Chase Elliott wins NASCAR Nationwide Series championship

Nick Bromberg
·College football and motorsports writer

Chase Elliott is a NASCAR champion.

The 18-year-old son of fomer NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion Bill Elliott clinched the 2014 NASCAR Nationwide Series title at Phoenix on Saturday. He heads into the final race on November 15 at Homestead with a margin of more than a race (52 points) on second place Regan Smith.

Driving for JR Motorsports, Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s team, Elliott finished fifth on Saturday. In 2014, his first full year in the Nationwide Series, Elliott has won three races and has 26 top 10s in 32 races. He's the youngest champion in NASCAR national series history.

His first win came at Texas in the spring and he won the next race at Darlington. His third win came at Chicago in the summer. Chase and Bill are the fifth father-son combination to each win NASCAR titles.

Elliott, who is signed as a developmental driver for Hendrick Motorsports, will stay in what will be the Xfinity Series in 2015. Hendrick has all four cars filled in the Sprint Cup Series for 2015 in Junior, Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson and Kasey Kahne.

However, Elliott will have a new crew chief next year. His crew chief Greg Ives is moving to atop Junior's pit box for the 2015 season. Junior's current crew chief, Steve Letarte, is moving to the broadcast booth for NBC Sports next year.

The race at Phoenix was won by Brad Keselowski on a last-lap pass of Kyle Busch. The pass was set up by a green-white-checker restart due to a questionable caution for Alex Bowman's car being out of fuel.

Bowman's car slowed on the penultimate lap and he had plenty of momentum to make it to pit road safely, but NASCAR threw the caution flag as Busch, who had a very comfortable lead, was not far from the white flag. Had the caution come out after Busch had started his final lap, the race would have been over.

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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!