Jeff Gordon shares his take on Chase Elliott running out of fuel at Watkins Glen

Chase Elliott’s bid to win his first race of the season during Sunday’s Go Bowling at the Glen at Watkins Glen International, thus qualifying for the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs, was thwarted after his No. 9 Chevy ran out of gas ahead of the final green flag pit stop with 36 laps remaining.

Elliott, running ninth at the time, walked away with a disappointing P32 result at a racetrack he’s picked up two victories at during his career. Jeff Gordon, vice chairman of Hendrick Motorsports, explained after the race what went wrong for Elliott.

“Clearly miscalculation with the 9 car, and that was huge,” Gordon said, via The SportsRush. “… He was stretching… He came in a little bit short the first stop. And so they were trying to stretch it to get closer on the strategy of the others. You always want to pad yourself here just in case there’s a lot of restarts at the end. The fuel just wasn’t there. It was really unfortunate.”

While Elliott wasn’t made available after the race, his crew chief, Alan Gustafson, was. Gustafson, however, was in no mood to discuss why Elliott ran out of gas.

“That’s internal stuff,” Gustafson said. “I’m not going to go over our internal struggles in the media, and I’m certainly not going to educate everybody else on the problem.”

He added: “To win, you have to have very little margin. That’s what winning is — you’re going to make sure you exploit everything to the highest percentile possible. Any time you’re trying to push, you’re cutting margins, That gets riskier and riskier.”

Chase Elliott in need of victory at Daytona to clinch playoff berth

In order for the 2020 Cup Series champion to make another postseason run, he must find his way to victory lane in Saturday’s Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona International Speedway. The time to chip away and get in on points is officially over, and in Elliott’s words, showing up to Daytona in a must-win situation is like “going to Vegas and having to hit the nearest slot machine for the jackpot.”

“To show up there and be in a must-win situation is like going to Vegas and having to hit the nearest slot machine for the jackpot,” Elliott said ahead of Watkins Glen. “That’s just silly.”

Silly as it may be, that is the predicament Elliott finds himself in. It’s win or go home at the most famous racetrack in motorsports.