Phoenix top-10 brings spring to Elliott’s step – Nascar

RELATED: Driver grades at Phoenix | Power Rankings

In his first NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season, Chase Elliott keeps making strides.

The driver of the No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet scored his second top-10 finish in three races with an eighth-place result Sunday in the Good Sam 500 at Phoenix International Raceway. That finish matched his career-best result in the Sprint Cup ranks, equaling his eighth-place finish at Atlanta Motor Speedway last month.

Elliott, who started 17th, spent all but six of the 313 laps in the top 15, and resided in the top six for much of the race’s latter third.

“I was just happy we finally put a day together and got a finish that these guys deserved,” Elliott said. “I feel like we had a good car. We made gains on it all day long.”

Elliott’s gains showed not just on the leaderboard but also in the loop data for the race. The 20-year-old had the most quality passes (28) in the field on Sunday, carrying over the speed the team showed in Saturday’s two practices where Elliott placed fifth and fourth, respectively.

“My guys have been bringing such fast race cars to the race track every week since Daytona, and I haven’t been doing a very good job of getting the finishes that they deserve,” Elliott said.

Elliott lined up seventh on the final restart on Lap 312 but got shuffled back a spot in the overtime frenzy of the final two laps.

“That last restart, obviously, was pretty wild,” said Elliott, who jumped up seven spots in the Sprint Cup points standings to 21st. “We tried our best. We gave up a couple of spots, but we will take it and move on to Fontana.”

Elliott was not the lone rookie the score a top-10 at Phoenix. Ryan Blaney snuck in a 10th-place finish, his second straight top-10 tally. Benefiting from a late-race pit stop before the final green flag of the day, the 22-year-old picked up two spots from his restart position of 12th. The result moved Blaney up to 12th in the point standings as well.

“We didn’t start out that great and we just got better as we went along,” Blaney said of his No. 21 Wood Brothers Racing team. “The guys did a great job with two tires at the end and I thought about staying out but we wouldn’t have been on the first two rows I don’t think so we had to come in and get two.”

The Sunoco Rookie of the Year battle is expected to go back and forth all season long between Elliott and Blaney. Thus far, the two have alternated as the top finishing rookie in each of the season’s four races.

The two drivers comprise a five-person rookie class that also includes Chris Buescher (No. 34 Front Row Motorsports), Jeffrey Earnhardt (No. 32 Go Fas Racing) and Brian Scott (No. 44 Richard Petty Motorsports).

The Good Sam 500 marked the first time since the 2014 Hollywood Casino 400 at Kansas Speedway that two Sunoco Rookie of the Year candidates finished in the top 10 in a race. In that race, Kyle Larson finished second, while Austin Dillon finished eighth. Larson and Dillon also both placed in the top 10 that year at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.