Elliott’s journey back to top of NASCAR Cup Series brought crew chief, No. 9 race team closer
By John Sturbin, Raceday San Antonio
FORT WORTH _ The maturation of NASCAR favorite son Chase Elliott was on full display Sunday during a post-race presser at Texas Motor Speedway 18 months _ and one snowboarding wipeout _ in the making.
Chase Elliott, driver of the #9 Hooters Chevrolet, celebrates in victory lane after winning the NASCAR Cup Series AutoTrader EchoPark Automotive 400 at Texas Motor Speedway on April 14, 2024 in Fort Worth, Texas. (Photo by Sean Gardner/Getty Images)
Elliott snapped a nagging, 42-race Cup Series winless streak with a double-overtime/green-white-checkered flag victory over Brad Keselowski in the AutoTrader EchoPark Automotive 400 that undoubtedly thrilled his devotees and temporarily at least silenced his detractors. And in the process of dissecting his day with the media, Elliott acknowledged that his 19th career Cup victory was mostly about “the journey.”
But from where-to-where? That’s the easy part _ starting from the country roads confines of Dawsonville, Ga., to Hendrick Motorsports’ corporate complex in Concord, N.C. The former is home to Chase’s father, 1988 Cup champion and NASCAR Hall of Famer “Awesome” Bill EIliott. The latter is the centerpiece of 74-year-old team-owner Rick Hendrick’s racing empire, home to seven-time Cup champion Jimmie Johnson, four-time Cup champ Jeff Gordon, two-time Cup champ Terry Labonte and enough hardware to rival the nearest Ace store.
In the case of Chase, the journey traces the giddy days of five wins he scored en route to his first Cup championship in 2020 to a winless, grinding 2023 campaign interrupted by a broken left leg suffered in a snowboarding accident in Colorado. In between, Elliott was reminded that the No. 9 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 team led by crew chief Alan Gustafson always will have his back.
“I think that the win (Sunday) is great, all that stuff is fantastic,” said Elliott, still sporting the black cowboy hat presented to him in Victory Lane. “To me, honestly, this journey and everything about today is really a credit to the guys that sit in our meetings on Monday mornings in the No. 9 room. That starts with Alan. It’s really easy when things go bad to jump ship, go do something different, for those guys to go elsewhere. It just is. It happens a lot.
Chase Elliott, driver of the #9 Hooters Chevrolet, and crew celebrate in victory lane after winning the NASCAR Cup Series AutoTrader EchoPark Automotive 400 at Texas Motor Speedway on April 14, 2024 in Fort Worth, Texas. (Photo by Chris Graythen/Getty Images)
“It’s been an extremely important thing to me, and fortunately to our entire group, to try to climb this mountain again together and try to get back to where we need to be as a group. We’re not all together, but a lot of us are still there that have been on our team for most of my nine years. That’s pretty special.
“I look at it as a credit to them because I think they’ve made me better and they’ve pushed me to be better, helped me identify some of my faults and some of my bad habits and been patient with me as I’ve addressed them, or at least started to.
“I just feel like we’re all in a really good place, and we have been. It’s nice to see all the hard work pay off. Those guys really deserve to win. They’ve been busting it for a while, have been doing a really good job. That’s what I’m most proud of, is the journey and all of us sticking together at the No. 9 team.”
Elliott returned to Victory Lane Sunday for the first time since Oct. 2, 2022 at Talladega Superspeedway. It was Elliott’s 19th victory in 295 Cup starts, first win on TMS’ high-banked/1.5-mile oval and second on an intermediate track in the Next Gen car NASCAR introduced in 2022.
Chase Elliott, driver of the #9 Hooters Chevrolet, takes the checkered flag under caution to win the NASCAR Cup Series AutoTrader EchoPark Automotive 400 at Texas Motor Speedway on April 14, 2024 in Fort Worth, Texas. (Photo by Jonathan Bachman/Getty Images)
Elliott’s winless 2023 season and his ongoing love/hate relationship with TMS’ uniquely-banked layout combined to generate considerable buzz among NASCAR Nation’s media and fandom about Chase’s ability to adapt to the Next Gen platform.
“I don’t want to downplay it, (but) like I’m not like, ‘Oh, geez, we’re on a losing streak,’^” said Gustafson, a 48-year-old native of Ormond Beach, Fla., in his 20th season at HMS. “That never comes into my mind. I never think about that at all. There’s no clock on my desk that says it’s been 10,225 days and a billion hours since you guys won. I just focus on doing the best I can and getting the team ready to go.”
At one point, Gustafson politely deflected an inquiry along those lines prior to Chase’s arrival in the TMS infield media center.
“You’re talking about Chase like he can’t drive this car,” said Gustafson, incredulously. “I mean, he really can and he does really good. When you’re struggling, you just kinda get after it more. I guess my point is if you look at his body of work in this car _ regular-season champion the first year of the car, five wins, two Playoffs, breaks his leg, has maybe not as good a year as we would have liked and now we start this season with one win, three top-fives…what am I missing? What is he not doing that he should be doing?
“So, I don’t really know that this car doesn’t suit him but maybe just not as well as the old car and the options we had with it. I think the old car (Gen 6), we were really in it _ we were in a position to win a lot. In 2022 we had it and lost it a little bit. But you’ve just got to trust the process. Trust each other. Focus on improving, not getting caught in what you don’t have. Focus on what you do have. We have everything we need to win with Mr. Hendrick and how he supports us. It’s not anything special (Gustafson does) besides just being super, super-stubborn and resilient.”
