Chase Elliott after wreck: "I need to rethink things and do a better job"

Elliott, the 20 year-old son of NASCAR Hall of Famer Bill Elliott, is in his first full season driving Hendrick Motorsports’ No. 24 Chevrolet and has been as high as sixth in the series standings.

With his 33rd place finish in Monday’s rain-delayed and fog-shortened Pennsylvania 400, Elliott has finished 31st or worse in four of his past five races.

In Monday’s race, Elliott had another run-in with fellow rookie and good friend Ryan Blaney on the track before getting caught up later on Lap 106 of 138 in an incident with Joey Logano that sent Elliott to the garage.

“I didn’t mean to put anybody in a bad spot. We had a bad segment of events prior to (the run-in with Blaney) and I was trying to stop the bleeding and doing all I could do. I felt like we were falling back and losing too many spots,” said Elliott, who dropped from 11 to 13th in points.

“I had to do something to try to keep from falling back and losing all that track position. I hate to put anybody in a bad spot and glad nothing much happened. Obviously, it didn’t work out later on.”

Elliott then described the incident with Logano shortly after a restart:

“I came off (Turn 1) and those guys were three-wide, I thought Denny (Hamlin) had the best run so I elected to push him and I thought that would be a good move to kind of get him past them and hopefully he would drag me by. I just got next to (Logano) and got in there. I thought I slowed down enough to not get loose, but I got loose and collected him.

“I apologize to the No. 22 guys – it was completely my fault. I apologized to my guys as well. They gave me a really good car today.”

Elliott said his recent performances are forcing him to re-evaluate how he will approach the upcoming races.

“It’s not working out right now,” he said. “Just poor decisions. The best way is to see it first, notice it and go to work and, like I said, rethink my approach. It’s definitely not working.

“We’ve had good cars. We had another good car today. I just didn’t do my part. So I need to rethink things and do a better job. It’s not bad luck, it’s just me putting us in some bad spots.”