Chase Elliott continued his mastery of road courses in NASCAR. The young star held off Denny Hamlin for the win in NASCAR Cup Series’ inaugural race at the Daytona Road Course on Sunday.

He notched his third consecutive win on a road course, dating back to last year, with wins previously at the Watkins Glen and Charlotte. It also marked his fourth win in the last six road course races.

Chase stands tied with Kyle Busch and Kevin Harvick for the most ‘Road Course’ wins among the active drivers. Additionally, Crew Chief Alan Gustafson grabbed his 4th ‘Road Course’ win as a boss.

There was so much talk before the race, with no practice and no qualifying for drivers and the challenge of Daytona. But Elliott raced as if he was born to win, leading 34 of the 64 laps.

He pulled off a massive 10-second lead over Denny Hamlin with 10 laps to go, but there was still some final drama in store.

Chase Elliott keeps his calm

The caution came out due to Kyle Busch’s tire failure, giving Hamlin and Martin Truex Jr. the chance to catch up with Elliott. However, Elliott maintained his focus and consequently preserved his hard-earned lead.

Driving in the No. 9 Chevrolet, Elliott had the most perfect final restart and raced through the final few laps to beat Hamlin by 0.202 seconds. Truex Jr. bagged third place.

Chase Elliott was humble in his assessment of Sunday’s masterful performance and said he did not do anything special. “Just had a really good car more than anything, not sure I did anything special today. Really fortunate from that standpoint.

“Had a good week of preparation and came out and really executed on the race,” Elliott said after the race.

Road-course superiority

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He joked that Daytona had to be changed to a road course for him to win. But said it was the right call to replace a road course (Watkins Glen) with another in the schedule.

“Any win at Daytona is special. (Crew chief) Alan (Gustafson) and I were joking that we had to change it to a road course to win a race here at Daytona…Just a great day.

“Obviously Watkins Glen has been good to us. But I was just really happy that we replaced a road course with a road course,” Elliott said.

“There was a lot of effort in getting this road course done and completed in time. So appreciate Daytona and everybody that worked from the facilities here to be able to turn it that fast and did a really nice job with it,” he added.

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