Chase Elliott, driver of the #9 NAPA Auto Parts Chevrolet, and crew chief Alan Gustafson talk on the grid during qualifying for the NASCAR Cup Series GEICO 500 at Talladega Superspeedway on April 22, 2023 in Talladega, Alabama. (Photo by James Gilbert/Getty Images)
Elliott soldiered through that winless 2023 season after fracturing the tibia in his left leg in a snowboarding accident in Colorado in early March. Forced to miss six races after surgery and rehab, Elliott placed 17th in the final standings after compiling seven top-five and 15 top-10 results in 29 starts. Despite questions about his judgement and career commitment outside the HMS compound, Elliott won the 2023 National Motorsports Press Association Most Popular Driver Award for the sixth straight year.
Elliott’s previous best finish through this season’s first nine races was third on April 7 at the half-mile Martinsville Speedway. “I don’t feel like we go to the racetrack and just struggle and don’t run well,” said Gustafson, previously paired at HMS with Cup rookie Kyle Busch, veteran Mark Martin and Sir Jeff Gordon. NASCAR Hall of Famer Gordon was appointed vice chairman of HMS in 2022.
“I really can’t think of a race this year that we weren’t in contention to compete at least for a top-10 or even a top-five,” Gustafson said. “I guess, what standard are you setting? I just feel like for us to get back to winning consistently that way we want to yeah, I think we’re 90 percent there. That last 10 percent is super-hard to get _ to get to the level the No. 24 (of teammate William Byron) has been at recently, the No. 11 (of Denny Hamlin at Joe Gibbs Racing) has been at _ so we just need a little bit more. But I don’t feel like we’ve been failing, so to speak.”
That’s a prime example of the positive reinforcement Elliott now expects _ indeed, looks forward to consuming _ during those early-week confabs over coffee-and-donuts with his pit crew and teammates who work behind-the-scenes at HMS.
NASCAR driver Chase Elliott talks to car owner Rick Hendrick at the NASCAR Cup Series Autotrader EchoPark Automotive 400 at Texas Motor Speedway on September 24, 2023 in Fort Worth, Texas. (Photo by Michael Haag/Raceday San Antonio)
“I think that starts with Alan and his leadership,” said Elliott, 28. “I was, what, 20 or 21 when we started (in 2016). Alan had been doing it for a long time at that point. He’s kind of watched me age and get older through an important part of your life, through your 20s.
“Having that professional relationship with him, it’s been great because he’s just the kind of guy that keeps things right where they need to be. It’s very easy to get up and it’s easy to get down. He makes sure we’re focused on the things we need to be focused on. Really appreciative of that. I’ve learned a lot from that approach.
“We’ve gotten to know each other a lot better over the years. Certainly our personal relationship has grown quite a lot. Admire him and appreciate him sticking with me, being willing to fight through this journey and our struggles. We can be open and honest and talk about why we were bad or what I did wrong or what he did wrong. We can look at each other and be like, ‘All right, let’s go back to work.’ That’s just kind of how it is.”
Gustafson said there is a tendency for media and fans to have tunnel vision when it comes to the driver-as-hero. “I mean, in this forum, everything’s looked at through the lens of racing and performance and the sport of racing,” said Gustafson, who has overseen 39 Cup wins, 198 top-fives and 340 top-10s. “There’s life that goes on outside of this for everybody that most people don’t take into consideration. He has his life to run…he has trials and tribulations he has to work through. Yeah, being out with the injury and having to go through all of that, yeah, and maybe not performing to some people’s expectations _ it’s not something I believe. I feel like he’s performed really well.
Chase Elliott, driver of the #9 Hooters Chevrolet, and Ross Chastain, driver of the #1 Worldwide Express Chevrolet, lead the field to a restart during the NASCAR Cup Series AutoTrader EchoPark Automotive 400 at Texas Motor Speedway on April 14, 2024 in Fort Worth, Texas. (Photo by Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images)
“Sometimes you can get in a little bit of a hole and you just have to fight. You learn that you just never give up and if don’t give up eventually things are going to turn around. And I think that’s probably going to be the biggest lesson he’s going to take out of this. He’s a young kid and he’s going to learn you just got to grind through it. You’re not always going to get a win. It’s not going to happen.”
Jeff Andrews, HMS’ executive vice president/general manager, said he is proud of the approach Gustafson and Elliott have taken to reboot during the first third of the 2024 schedule.
“Those two guys have an unwilling trust and belief in each other,” Andrews said. “Things haven’t been where they needed to be in the last year, but they spent a lot of time this winter working on their team, their relationship, the relationship with both of them and their team. We couldn’t be more excited to see all of that start to pay off for them both and that whole team.”
Elliott added the HMS group he travels with throughout NASCAR’s nomadic/10-month season positively impacts morale. “We’re around each other all the time, right?” Elliott said. “We spend as much time with each other as we do with our families. It’s important to make sure we’re all pulling in the same direction.
“I’m just very fortunate that I am surrounded by the type of people that we can all be open and honest with one another, push each other to be better. Even when it might be something that you don’t necessarily want to hear, it’s well-received. That’s growth. That’s improvement. That’s being mature adults.”
