Chase Elliott has been the most famous driver in the NASCAR Cup Series for the past four years. He won the 2020 Championship. This season he has been one of the best drivers with a pair of victories and topping the points standings. All of these things exist in the present or recent past.
When it comes to the future, Hendrick Motorsports driver has concerns about the sport. He admitted it this week during an interview, identifying one particular area that worries him the most.
Chase Elliott was destined for NASCAR greatness at a young age
Chase Elliott was always scheduled to be the NASCAR Cup Series driver. As the son of Hall of Famer Bill Elliott, he grew up around racing and was taught at an early age to handle it as a business.
Elliott said last year while promoting it Chasing documentary. “It made me appreciate the bigger picture of how much to race. It’s not a cheap thing to do. When you start to race cars, there are other people who depend on these race shops and these race teams and that’s their livelihood. They have families at home. There are a lot of people involved and I think That more than anything else respects the bigger picture.
“Even as a kid I feel like we always tried to go to the racetrack, it was so clear, if we were at the racetrack, we were there to race. We weren’t there to chat. We weren’t there to be in the clique and hang out with everyone and talk about everyone else and hang out. And we gossip. We were there to race. We always stood apart from everyone else. Kind of came and did our thing and left. I always appreciated that. I think it gave me a good perspective on things and kept my head in the game and helped me learn faster.”
His career numbers reflect someone who treats the cockpit of a racing car as his office. At just 26 years old, he has 20 wins between the Xfinity Series and the Cup, including a couple of titles (Xfinity – 2014, Cup – 2020).
Elliott has concerns about the future of the sport
As someone who was born to a race and has carried on a family tradition, it is understandable that Elliott would want to pass on the same passion to those who follow him. This week during an interview with Jeff Gluck of The Athletic in his “12 Questions” column, the HMS driver was asked what he worries most about NASCAR for five years down the road.
“My concern is that I don’t want the industry to be in this next-generation car and how it sits right now – I don’t want the people who designed it, who created it, to be too hard-headed and prepared in their ways not wanting to make changes and improve our races on these tracks. different,” Elliott said. “Because this is a learning process, and I think you have to be willing to change that thing a little bit over time, to put together the best racing product we can.
“I care we get to a point, ‘That’s how we designed it, we’re going to work on this. “And we’ll end up swallowing our pride because we want to push this thing really, really hard and we’re not going to be willing to adapt and make changes to put a really good race on every track we go. Because it was really a story of two cars from some racetracks we’ve been to, to the next. We’ve had some good races and we’ve had some terrible races this year, frankly, and I just think we have to be careful that we’re not too fanatical to be willing to adapt and improve our performances.”
Delighted with NASCAR’s recent moves
While Elliott expressed concern that NASCAR officials would be stubborn in the future and not modify the next-generation car when necessary, he also admitted in the same interview how satisfied he was with the sanctioning body for its willingness to make changes recently, and specifically, a different experience. Places.
“I’m the most optimistic about things we’ve been trying out new places and new things. We’re not afraid to do that as an industry,” he said. “Coming to a new path like Gateway. We’ve been visiting new places over the past couple of years, but it seems like most of them have been road courses. It’s good to come to an oval. I’d like to keep expanding on that and racing in some of the different ovals that we have across the country and see which markets we can have an impact on. I think we’ve had a huge impact on this market (in St. Louis) based on the judgment of the fans and the people I’ve seen.”
Chase Elliott is the most famous driver in NASCAR for a reason. If NASCAR was smart, they would listen intently to his suggestions about the future, knowing that he is such a huge part of his fan base and, most importantly, that he has a solid understanding of the sport as a business because he has seen it from that perspective since he first sat behind the wheel.
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