

Knowing he could do no more than “follow the leaders” at that point in the race, Elliott pit earlier than his competitors in stage three, and he utilized the advantage of fresh tires to cycle to the lead when everybody else came in for their pit stops.

The disadvantage, however, began to creep in, as now his tires were much older than those of his rivals, and he subsequently lost the lead to Joe Gibbs Racing’s Denny Hamlin, who won both of the first two stages.

But a yellow flag, which arguably should have come out earlier when Elliott was actually still leading, bailed out the No. 9 team. Pieces of the brake rotor from Ty Dillon’s No. 10 Kaulig Racing Chevrolet were on the race track in spots NASCAR deemed unsafe following his issue.

As a result, the advantage held by Elliott’s rivals was nullified when he joined them on pit road for new tires under caution. He went on to beat Hamlin in a head-to-head fight for the victory.

The win moved him up to fourth place in the point standings, and it marks the earliest in a season he has ever won during his 11-year career. It’s also his second top two finish in the past three races; he finished second behind Hamlin at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, despite Chevrolet’s ongoing struggles in terms of getting up to speed with their new car bodies.

Given the criticism that Gustafson has faced for supposedly holding Elliott back, the result, which was Hendrick Motorsports’ first win of the year as a team, was a much-needed one.

Of course, many fans even tried to argue that NASCAR rigged the outcome of the race for Elliott, simply because of the fact that Fox Sports was slow to locate and show the brake rotor from Dillon’s car that was on the race track to prompt the yellow flag.

But that’s to be expected, not just because NASCAR fans often claim races are rigged when anything that might seem remotely convenient happens, but because of the fact that Gustafson couldn’t have possibly done something right to buck the narrative that he’s holding back the sport’s most popular driver.

Under the strategy of the leaders, Elliott’s post-race interview would have probably gone something like this: a question about finishing in 10th, him sipping from his Coke bottle, and then saying, “yeah it was a good day, the boys and girls back at the shop are working hard, we’ll take this result and move forward”.

Instead, he was in victory lane, celebrating with his second grandfather clock.

At some point, you have to give credit where it’s due. Even if it’s earned by someone who has notoriously been labeled by fans as “the problem”.