Chase Elliott hopes to turn things around after winless NASCAR season
The Elliott name in NASCAR is not just royalty but even better than that, it’s beloved by the people who buy the tickets, the merchandise and watch every week until the checkered flag drops.
William Clyde Elliott Sr., known more as “Awesome Bill from Dawsonville” and William Clyde Elliott II, known as Chase, have won the most popular driver award, voted on by fans, 22 times. Bill did it 16 times in his 37-year career and could have won it more except that he asked his name be taken off the ballot in 2002.
Chase is on a six-year winning streak despite not even winning a race last year.
“I think a lot of it was my foundation and the path my family took to the success they’ve had,” Chase Elliott said, trying to explain his family’s popularity. “People in the late ‘80s and the ‘90s could really connect with us because we were a small-town family. There were three brothers and a dad who just loved cars and had an extreme work ethic. And they wanted to be part of a sport that seemingly wanted to be much bigger than they were at the time and they were willing to outwork whomever.
“It was just a story that people could jump on board with. I owe that to them more than anything because they set a good example for me more than anything I’ve done.”
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Last year was statistically the worst Chase Elliott has had in the Cup series. He didn’t win a race for the first time since 2017, his second year running full time in the Cup series. He also didn’t qualify for the playoffs partially because he missed six races because of an injury and one more because of a suspension from NASCAR for rough driving.
“Yeah, I guess it was three-quarters of a season,” Elliott said with a laugh. “We struggled pretty bad at the end of ’22. We kind of started the season OK. I was happy for the first couple weeks and then I got hurt.”
Hurt is how Elliott describes a broken left leg he suffered during a snowboarding accident. Elliott offers no apologies for the accident, calling it a “perfect storm” of what can go wrong in a recreation he refuses to give up.
“It’s a great way to get out and get some exercise,” Elliott said. “It’s something I grew up with, so I enjoy it. I hadn’t had a chance to do it this winter. I had my shoulder operated on in November and that’s kind of had me down for the count. I look forward to snowboarding again, whenever I can.”
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The latest injury wasn’t anything new, it was to repair a torn labrum suffered many years before.
“It was a high school injury type of thing,” the 28-year-old said.
After returning from the broken leg last year, things never started to click in a significant way.
“We never got in a good rhythm,” Elliott said. “I did think toward the end of the year, we were thinking about the right things. We started to identify some areas that we needed to work through. It would have been nice to have a couple more weeks at the end of the year to keep working.
“But nonetheless, I think a lot of those things are going to start to carry over. As we go into this year, we need to keep our heads down. It’s a marathon and we understood that and we’re ready to get back to work.”
Things didn’t start all that great, not just for Elliott but NASCAR, when the Busch Light Clash at the L.A. Memorial Coliseum was moved up a day on just hours notice to avoid the atmospheric river that hit Southern California two weeks ago. The race was run in front of just a smattering of fans as Elliott finished 22nd of 23 cars, having issues with his steering.
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NASCAR will likely be dealing with weather for Sunday’s Daytona 500 with rain expected to start Saturday and continue throughout the day Sunday. The Weather Channel lists the chance of rain in Daytona Beach on Sunday at 99%. But it is Florida and things change.
Winning the Daytona 500 is notably absent from Chase Elliott’s nine-year resume. He has won the pole twice. Last year he finished 38th.
“It would be nice to be done racing and say you’ve won the Daytona 500,” Chase Elliott said. “I think it would be really cool.”
Bill downplays his role in Chase’s success.
“You’re dealing with a lot of pressure and a lot of different things and sometimes you just have to get through it and deal with it in your own way and learn from your mistakes,” Bill Elliott said at a NASCAR news conference in 2018. “But at the end of the day you still have to figure it out in your own head.”
But Bill did give his son some off-track advice that may also help explain their popularity.
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“I needed to put things in perspective,” he said. “I always said there is a time for racing, there is a time for fans, there is a time for media and there is a time for family and you have to segment it out so you can deal with it.”
The Elliotts are one of three families where the father and son each won a Cup championship. Bill won the year-long series in 1988 and Chase in 2020. They join Lee and Richard Petty and Ned and Dale Jarrett.
Chase covets that second title if for no other reason than to pass his father.
“I would love to one up him, no doubt, for sure,” Chase Elliott said. “I’d love to catch him in wins [he’s behind 44 to 18], I’d love to one up him in championships. I think we have a great opportunity to do that. That’s a box that I’d love to check, for sure. What that would be like, I don’t know, I haven’t achieved it but I’d have to imagine it would be a really cool thing to talk about and to share. Hopefully we can get there.”
The first step could come on Sunday. Or maybe Monday.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
