Chase Elliott wins All-Star Race at Bristol
Chase Elliott got a great restart at the start of the final stage of Wednesday night’s All-Star Race and cruised to an easy win over Kyle Busch at Bristol.
Elliott darted ahead when the green flag waved for the final 15-lap stage at the half-mile track. Busch quickly clawed his way to second but couldn’t get close to Elliott’s bumper over the final segment.
The All-Star Race was broken up into four stages. Elliott won the final three.
“I’ve never won here, what a race to do it,” Elliott said. “Just really proud of our team tonight and rebounding. We’ve had a really tough couple of weeks and just felt like we had kind of gotten off base and I felt like I was struggling. Just tried to hit the reset button this week, and came out and put on a great performance — great car.
The race was held at Bristol for the first time ever and held at a track not named Charlotte Motor Speedway since 1986. The last All-Star Race not held at Charlotte was at Atlanta. And won by Chase’s father, Bill Elliott.
Elliott’s win at Bristol comes after he crashed with Joey Logano while the two were racing for the lead late at Bristol on May 31.
It was a long time coming for the All-Star Race to move away from Charlotte and to a short track like Bristol. But it’s safe to say that the Bristol debut was short on drama. The night’s most climactic moment came when Michael McDowell crashed Bubba Wallace on the straightaway in the All-Star Race qualifier.
The All-Star Race itself was a relatively boring affair. Once drivers got separated after restarts there wasn’t much tension. The only crash came when Kurt Busch went spinning early in the race’s first stage. After that, the race was pretty straightforward.
The race was originally scheduled for Charlotte in mid-May but postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic. When NASCAR rescheduled the race, it moved it to Bristol as coronavirus cases started to rise in North Carolina and the state of Tennessee was cool with fans in attendance. Thousands of fans showed up for better or worse — Bristol capped attendance at 30,000 in its 150,000-seat facility — to make the race the most-attended sporting event since the pandemic began.
The Cup Series next travels to Texas on Sunday where it will race in a state where coronavirus cases are increasing by the day. That race will also have fans in attendance. After Texas, NASCAR heads to Kansas, where no fans will be allowed in the grandstands.
All-Star Race results
1 Chase Elliott
2. Kyle Busch
3. Kevin Harvick
4. Brad Keselowski
5. Denny Hamlin
6. Ryan Blaney
7. Joey Logano
8. Alex Bowman
9. Aric Almirola
10. Martin Truex Jr.
11. Erik Jones
12. William Byron
13. Matt DiBenedetto
14. Justin Haley
15. Clint Bowyer
16. Cole Custer
17. Jimmie Johnson
18. Matt Kenseth
19. Ryan Newman
20. Kurt Busch
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Nick Bromberg is a writer for Yahoo Sports.
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