Chase Elliott came to Richmond with a bold plan and playoff dreams. But pit road had other ideas, and so did Kyle Busch. One penalty and one wreck later, Elliott’s night ended in heartbreak and his title hopes took a major hit.
The 2024 Cook Out 400 at Richmond Raceway was a rollercoaster for Elliott, and not the fun kind. The No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports driver rolled the dice with a bold strategy, skipping a Stage 1 pit stop while most of the field, like Alex Bowman and Justin Haley, swapped tires.
The plan was to save a fresh set for the final laps, banking on late-race speed to make up ground on Richmond’s tight, 0.75-mile oval. It was vintage Elliott, playing the long game with confidence. But pit road had other ideas. When Elliott finally dove in during the stage break, his car clipped Chase Briscoe’s pit box, triggering a vehicle interference penalty that sent him to the back of the field.
The call wiped out any edge his tire strategy might’ve earned, leaving him stuck in traffic. Just when it seemed things couldn’t get worse, a massive multi-car wreck on Lap 199, sparked by Kyle Busch, caught Elliott in the aftermath. His No. 9 slammed head-on into the wall, ending his night with a DNF and crushing his hopes for the regular-season points title.
The double whammy, self-inflicted penalty and bad-luck crash, stung for a driver who’d been a model of consistency all year. With one race left, Elliott’s now left regrouping, but his candid take on the pit-road blunder shows he’s ready to learn and bounce back.
Chase Elliott’s take on the pit-road snafu
Before the race, Elliott opened up about the chaos, “Yeah, I’ll have to go back and watch it. You know it seems like it’s happened a lot lately and I don’t know. It’s a really tough position, especially when you’re directly behind the car that’s pitted right behind your stall, because the front tire carriers are carrying two tires and you get in a position where if I get too far over to the right I’m gonna be stopped and now he isn’t going to be able to get out his box. Obviously, I’m not trying to hit these guys.”
Richmond’s cramped pit lane is a nightmare, with tight stalls and tire carriers darting around. Elliott’s been burned before, Phoenix 2023 saw William Byron box him in, and Martinsville this year cost him five spots after a similar squeeze. It’s a high-stakes balancing act, and Elliott’s frustration shows how tough it is to avoid trouble.
He doubled down, “You know, I would never intentionally do that or try and, you know, make him get further left. Like, that’s not my intent at all. I just, I don’t want to get in a position where I’m angled so far in that now I’ve blocked him in and we have a bad angle for our stop.”
Chase Elliott liked the style of racing where he had the strategy of potentially having an extra set of tires for the end of the race by going the first stage on one set of tires. He never got to see how it would end up as getting collected in a wreck ended his day. @NASCARONFOX pic.twitter.com/Bzh8SslSKL
— Bob Pockrass (@bobpockrass) August 17, 2025
Pit-road etiquette matters, Denny Hamlin learned that at Darlington in 2022 when he apologized for blocking Kevin Harvick’s crew. Elliott knows one wrong move can spark bad blood, especially when a bad angle can add seconds to a stop, costing positions on a short track like Richmond.
Finally, he owned it, “So, all I was trying to do was just take as much room as I could, you know, to get back straight and not cause another issue at the end of the pit stop. But it wasn’t, it was nothing beyond that. I had to go back and watch it. Obviously, I got too aggressive with it, but it was, you know, an unfortunate situation. Just like, you know, what happened just now.”
Elliott’s had similar slip-ups, like overshooting his stall at New Hampshire in 2024 or tangling with Busch at Bristol in 2021. His admission of getting “too aggressive” shows a driver reflecting on a recurring issue, determined to clean it up.
The Wreck that sealed the deal
The Cook Out 400’s second half turned into a demolition derby, crushing Elliot’s comeback dreams. After a clean Stage 1, three quick cautions led to a Lap 199 pileup that collected 13 drivers. It started when Chase Briscoe peeked inside Kyle Larson, only to get squeezed by Kyle Busch, spinning him in front of a packed field.
Ross Chastain, Brad Keselowski, Justin Haley, Denny Hamlin, William Byron, Todd Gilliland, Cole Custer, and Erik Jones all got caught in the chaos. Elliott, second in points entering the weekend, nearly threaded the needle, but Busch right-reared him exiting the scrum, sending the No. 9 into the frontstretch wall.
Elliott told NBC’s Kim Coon, “I have no idea what happened still. Obviously, I saw them crashing, and we were all stacking up trying to get stopped. After the wreck was over, I thought we were done wrecking. I was just trying to squeak by, and I guess somebody didn’t know I was done there. I guess Kyle just didn’t know I was to the left.”
The crash marked Elliott’s first DNF of 2024, a bitter end to a season where he’d completed all but one lap.
The wreck reshuffled the points race. William Byron, the leader, took damage but climbed from 27th to 18th on fresh tires. Hamlin’s damage and Christopher Bell’s bad pit stop, restarting 25th, kept them behind. Byron now needs just 62 points over Hamlin and Bell to clinch the regular-season title, a gap that widened thanks to Elliott’s early exit.
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