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Chase Elliot Break His Fans Heart Over His Comments
Chase Elliot Break His Fans Heart Over His Comments
As NASCAR heads to Las Vegas, all eyes are on Chase Elliott, who suffered a snowboarding injury right around this time last year, triggering one of his worst Cup Series seasons with an average finish of 14.5. For a man who had won 18 races from 2018 to 2022, last season was a curveball unlike any other. Not only did Elliott fail to bring in any significant results in the second half of the season, but ending the year with four finishes outside the top 15 left a lot to be desired from 2024.
With that said, Elliott kicked off 2024 swinging, with two top-15 finishes that place him sixth on the standings as we head to Vegas. While this triggered many to speculate a rebound was in the works, Elliott doesn’t want to put that kind of pressure on his garage. Reflecting on the goals for 2024, Elliott was quoted by Fox Sports, “It’s not about rebounding or whatever. It’s just getting to the level that we feel we’re capable of achieving.”
Elliott shared that the only thing that mattered was taking steps forward compared to 2023, no matter how small. With various problems standing in the way of the former champion from achieving glory again, Elliott shared how the #9 garage is working to solve these issues: “We’ve identified some areas that need to be improved upon. Step one is identifying it. And then after that, it’s going to work and trying to find solutions.”
Chase Elliot Break His Fans Heart Over His Comments
While many consider 2023 to be one of the worst seasons for Elliott, the Hendrick Motorsports driver felt it wasn’t as “doom and gloom” as it may seem. Acknowledging that the team could have capitalised on more opportunities to win last season, Elliott felt the goal was clear for 2024. He stated, “I have not been performing as I expect of myself, and like we expect of our team. We just want to do the job that we feel like we’re capable of doing and try to get to that point and do it consistently. That’s all we’re looking for.”
The coming weekend at Las Vegas Motor Speedway will be crucial for Elliott, not only because it gives us the first taste of the usual 1.5-mile racing we will expect to see every weekend but it also marks a year since Elliott’s injury set him back. While the #9 garage is eager to hit it out of the park this year, Elliott also revealed the one challenge that appears to be holding him back.
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While many believe Elliott’s injury was a major reason for his mediocre performances over the last season, the truth is that the #9 driver has been struggling for some time longer. Despite winning six races in 2022 when the Next Gen car was launched, it seems like the transition to the new challengers has been harder than anticipated for the 2020 Cup Series champion.
Elliott shared, “It‘s always been a fine line of hitting it right, and I think that as you transition to new cars — which, mind you, this is the first time I’ve gone through a transition like that. So breaking habits and kind of reteaching yourself in some areas to ultimately extract performance is a hard thing to do when you’ve grown to do things a certain way.”
Working with crew chief Alan Gustafson, who has been with Elliott for nine years now, the main aim for the HMS star is to get up to speed with the Next Gen car. For Gustafson, the new season brings with it a fresh start. He stated, “What’s most exciting to me is the opportunity and the blank canvas we have this year to continue to build something good.”
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Max Verstappen has once again claimed that he is the target of ‘British bias’ in the media after watching the fallout from his battle with Lando Norris. The three-time world champion’s defending was criticised by a number of drivers, including Lewis Hamilton.
Verstappen and Norris shared a titanic battle at the Circuit of the Americas last weekend, but the flashpoint came at Turn 12 as the Dutchman deployed a signature tactic, lunging deep into the corner to get to the apex first before running both himself and his title rival off the road.
Norris opted to keep his foot in and overtook the Red Bull driver around the outside, although this decision landed him a five-second time penalty that dropped him back behind Verstappen in the general classification. This sparked a major debate with other drivers – Hamilton included – calling for the FIA to take action and outlaw this style of defending.
Verstappen has been frustrated by this debate. Quizzed by Viaplay in Mexico on whether he’d like to see the rules changed, he replied: “No, not really. But I have the wrong passport.” Asked if he was referring to a British passport, he confirmed as much.
“Yeah, it’s the wrong country, on that aspect… with complaining” he replied. “I love my passport but on that aspect, I should have had a different passport, actually.” The Dutchman also complained of ‘British bias’ earlier this season following comments made by Adrian Newey.
When asked about the debate surrounding Verstappen’s on-track conduct, former title rival Hamilton was quick to point out that the Dutchman has been employing these tactics for some time, dating back to their no-punches-pulled fight in 2021.
“It’s always been a grey area, that’s why he’s got away with it for so long,” Hamilton explained ahead of the Mexican Grand Prix. “They probably need to make some adjustments for sure.
“Also, we do have inconsistencies through rulings, weekend in, weekend out, obviously depending on which years it is. I mean, as a sport, we do need to level up on all areas and if you look at other global sports, they have full-time refs, for example, and I’m sure that wouldn’t be a bad thing for our sport.
