Chase Elliott apologizes to Chase Briscoe after Gateway crash: 'I had nowhere to go'

There was plenty of chaos in Sunday's NASCAR race at Gateway, with the Cup Series bringing out a season-high 18 cautions by the time the checkered flag was waved .

One of those cautions spelled an early end for Chase Briscoe and Chase Elliott. With 27 laps left to race, Elliott's No. 9 suffered a brake failure— one of several across the field on the day—and caught Briscoe's No. 19 with nowhere to go.

It was a brutal, and undeservedly early end to the day for both drivers, who are both in the Chase and vying for a championship. Their poor finish on Sunday meant they'd both see their already uphill battle to the title get a little bit steeper.

But while it was a tough break for Chase and Chase, the duo made good after the contact, with Elliott apologizing to Briscoe after the race and Briscoe assuring him he had nothing to worry about.

"I had nowhere to go," Elliott replied with an exhausted laugh.

The day didn't end how either driver was hoping it would, but given how much carnage the race featured, a few playoff drivers were bound to get caught up in the wreckage.

"It felt like we used eight of our lives up there early in the race, a lot of different things. Just weird stuff," Briscoe told reporters in a scrum. "Finally ran out of lives there at the end there. ... Just unfortunate. Wrong place, wrong time, and you're going to have that in racing sometimes."

Elliott expressed frustration with the Next Gen car, saying that brakes have been a known problem at Gateway.

"We've been blowing brake rotors since we started coming here in this particular vehicle, so, obviously we're in a box there where you can't do a whole lot about it," Elliott said. "Long straightaways with heavy braking on both ends of the track, it just puts you in a really tight box as it pertains to temperatures and making the brakes live.

"You can get it right, but there's definitely some luck involved. Just how they cool and how they come back up to temperature, the cycles, all the stuff. Unfortunately we were on the bad end of that today."

Again, a tough way for the day to end for both Briscoe and Elliott, but given the controversy some other recent NASCAR wrecks have stirred in recent weeks , the amicable understanding that the two came to feels like a solid win.

Briscoe and Elliott will look to work their way out of the hole they find themselves in starting next week at Bristol.

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