Chase Elliott Seems Determined To Take Away All Our Fun

1. Look out, because Chase Elliott isn’t having any fun unless he wins …

If you’ve followed New Hampshire NASCAR Cup Series winner Christopher Bell since his days in the Xfinity Series, you likely remember him as one of the more miserable second-place finishers around on days he couldn’t bring home the checkered flag. Other drivers interviewed after top-five results might talk about how their team battled to improve or how it was a good points day, but Bell? He always seemed despondent as the runner-up.

It’s with no small amount of irony, then, that Bell was the one who brought that same glum outlook from Chase Elliott. After the race, he was so down about letting a win slip away — blaming himself, not his team — that you would have thought he came home 32nd instead of second. Not even the interviewer reminding him that NHMS marked his fourth top-two finish in a row could cheer him up. Instead, he finished by saying he needed to work on “everything.”

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Not a bad stretch for @chaseelliott. pic.twitter.com/2QAZ78ton4

— NASCAR (@NASCAR) July 18, 2022

Lest Elliott’s legion of fans interpret this as a diss, it’s quite the opposite. He’s not just the hottest driver in the NASCAR Cup Series right now, but he’s unwilling to stand pat and rest on that fact. That shows he’s a serious threat to win his second championship, because he’s not going to accept defeat — even a definition of one that works out to “anything but first place.”

2. … But Elliott getting happy might make all race fans gloomy

Bell’s victory brought us one step closer to what this column has previously dubbed Winpocalypse: a situation where there are 17 or more regular season winners and a victory doesn’t guarantee a spot in the playoff field. We’re tantalizingly close now, with 14 different winners and six more races to find three additional ones.

Amazingly, Ryan Blaney and Martin Truex Jr. have found a way to do everything but win, so having them break through would be helpful. Yet the real issue now is whether someone already inside the playoffs will get hot enough to rip off several more wins, entering the postseason by dashing fans’ dreams (well, some fans, anyway) while ensuring themselves a healthy leg up on their title run.

Elliott is the most likely person to play party pooper, and not just because he’s on fire at the moment. The tracks still to go on the regular season slate include Watkins Glen, where he’s won…