Chase Elliott looks back on Alan Gustafson's controversial call at Dover, if team made a mistake

Chase Elliott opened up Friday on crew chief Alan Gustafson‘s call to pit for two tires during the Lap 340 caution for rain in this past Sunday’s race at Dover Motor Speedway. At the time, Elliott was one of six cars on the lead lap. He had pitted just seven laps earlier.

Denny Hamlin and the No. 11 team decided to stay out on older tires, and that strategy was the winning one. Elliott, meanwhile, finished a disappointing sixth after leading a race-high 238 laps from the pole. In hindsight, it’s easy to say they made a mistake, Elliott said. But he believes the outrage might have been the same if the roles were reversed and Elliott stayed out while Hamlin and others came down pit road.

“Easy to look back on that and realize you made a mistake,” Elliott said, via Jeff Gluck of The Athletic. “But look, [if] we don’t come down pit road and the 11 [Hamlin] comes down pit road, then everybody’s fussing about that because the rest of them were going to pit. We decided to pit and the 11 stayed out and he happened to win the race. And of course, that’s going to get the same reaction. So, the point I’m trying to make is when you have all the answers to the test after it’s over, it’s really easy to sit back and look at what was the right thing to do and what wasn’t.

“Denny did a really good job holding off the tires behind [him]. Does he stay out if we stay out as well, knowing that [new] tires was going to line up right behind us on the second row and he didn’t have control of the restart? I don’t think they do. But maybe they do. Regardless, it is a tough spot to be in, and it went the way it went. We can’t change it, but we can certainly take some lessons from the day and from the weekend and try to apply that forward to put ourselves in positions like that more often.”

Chase Elliott takes regular season points lead after Dover

The team waffled on the call before Gustafson made the final decision to bring Elliott to pit road. Gustafson told The Athletic after the race that he regretted the call to pit in general. Still, Sunday was another step forward for the No. 9 team. Elliott finally spent a significant time out front and passed Hendrick Motorsports teammate William Byron for the regular season points lead.

Elliott dominating races has seldom been seen in the Next Gen era. But it came together at Dover, and could be something to build off of heading into this Sunday’s race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.