Yesterday at Martinsville, Chase Elliott and his team did something unimaginable. Their pit stop strategy was deemed a failure. Yet somehow, his team ends up winning the race, breaking the winless streak that the Chevys and Rick Hendrick’s team have had this season. While the fans are not ready to accept his crew chief Alan Gustafson’s idea as a masterclass, Kyle Petty would beg to differ.

Kyle Petty delivers brutal wake-up call to haters

In the latest episode of NASCAR Inside the Race, Kyle Petty was seen defending Alan Gustafson’s decision to give Chase Elliott a two-stop strategy.

“No matter what Alan’s call was. And Alan made a great call. And we have seen Chase Elliott fans hate on Alan in the past because Alan at least tried stuff.”

Petty did not shy away from calling the fans out for their hypocrisy. In his eyes, Alan Gustafson’s idea struck brilliantly with some luck on the No. 9 team’s side.

“He would at least try, and he said in his post-race interview we were stuck in 10th. I had to do something, and Alan made a call, caught a break with a caution, and caught some luck. And that’s what it takes sometimes. 

“And then Chase did what he was supposed to do. And listen, there’s nobody smoother than Chase. We’ve watched Chase a lot of times, and it doesn’t look like he’s really hurt or he’s—it doesn’t look like he’s hustling.”

While hurling praise towards Chase Elliott for being able to work so easily under pressure, Petty also highlights how his crew chief was able to think outside the box in a situation where others would not want to take a risk. It was necessary because Martinsville does not favor overtaking. At a track as small as this one, the grid position often ends up deciding your fate.

But when Alan Gustafson brought him to the pit early, he was able to shatter the momentum of the rivals. They had to follow suit and pit in early to cover Elliott and his advances. Although that simply was not enough for Gustafson. What followed next was a brilliant execution from the team based on his hunch.

“In this situation, Luke Mitchell, who is my race day engineer at home, does a great job with strategy; we just continued to communicate about it. He told me that it was close and ultimately felt like it was a safer play to one-stop it,” said Gustafson.

“I asked him to go do some other calculations based on some different scenarios. He said it was probably a couple seconds faster. That was just enough for me then to say, ‘Yeah, it’s worth it.’ We had to give ourselves a shot, so …”

It had to be picture-perfect for the team. The calculations were mathematically correct, but the execution needed to be done regardless of how the race played out. While Elliott did his part without any hint of struggle or errors, he also revealed that he never lost faith in his crew chief.

No wonder Elliott and the rest of the Hendrick Motorsports team can’t stop themselves from praising Alan Gustafson’s amazing gamble.

Chase Elliott and Co. extend full support to Alan Gustafson

Being a crew chief for one of the best teams in the sport is never easy. There is always double pressure on your shoulders. On one hand, you have to explain your failures to your boss, who wants the best from your team with the resources you have at your disposal. On the other hand, you also face the heat from the angry fans who want their favorite driver to win.

Alan Gustafson was in the same dilemma. However, no matter the circumstances, his driver understood his intentions perfectly.

“I think we had forced those guys into stopping really early. They were going to have to run a hundred-something laps on a set of tires. So, I think we were in really good shape.

“It’s a great call. I’m glad he picked up on that and saw that. I don’t think anybody else did. Goes to show that he’s pretty good at what he does, which I try to tell y’all all the time.”

While this was the best outcome for the No. 9 team, it was not necessarily good enough for others. Even William Byron’s crew was thinking the same strategy, but they did not have enough to execute it.

“What they were playing on, and it was true, is that everyone’s tires would die really, really hard over 80 to 100 laps, which no one had gone yet, and they put themselves in a good spot because they had track position for a while,” Byron’s crew chief Rudy Fugle said about the No. 9 team’s victory yesterday.

Not only that, but Fugle also believes that Elliott and his team’s openness to try the things that no one else can also gave them the edge in that situation. In a way, the operations strategy of the No. 9 team worked out well only because of the synergy between Chase Elliott and Alan Gustafson. Had there been any friction between the two, the victory would never have become a reality.