“I experienced it many times with Max, you shouldn’t be able to just launch the car on the inside and be ahead and then you go off and still hold your position. So, they need to definitely work on this.”
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$200M Jeff Gordon teams up with Chase Elliott and Co. to decode the HMS driver behind the “Don’t judge me” old tweet
Hendrick Motorsports vice chairman Jeff Gordon teamed up with Chase Elliott and other HMS drivers in a lighthearted fun exercise for fans where they attempted to solve the mystery behind an old tweet from their current driver.
The anonymous tweet reads, “Don’t judge me, but I can’t wait to see the new twilight movie haha,” and it’s believed to belong to one of the HMS’s driver lineups, which includes Elliott, Kyle Larson, William Byron and Alex Bowman.
Jeff Gordan, who has a net worth of $200 million (according to Celebrity Net Worth), and HMS drivers tried to guess, but none of them were correct. Bowman and Elliott named Byron, while Byron went with Elliott, but it was Larson. He accepted that it was his tweet in 2011 and revealed that he likes Catherine Hardwicke’s Twilight movie.
HMS shared the video of the fun investigative activity on Instagram with a caption:
“Hold on tight, spider monkey”
Watch the Jeff Gordon and HMS’s guesses below:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DBjQ7EzP3A7/?utm_source=ig_embed&ig_rid=e5182e01-3688-440a-ae00-0bf669973e15&ig_mid=01331E07-1F15-4C86-B3DB-7587302F0125
Three out of four HMS drivers are still in contention for the 2024 NASCAR Cup championship. Larson and Byron are in good position in the playoffs points table, with 35 and 27 points above the cutline.
However, 2020 Cup champion Elliott is in danger of getting eliminated from title contention, as he’s 53 points behind the cutline heading to this weekend’s Homestead-Miami race.
In an interview with NBC Sports earlier this season, Jeff Gordon spoke about the competition between their two best drivers, Kyle Larson and Chase Elliott, for the regular season championship. Gordan wanted to see both top drivers perform well and race aggressively against each other while maintaining sportsmanship in their chase for the regular season title.
However, neither Larson nor Elliott won the championship; it was Tyler Reddick who clinched the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series regular season championship. Speaking to NBC Sports, the four-time NASCAR Cup champion Jeff Gordon said:
“I think it’s pretty clear at Hendrick how we expect teams and drivers to race against one another and how they’ve got to go and compete not only against their competitors but against one another.
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“Kyle Busch is an a**”: Brad Keselowski publicly chastised his fierce NASCAR rival in front of over 150,000 spectators
Kyle Busch and Brad Keselowski birthed one of the fiercest rivalries in NASCAR. The duo had multiple run-ins throughout their careers, but the seed of their feud was sown at the 2010 Xfinity Series race hosted by the Bristol Motor Speedway. In the aftermath, Keselowski publicly castigated Busch in front of over 150,000 fans during driver introductions.
Busch kicked off his Food City 250 from third place in his #18 Toyota while Keselowski began in 13th. However, as the 250-lap battle inched closer to its conclusion, the then-Penske Racing driver held the domination while the former #18 Joe Gibbs Racing driver fought hard for the lead.
After struggling to overtake for nearly a dozen laps, Busch, with 31 laps until the checkered flag dropped, lunged ahead of Keselowski, only to be wrecked from behind and lose the spot again.
However, the JGR driver quickly retaliated and spun out Keselowski’s #22 Dodge. The move propelled the #18 Toyota to the victory lane while the Penske driver fell from a potential win to settling in 14th place.
The bitter feeling inside Brad Keselowski surfaced during the Bristol Cup Series race driver introductions the following day. After Kyle Busch introduced himself, his fierce rival took the mic and blasted Busch with his “a**’ comment.
“Brad Keselowski, driver of the Penske Racing Dodge. Kyle Busch is an a**,” he said.
However, when asked why he slammed Busch, Keselowski said that Juan Pablo Montoya challenged that he can’t call the JGR driver an “a**”. It’s worth mentioning that the crowd’s roar on the Penske driver’s introduction notched 104.2 decibels.
“Sometimes you just don’t like a guy”: Kyle Busch publicly slams Brad Keselowski during their 2017 title fight
The bitter rivalry between Kyle Busch and Brad Keselowski was such that both made unapologetic comments about the other from time to time. Despite the latter publicly extending an olive branch to the former in 2015, their relationship remained sour.
Max Verstappen addresses ‘British bias’ at Mexican GP after Lewis Hamilton put-down
$200M Jeff Gordon teams up with Chase Elliott and Co. to decode the HMS driver behind the “Don’t judge me” old tweet
