Chase Elliott won the race. That’s great that NASCAR’s Most Popular Driver won the All-Star race. It’s the equivalent to LeBron James winning the Dunk Contest, the All-Star game and MVP all wrapped up into one. 

But, did Elliott’s win overshadow and somewhat dud on a NASCAR All-Star Race? I unfortunately think so. 

“I think a short race, you look at last week, for the most part it wasn’t a very good race, you had a great finish,” third place finisher Kevin Harvick said of the 46 minute All-Star race. “I think it all depends on how all that goes. 

“I think tonight Chase Elliott winning makes it a better race just because he’s obviously the most popular guy here. It’s good for all of us when Chase wins.”

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Elliott, was untouchable. In the era of social distancing, he did his best to endure his peers couldn’t close to the bumper of his No. 9 Chevrolet. 

“You got to be able to catch a guy to bump a guy,” second place finisher Kyle Busch said. “When there’s no catching them, there’s no bumping them. I don’t know what the rest of the space looked like behind me as far as how separated the rest of the field was. It seemed like once we got strung out, it was just strung out.”

A main reason it got so strung out was due to the lower groove being so dominant and the aero of these cars not allowing for drivers to close up to the bumpers of the cars in front. 

“Wish we would have had a couple more lanes to race in is the only thing I would like to see different,” Harvick said. “If we did that, if we raced here again, run all the other races so that the track was 100% run-in so you could run all over the racetrack.

“I think we could definitely have the track prepared better if we did race here again. Heck, they didn’t even clean the outside lane one time. Never really had a chance to even get high enough to get that lane to come in. The second lane came in, a couple cars made a little bit of ground. The bottom was so dominant, you had to run most of your laps down there.

“You didn’t have any options to move around, make your car do different things. A lot of times if you can’t run the bottom, you move up to the top. It seems like the cars have a better chance to fix the problems that they had. 

“With the short race tonight, not having an option besides the bottom, just kind of took all those things away of tools that you had to try to race and make your car faster. 

“Tonight the 9 hit it. He had the dominant car in the lane we had available.”

The Choose Cone didn’t really pay much dividends. It wasn’t used much and when it was, it didn’t aid in many gains. Plus, as some drivers put it, may have ruined the ending with having only a 15 lap shootout and the fast cars getting able to start where they wanted. 

Also, a 15 lap run at Bristol isn’t ideal. Bristol, leads to tire fall off. You won’t have that in 15 laps. 

Plus, with only 20 cars, you don’t have lapped traffic slowing the leaders up either. 

Combined, it led to us leaving somewhat disappointed in the racing product.