Chase Elliott, the defending race winner, and Austin Dillon were eliminated a two-car wreck with 55 laps left in Monday’s Cup race at Talladega Superspeedway.
The incident occurred on the backstretch while Elliott was running in the top five.
Elliott was receiving a push from Brad Keselowski when Elliott moved to the middle lane and was turned. Dillon was unable to avoid the spinning Elliott.
Elliott’s team attempted to make repairs to his car and he made a few laps after the restart before he retired to the garage.
“The splitter was in the ground a long ways and it was just dragging too much,” Elliott told Fox. “It wasn’t getting any air to the engine, so it was getting really hot. So, it just wasn’t worth continuing. I hate it. We really started the day struggling pretty bad and finally got it going pretty good, I thought, later on. Ultimately, just got in a bad spot there and went around.”
It won't be a repeat #GEICO500 win for @chaseelliott.
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) June 22, 2020
The No. 9 brings out the caution at @TalladegaSuperS. pic.twitter.com/7VB6FcQy3Z
