As the GEICO 500 drew to a close, Elliott was the only Chevrolet driver in the top-five and his nearest teammate was Alex Bowman in seventh.

Elliott clearly wanted to try to something to dislodge Joey Logano from the lead – he looked both high and low – but he couldn’t find anyone to join him in his journey.

He ended up settling for a third-place finish.

“I got to the end and those guys around me were working together so much. I thought for sure one of them wanted to win a little worse than what they did,” Elliott said after the race. “They were being very patient with one another and I was surprised by that.

“If it was me, I feel like I would have wanted to try or do something. Those guys weren’t having it. I was trying to move forward and make a lane and push and they were not interested in advancing.”

While Logano had no teammates up front with him, he did have several fellow and very fast Ford drivers – such as Kevin Harvick, Kurt Busch and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. – who remained in line behind him.

As it turned out, with one lap to go, Busch was the one who pulled out of line but he couldn’t muster a pass on Logano before the finish.

“We had a solid car. I don't think it was the best car today, but we had a good car,” Elliott said. “Our team did a nice job overcoming a little bit of damage there mid portion of the race.

“Alan (Gustafson, crew chief) made a good call there towards the end to ultimately get us some track position and have a shot. It was a pretty wild afternoon.

“The cars were hard to drive. I think that scared some people off from running three-wide and four-wide. That was interesting, as well. So, (it) could have been worse.”

After a difficult start to the season, Elliott has rebounded from a low of 23rd in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series standings with a second and third the last two races that has allowed him to move up to 18th.

There could be more good news on the way – the series moves to Dover (Del.) International Speedway, where Elliott has not finished worse than fifth in four series starts.