By: Ashley McCubbin

After winning the Alsco Uniforms 500 at Charlotte Motor Speedway, Chase Elliott was asked in the post-race media center whether crew chief Alan Gustafson’s confidence was not there in his young driver.

Elliott was prompt in his response in saying. “That’s probably about the dumbest question you’ve ever asked me.” Gustafson backed up those sentiments shortly thereafter, stating he has the utmost confidence in his driver and believes he’s the best driver on-track right now.

The question came about after a late caution in the Coca-Cola 600 saw Gustafson bring Elliott down pit road for four tires from the lead. The call did not work out, with Elliott driving his way back to the front to finish second behind Brad Keselowski, who had elected to stay out.

From the decision being made to the checkered flag and thereafter, many questioned the crew chief’s decision on top of the box, wondering what would’ve happened if Elliott had stayed out. There were even some who doubted Gustafson’s ability and wondered if Rick Hendrick needed to make a change.

Although the entire No. 9 team was disappointed in the result, their support of each other did not change as Elliott said afterwards he did not question or fault Gustafson for the decision made.

“I think you have to be a little bit hard-headed to do this job, and you have to find a way to improve, and just you have to kind of shake it off,” Gustafson commented. “Professional sports are super fickle, and one day you’re good and one day you’re terrible, and you just get used to that.”

With having been on top of the pit box in the Cup Series for 16 years and having worked with other high profile drivers like Jeff Gordon and Kyle Busch, it’s a situation that Gustafson has faced previously. However, there’s no doubt that through facing the adversity together, there wasn’t some rough moments.

“I don’t base my self-worth on other people’s opinions or if I’m doing a good job based on what other people say, but certainly I’m a human being, too, and when you get that many rocks thrown at you, it doesn’t feel great,” Gustafson admitted. “But yeah, it was a long couple days, but at the end of the day, you’ve just got to look past it and move on.”

Certainly being able to score the victory on Thursday will help heal the wounds left by Sunday, but they were only get to the checkered by remaining faithful in each other, and confidence. That was made easy, thanks to entering their fourth season of working together with wins in the previous two seasons including three last year.

It also doesn’t hurt that they have had a strong start to the 2020 campaign, with Elliott currently fourth in the standings with four top-five’s in eight races. They had also been plenty capable of winning races prior to the COVID-19 break, if not for incidents on-track and mistakes in the pits.

“Having an opportunity to win is a huge thing, and we’ve had a lot of opportunities to win,” Gustafson said. “It’s obviously been pretty well-documented that we didn’t do that as much as we would have liked, and knowing we could come here with a good car and a chance to win again and put ourselves in that position again and overcome it was good.

“I mean, if the race on Sunday night, if that was really the only shot we had all year, we hadn’t had cars that had speed to win, it would have been even that much more devastating, but we’ve had really good cars.  Yeah, it worked out.”

Even without the checkered flags to date, it’s safe to say to admit the confidence is higher this year than last, as the first half of the 2019 campaign was fought with trying to find the right recipe for success on the intermediate tracks for Hendrick Motorsports rather than winning. Through the first 10 races last year, there was only three top-five finishes.

“We’ve all stuck together.  We’ve all fought through it,” Gustafson commented. “We’ve not had the years we wanted the last three or four and we’ve stuck together and kept fighting and kept fighting, and now I think we’re getting to a position where we can contend.”

One of the contributing factors to their success comes down to Chevrolet debuting a brand new body for 2020, though the crew chief feels it also goes back to “a lot of hard work in the shop and a lot of work in the off-season and a lot of collaboration and all those things.”

With only being in the early stages, it’s hard to say who will be the drivers to watch for the championship – but Elliott has certainly made a case for himself with Gustafson at the helm. The only question that remains is can they carry the intermediate success over to the short tracks, beginning with Bristol Motor Speedway on Sunday.

Despite all of the success thus far, Gustafson notes that it doesn’t add any extra confidence headed to the bullring.

“I love Bristol.  It’s a great track.  It’s a lot of fun.  But it’s got its own unique challenges, and it’s got its own unique circumstances,” he commented. “I don’t really feel like there’s much from any of the tracks that we’ve raced that’s going to correlate to Bristol.  It’s its own animal.  I’m excited to get there and race it, and the dynamic of the track changing and rubber and the grip compound and no practice and all that’s going to be — it’s going to be significant there.  That’ll be a pressure cooker.  It’ll be fun.”