"I don’t think we were good enough to go win" - Chase Elliott rues losing 'momentum' after P11 finish at NASCAR Kansas race

2022 NASCAR Cup Series regular season winner Chase Elliott entered the playoffs as one of the top contenders for this year's championship. With two races under the bridge in the Round of 16 and one race remaining to the Round of 12, the winning odds seem to be against him.

Chase Elliott entered the playoffs with the favorite driver tag, and all eyes were on him as fans waited to see the regular season dominance in the playoffs. Despite hitting the playoffs as the favorite driver to win the Darlington race, which was the Round of 16 race opener, Elliott ended up taking home the last position.

After a terrible wreck that eliminated him from the winning stage at Darlington, the Hendrick Motorsports driver was hoping to reclaim the lost points by winning the Kansas race over the weekend.

This time around, he was lucky enough to complete the race, but he wasn’t fortunate enough to carry the checkered flag and instead went home with an 11th finish. Following an average finish, the #9 car driver felt he wasn’t good enough to win the race.

Speaking to the media after the race, Elliott said:

“Probably just bad lane choice. I don’t think we were good enough to go win. Bubba (Wallace) was really good, congrats to him and his team. That’s a big win for him and a deserving one, too. We just had a bad restart there and fell back a lot of spots. Our car wasn’t really driving any differently than it was earlier in the race when we were upfront. You just kind of loose momentum, start going the other direction and it’s difficult to rebound from that sometime.”

Elliott led the Cup Series drivers’ standings for the better part of the regular season to earn his first career regular season championship a few weeks back at Watkins Glen. His victory was well-deserved, considering he was the only driver to score more than three wins in the regular season.

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Chase Elliott's poor performance in 2022 NASCAR playoffs

Having won the regular season championship, Chase Elliott was awarded 15 playoff points, leading the board by +33 points ahead of the playoffs. After a wreck that stretched him to 35th position at Darlington, however, the Dawsonville-born driver dropped from the lead position to 8th place, earning only 14 points in the playoff standings. This served as a significant blow to his playoff journey.

Over the weekend, Elliott arrived in Kansas with high hopes of clinching his fifth win of the season and garnering more points. His weekend, however, didn’t start as he wished, earning a poor starting position in the qualifying race before working his way up to a P11 finish.

Chase Elliott earned 28 points at Kansas, advancing to 7th position with 2078 points, 30 points behind Christopher Bell, who is leading the board. Despite winning the regular season, Elliott might miss the Round of 8 if the low-performance trend continues for the next three weekends.