Chase Elliott Wins Under the Lights at Nashville

For the second straight year, the NASCAR Cup Series came to Nashville Superspeedway for the Ally 400, where it held its inaugural race in 2021 where Kyle Larson won the race. Another Hendrick driver won the race, this time being Chase Elliott, collecting his second win of the 2022 season. The other win came at another concrete track, Dover Motor Speedway. Despite teammates Alex Bowman and William Byron having rough days and the race being dominated by Joe Gibbs Racing cars, it was Elliott that prevailed in the end in a race that was delayed a couple of times due to inclement weather.

After a late caution, Elliott stayed out while many other leaders decided to pit for fresh tires. Elliott was able to hold off Kurt Busch on the final restart with 4 laps to go to win himself a guitar that comes with winning at Nashville.

“I’m so proud of our team,” Elliott said. “We had a setback about halfway, but we were able to get the NAPA Chevy dialed back in and get back in the mix. It was a long day, a fun day. I’m so proud of our team. We’ve had a pretty rough month, month and a half. It’s just nice to get back going in the right direction. Getting a win is always huge. To do it in a really cool city like Nashville is even better. I’m looking forward to that guitar.”

Elliott held off a dominant Joe Gibbs Racing team that led a combined 250 of the 300 between Denny Hamlin, Martin Truex Jr, and Kyle Busch. Those leaders ended up pitting on that final caution, which led to them not having a chance to win the race. Kyle Busch and Martin Truex Jr couldn’t navigate through traffic and finished 21^st and 22^nd in that order.

As for Kurt Busch, he said that he could’ve been more aggressive on the final restart.

“I wanted to throw some fenders, but I didn’t get the job done,” Kurt said after the race. “Everybody will be smiling, but I let them down. I should have come up with a better plan. We were going to stay out no matter what, and I needed to start throwing fenders to move people around. I didn’t get after it, and I made too many mistakes and didn’t stick with our strength. I’m not going to say what our strength was, but we did a lot of things good.”

The second lightning delay brought a heavy downpour of rain and storms, as it lasted two hours, eight minutes, and 35 seconds, leading to the race resuming around 10 PM EST. The delay happened on lap 139, 11 laps short of the halfway point that would have led to the race being called.

The Cup Series heads next to Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin at Road America for Fourth of July weekend, where Chase Elliott won the inaugural event in 2021 and is sure to be a favorite.