Chase Elliott played it smart during last Sunday\u2019s NASCAR Cup Series race at Circuit of the Americas. Within moments of seeing the tire come off Ross Chastain\u2019s No. 1 car just ahead of him, Elliott made a split second decision to duck onto pit road for fresh rubber before the caution flag flew. The call proved to be a stroke of timing for the No. 9 driver.<\/p>\n
Elliott came as the first car on new tires for the restart, turning the race that had been slipping through his fingers into a charge toward the front. He climbed from outside the top 10 to finish inside it.<\/p>\n
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The moment unfolded after an incident involving Trackhouse Racing. During the race at Circuit of the Americas, the right rear wheel on Ross Chastain\u2019s Chevrolet detached on Lap 75 under green flag conditions. NASCAR officials announced Tuesday that rear tire changer Kenneth Pozega and jackman Josh Appleby will be suspended for the next two NASCAR Cup Series events as a result.<\/p>\n
The team was also assessed a two lap penalty during the race, and Chastain finished 35th, two laps down. While the loose wheel sent Trackhouse scrambling, it ended up playing directly into Elliott\u2019s hands and helped spark his late charge through the field.<\/p>\n
Fans took note and took to X, with one writing, \u201cWas at the 9 box yesterday, pretty badass watching them execute as soon as he made the call to come down pit lane.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another fan added, \u201cAnd none of the podcasts I\u2019ve listened to mentioned it. Big brain right there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another showed his gratitude, \u201cThank you for covering this. Talk about perfect timing and positioning. Alan was even like \u201cI didn\u2019t know what was going on\u201d.\u201d One NASCAR fan stated, \u201cThat\u2019s heads up racing at its finest.\u201d<\/p>\n
Elliott had qualified fifth for the event and battled handling issues in the opening stage, but still secured three stage points with a P8 finish. After a lengthy stop for adjustments during the stage break, he restarted deep in the field for Stage 2 and inched forward before taking the green-and-white checkered flag in P28.<\/p>\n
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In the final stage, the tide turned. Elliott\u2019s early stop before the caution reshuffled the deck. As other teams pitted under yellow, he lined up 12th with 17 laps remaining. From there, he kept his nose clean and drove to seventh, and overall managed to salvage 33 points.<\/p>\n
The post Chase Elliott\u2019s Big Brain Moment During Last Sunday\u2019s NASCAR Race Leaves Fans in Awe<\/a> appeared first on The SportsRush<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chase Elliott played it smart during last Sunday\u2019s NASCAR Cup Series race at Circuit of the Americas. Within…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":513727,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,4387,98681,19546,2884,88394,634,8994,82],"class_list":["post-513726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-chase-elliott","tag-circuit-of-the-americas","tag-daytona-500","tag-daytona-international-speedway","tag-mark-j-rebilas-imagn","tag-nascar","tag-ross-chastain","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=513726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513726\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/513727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=513726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=513726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=513726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}