Who… should you be talking about after the race?
It was 42 races since Chase Elliott last saw victory lane before Sunday (April 14), and it probably seemed even longer for Elliott as there have been two off-seasons in between as well as a couple of months on the sidelines last year after a snowboarding accident.
Elliott has had good cars, but at times hasn’t looked as hungry as he could have. That hunger was on display at Texas Motor Speedway, as Elliott survived multiple late cautions and won the Auto Trader EchoPark Automotive 400 under caution over runner-up Brad Keselowski.
Elliott has run well this year but needed to put together a total race. He did that on Sunday, finishing in the top 10 in each of the opening stages and leading three times for 39 total laps.
Elliott had to hold off drivers like Denny Hamlin, Ross Chastain and Keselowski on restarts in the final laps, hoping he had enough fuel in the tank for the last overtime run. If anyone went to bed early in Dawsonville, Ga. tonight, they got quite an awakening.
And don’t forget Carson Hocevar. Hocevar drove like a veteran on Sunday, avoiding trouble that even some of the veterans couldn’t escape and driving to a career-best 10th-place finish in Texas. Hocevar kept his head after spinning on lap 115 and drove his way back to the front. It wasn’t an easy day for the 21-year-old, but it was a learning experience that came with a great result.
What… is the big question leaving this race in the rearview?
Fans don’t like it. A lot of drivers don’t like it. Texas dropped from two races to one (after once filing a lawsuit to get a second race) because of higher demand for racing at other tracks, but in this case, absence hasn’t made the heart grow fonder.
There have been rumors of reconfigurations for a couple of years, but so far nothing has come of them. The same old, same old isn’t making anybody happy. So, what does the future hold for Texas?
It’s hard to imagine the Mild Asphalt Circus falling off the schedule entirely, but the options are limited as far as changing anything to make the racing better. Reversing the 2018 reconfiguration might make the racing a bit better, but it wasn’t really great on that surface either.
A complete reconfiguration to something other than an intermediate track would mean either a short track — which would have been well-received before the Next Gen cars turned out to be pretty…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at …