Chase Elliott's First NASCAR Cup Win Could Not Come Fast Enough

It took 99 races before Chase Elliott scored his first career NASCAR Cup victory on Aug. 5, 2018, at Watkins Glen International.
Elliott led 52 laps, including the final 34, and finished a startling seven seconds in front of second-place Martin Truex Jr. that day.
Chase Elliott won the Xfinity Series championship in 2014, becoming, at 18, the youngest driver to win a major NASCAR title.
Chase Elliott could count the close calls as they stacked up in the early years of his NASCAR Cup career.

And, if he wasn’t counting, other people were.

In 2016, his first full season at stock car racing’s top level, he had two second-place finishes and 10 top fives with no victories. The following season he boosted both numbers—five seconds and a dozen top fives, but, again, no wins.

When the win finally arrived, it almost seemed easy (if Cup wins are ever easy). Elliott led 52 laps, including the final 34, and finished a startling seven seconds in front of second-place Martin Truex Jr. In a series in which road-course races often have turned into every-man-for-himself, last-lap calamities, Elliott was on cruise control.

In Dawsonville, Ga., the siren at the Dawsonville Pool Room—the loud and lasting herald of an Elliott family victory—sounded, and the success envisioned by many for Chase Elliott turned from promise to reality.

Two more wins followed that season, and Elliott won five times in 2020 on the way to his first Cup championship. For a driver from whom much was expected, the future had arrived.

The Watkins Glen victory, Elliott said, was both relief and joy.