$12M-worth Chase Elliott battles back with Top 5 finish despite falling short of Kyle Larson's front-running pace at Dover

Chase Elliott recently reviewed his race at the Dover Motor Speedway and praised his #9 Chevrolet for helping him overtake for multiple positions.

The Hendrick Motorsports driver started the race down in the 29th position and managed to finish fifth. The weekend was strong for him and his teammate Kyle Larson, who started 21st and finished 2nd.

Although the qualifying position from both drivers might point towards an issue with the car in the qualifying session, Chase Elliott revealed that the Chevy performed well all weekend. He told FOX's Jamie Little:

"Yeah, I feel like our car drove really good yesterday. Just qualified terrible. So it was nice that when the race started, I've had that feel that we had in practice yesterday, and it was solid. It needed a little bit on the front side of a run. But other than that, I thought our Chevy was pretty good, and had a lot of comfort."

Chase Elliott further talked about overtaking a huge part of the grid yet missing out on the competition at the top between his teammate Kyle Larson and Denny Hamlin.

"And I haven't passed that many cars in one day in a while. So that was fun. And yeah, it's nice to be up in the mix. I mean, obviously, you know, Denny and Kyle, and this guy was really good. I never got quite to their row, but thought we were really competitive otherwise. So yeah, enjoyed the day. It was a lot of fun."

While Chase Elliott praised his Chevy for helping him make incredible overtakes throughout the race, his teammate Kyle Larson wasn't satisfied.

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Kyle Larson complained of pace while teammate Chase Elliott praised the car

Larson managed to win the second stage of the race despite starting down in the 21st position. While he was only within a second's gap from leader Denny Hamlin with 15 laps remaining in the race, he failed to overtake him.

Speaking with FOX after the race, Larson mentioned that "air blocking" is an easy job for drivers. Air blocking refers to driving in another driver's turbulent air which makes it hard to overtake. He said:

“I went late in the zone and Martin was trying to time it behind me and he hit me right when I wanted to go and it just screwed up and I got a lot of wheel spin and [Hamlin] was able to outrace me in the Turn one. His car was really good on the short runs and I could pace it, get closer to him at the end of the runs. It's just so easy to air block not that he was doing anything dirty or anything like that…”

Larson further stated that he was unable to generate "enough speed" to perform the overtake for the victory at Dover.

“I knew when I got within three cars length he was going to start moving around. I just couldn't really do anything. I was trying all sorts of different angles and speeds and all that and nothing could generate enough speed to get close enough, I guess, to do anything. So, that was a bummer.”

Chase Elliott and Kyle Larson gave opposing reviews of their drives after the weekend at Dover. The team, however, leads the championship table. William Byron had also gained in the race but crashed out in the final stages. Alex Bowman, meanwhile, finished in eighth place.