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Candid Chase Elliott Unintentionally Trashes Goodyear’s Phoenix Tire experiments
Candid Chase Elliott Unintentionally Trashes Goodyear’s Phoenix Tire experiments
Speaking about the tire compounds made by Goodyear, the Hendrick Motorsports star believes that they do not make much of a difference during a race.
It’s common knowledge how tire compounds work across all kinds of motorsports. Softer compounds are faster but don’t last very long and harder compounds last for several laps but aren’t as fast. To be successful, teams have to use these compounds smartly during a race with strategy in mind, and often, the right compound determines the winner of a race.
Chase Elliott exposes Goodyear’s tire compounds’ effectiveness
But that may not be the case in NASCAR, according to Chase Elliott. The Hendrick Motorsports driver believes that the Next-Gen car does not allow the different tire compounds to work well. There can be a lot of reasons for this. For the tire compounds to work, a car needs to be fairly light, and the Next-Gen is anything but. Its weight creates a lot of downforce, which bears down on the tires, subjecting them to extra pressure from above, which affects their performance.
Perhaps this would not have been an issue had it not been for NASCAR’s stringent rules about all the cars being the same. Engineers are hardly given any wiggle room when it comes to the car’s build which has cut down the scope for innovation. It’s a criticism that the organizers have faced from drivers, fans and insiders alike.
Man, I’ll shoot you super straight. They change the tire all the time. Not only does it not make the racing look any different, but it’s really hard to tell from inside the car. Regardless of whatever compound they put on — and I’m not saying it doesn’t change things, because it does — but they are such minute things. It’s not gonna look any different. You’re never gonna hear about it. I don’t mean that negatively, but the cars are what they are. We’re racing on asphalt and there are four tires. It can only be so different. Typically, the same guys run good every week whether there’s a tire compound change or not,” Elliott said as per a tweet by Jeff Gluck.
This @chaseelliott answer to @Cole_Cusumano_’s question about the new tire compound and whether it made a difference was memorable and will stick in my head for a bit.
“Man, I’ll shoot you super straight. They change the tire all the time. Not only does it not make the racing…
— Jeff Gluck (@jeff_gluck) March 9, 2024
Chase Elliott was not just underwhelmed with the tire compounds, but he did not shy away, like a lot of his counterparts, from raining criticism down on NASCAR’s new aero package, which apparently has hardly made a difference.
As per a report in Autoweek, several Cup Series racers believe that the new package has added nothing in terms of the driving experience after a practice session in Phoenix. This is disappointing for NASCAR since there was a lot of promise after the initial test of the package in Phoenix which garnered a positive response from the ones testing. So will this package be enough even to temporarily sort out the short-track racing issues?
“I forgot they did anything until they started talking about it afterwards. I don’t see it really changing a whole lot. I could be totally wrong, but I don’t think it’s going to change much,” Chase Elliott quipped when asked about the new package. Fellow Cup Series champion Martin Truex Jr echoed his sentiments when he said, “The teams engineer everything, make the car as close to balance as they can. So I felt exactly like I did here last fall.”
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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
