“I want it to love me back really bad.” Chase Elliott has a rather romantic yet sad plea to Darlington. The track ‘too tough to tame’ does not invite everyone to a date in the victory lane. For Chase Elliott, it is his perfect chance to get back to winning ways. But while Elliott was hoping for some developments this weekend, his team faced a massive setback that threatens his proposal to Darlington Raceway.

Chase Elliott’s hopes face a harsh reality check

When Bob Pockrass announced, “Elliott, Buescher, and Hill cars failed twice and passed on their third time through. They had their car chief ejected and lost pit selection this weekend.” He shattered the hopes that Chase Elliott and his fans held this weekend.

Now, not only is Elliott facing a danger to his victory ambitions, but he is also facing it at a track where his car is not predictable enough. Only a few hours ago, he was talking about the same, wishing to build on the momentum from the previous weekends.

“Now when you take that diffuser off the car and you come here, that’s a totally different shift in balance, and just the way the air flows across and underneath the car is totally different. I do think this particularly package has been a little bit of a weak point for us as a whole.

“So I hope for that this weekend. Well, we already had Phoenix, right? And I thought that it was a good opportunity to make it better, because we had a lot of complaints after that, and I think we can certainly do that. So this will be a good opportunity for us to gauge where we are after some long conversations about how to improve, and hopefully, we push the needle in the right direction.”

For now, the needle is pointing towards certain doom unless Elliott somehow makes a miraculous recovery this weekend for his team. He will have to pull off the same heroics that Denny Hamlin and Ryan Blaney had to for their first victories of the year.

After a P2 finish from Las Vegas, Elliott was ready to pour his heart out for a track that he loves innately.

“It’d be great. I love this place; I love coming here. It is such a cool racetrack. It has not been a good racetrack for me at all. I want it to love me back really bad, and we have put a lot of effort into trying and improving here, and I hope that this weekend is a step in the right direction.”

Back in 2014, Darlington gave him his first victory as a full-time racer in NASCAR. Chase Elliott won the race for JR Motorsports in the O’Reilly Series en route to his first NASCAR championship that year. Since then, the track seems to have lost interest in him or is probably trying to ‘break up’ with him.

The penalties he is suffering this weekend are a conversation that he will have to handle eventually. But what about the conversations surrounding Chevrolet’s NASCAR developments?

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Chase Elliott approves Chevy’s new body

When asked about how he feels driving the new Chevy with revised bodywork, Elliott is rather confident.

“Personally, I was pleasantly surprised with just—that was kind of our first drive at a mile and a half, and I thought it went really well. And knowing that I think we can make that better too is encouraging for us.”

He knows that they can’t do anything too invasive considering the NASCAR regulations, but he is still optimistic about the direction it is heading for now. Chase Elliott also wants to avert his expectations and prevent any false positives or early disappointments before the car performs at all NASCAR tracks this year. So that he can truly understand in the final leg of the championship.

“Like you are talking about itty bitty little details of what we are even allowed to change and if you could move the needle inside that box. You know it is just a really small area to work in. So, I don’t know if you can change it as much as you once could.

“But any subtle difference is a difference and we haven’t really been to all the different tracks yet and I am thinking till we kind of get one full pass on the places that we visit in a season, I think there will remain some questions that we don’t have answers to, but last week I got a really good reminder of, ‘Hey, we were close.'”

Darlington Raceway is not for the faint-hearted. And this weekend will test every nerve in Chase Elliott’s body as he tries to battle multiple setbacks while racing to earn the ‘Lady in Black’s’ cold heart.