MARTINSVILLE, Va. – Chase Elliott isn’t showing any outward signs of concern, despite being guaranteed to start at the rear of the field for Sunday’s First Data 500 at Martinsville Speedway.

A spectacular engine failure, complete with a trailing smoke plume and streaks of fire out of the back of the car, punctuated Elliott’s opening practice attempt and ended it just five minutes and five laps in.

That left the No. 9 Mountain Dew Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 team scrambling to install a backup engine prior to Saturday afternoon’s final practice session, which began at noon ET.

They successfully did so, and the lack of earlier laps and fresh engine didn’t appear to hinder Elliott at all, as he ended up sixth-quickest with a time of 19.835 seconds (95.468 mph) on the Happy Hour rundown.

Due to the engine change, Elliott will be forced to start at the rear of the field no matter where he ends up during Busch Pole Qualifying later on Saturday afternoon.

Just prior to strapping in for the afternoon session, Elliott met with the media and detailed what went wrong.

“We broke a motor there, five laps in, and it’s obviously and unfortunate way to start the day, for sure. But, it’s one of those things really that it kind of what it is at this point,” Elliott noted. “Getting some practice in the next session (quickly became) the most important thing for us.”

Despite recent engine issues at both Dover (Del.) Int’l Speedway and now at Martinsville, Elliott isn’t stressing and doesn’t believe the two are related as he continues to pursue his first Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series championship.

“It’s hard to say for sure, but I don’t think they are related, based on what happened,” Elliott noted. “I don’t know if that’s good or bad. But anytime you have two engine problems in four weeks, that’s not good, for sure. I do know that we’ll do a diligent job of trying to figure out what the problem was and hope that we can find a problem.

“Sometimes with engine failures or with parts failures, in general, when you break something, the worst thing that can happen is you don’t know why or what broke,” he continued. “We just need to make sure we do a good job of trying to figure out what caused the failure … if we can find it. And I think if we can do that, I think we can correct it.”

As far as going into Sunday’s race, Elliott’s mindset is simple. Starting from the back or not, he wants to win the race and not have to worry about points moving him on to Homestead-Miami (Fla.) Speedway.

He already knows that earning points in the first stage will be unlikely, making the rest of the race even more important.

“I think just to keep things simple for us, we need to try to win,” Elliott said. “If you’re not in a position to win, you just have to get as many points as possible. I think that keeps things simple for you. I’m going to be trying to be as far forward as I can be at each particular moment and try to make the smartest decisions that I can throughout the day to get us there. Obviously stage points are important, but I’m going to try to get as far forward as I can and get the most points possible at any given point in time.

“Yeah, starting in the back will be unfortunate for that first stage, but there’s nothing I can do about it now.”

Elliott knows he’ll likely have to contend against his teammate, nine-time Martinsville winner Jimmie Johnson, as well as perennial Martinsville contender Denny Hamlin if he wants to take home one of the track’s signature grandfather clock trophies, but he believes he can do that if the cards fall right Sunday.

“I think that people who always run well here are always going to be strong, and I think they’re going to be good here again this weekend,” he said. “If we can outrun those guys, we’ll probably have a shot to win.”