Elliott didn’t want to throw too many blocks on Daytona 500 final lap

Chase Elliott wanted to give himself one last chance coming to the checkered flag in Sunday’s Daytona 500, and that meant not wrecking himself against the run of Tyler Reddick.

Elliott succeeded in that mission. Riley Herbst wrecked him instead.

The frantic run to the finish saw the Hendrick Motorsports driver leading off Turn 4 on the final lap with Reddick coming fast. Elliott moved high to cover Reddick once, but didn’t follow the 23XI Racing driver to the bottom when Reddick moved left. That was where Elliott felt he would have wrecked himself.

Reddick kept his charge going toward the flag, and as he did, Herbst came with a run from behind Elliott and moved right. Herbst ended up going across Brad Keselowski’s nose, which then turned him back down the track and into Elliott’s right rear.

“I just felt like I was going to get crashed if I had tried to throw another move on (Reddick),” Elliott said. “I feel like the best play for me was to try to re-rack and get one last shove to the line. But it was the (No.) 35, and he wasn’t going to push me. Then he winds up crashing himself (by) not pushing me, which then in turn crashed me anyway.

“So, maybe I should have just turned left and wrecked the first time.”

The wreck coming to the finish was the second one that broke out on the final lap. Elliott avoided the first one, which occurred in the short chute going toward Turn 1. He was running in the middle of the top 10 when leader Carson Hocevar was spun off the bumper of Erik Jones. It cleared the way for Elliott to be three-wide with Reddick and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. for the lead.

Elliott was pushed clear in the lead by Zane Smith off Turn 2, and he stayed clear from the field until Reddick came with his winning charge. Reddick took the checkered flag alone with the top finishers behind him crashing across the line, while Elliott was credited with a fourth-place result.

“We got clear off of (Turn) 2, and then it was the (No.) 38 and I, and we got way out there, and I knew that probably wasn’t going to be good,” Elliott said. “At some point, there was going to be a momentum shift, and you just hope that things get busy and another one doesn’t come along. Unfortunately, it did.

“I just felt like Tyler was coming so quickly. I kind of blocked one direction, and he went the other way. I feel like if I had tried to throw another one, I would have been spun out on the wall on the inside. At that point, nobody is lifting, and I totally get that. It obviously sucks to be that close there in the closing lap and have the lead off (Turn) 4 and come up short. I think momentum had just shifted the other direction and it was just all defense, and being on defense on the last lap is tough.”

Sunday was the second time Elliott has finished in the top five in the Daytona 500. He has not won it in 11 attempts.

“I’m not the type of person that ever lets myself get there in the first place, so I knew it wasn’t over,” Elliott said. “At the end of the day, that’s part of this style of racing. I knew we were racing back to the line; they seemed pretty keen on wanting us to race back to the line, or they would have thrown the caution a long time before that, so I felt like we were coming back to the line, and I had the sensation that the momentum had shifted back the other way.

“At that point, it was going to be tough sledding, and unfortunately, it was.”