Hope for Elliott making playoffs on points goes up in smoke after Michigan crash

Any hope of Chase Elliott making the NASCAR playoffs on points likely ended against the Turn 2 wall at Michigan International Speedway.

Elliott was rolling through Turn 1 on lap 35 of Sunday’s FireKeepers Casino 400 when he lost control of his No. 9 Chevrolet, backing into the outside wall. The crash ended Elliott’s day, relegating him to a 36th-place finish after he limped the damaged car to the garage. It's his third DNF of the year and first since Charlotte Motor Speedway.

https://twitter.com/NASCAR/status/1688291117937168385

The culprit -- a tire failure.

“I feel good. Hate [that] it happened, obviously,” Elliott said after his crash. “Really early in the day to have a tire blow like that; it was really weird. Bummer, but not surprised. Obviously we stayed out, but I don’t even feel like I was being hard on it.

"Just add it to the list...”

Sunday’s crash effectively ended Elliott’s chances to make the playoffs on points. The Georgian rolled into Michigan 40 points below the playoff cutline, having slowly closed up the gap to 16th after missing seven races -- six with a broken tibia sustained in a snowboarding crash, and one served in a suspension for intentionally crashing Denny Hamlin in the Coca-Cola 600.

Quiet consistency had lifted Elliott into points contention over the summer, with three top-fives and no finishes worse than 13th in the seven races since his suspension. But Elliott had no margin for error prior to Sunday’s crash.

The 2020 Cup champion will have three races to win his way into the playoffs – Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course, Watkins Glen International and Daytona International Speedway. Of course, as he noted earlier in the weekend, expecting to need a win to make the playoffs is nothing new for him.

“I told y’all that the week I got back,” he said Sunday. “Nothing’s changed.”