When you grew up the son of a NASCAR Cup champion and a future Hall of Famer, you kind of tend to stick with the old-fashioned, tried-and-true elements of the sport. Chase Elliott embodies that original stock car racing spirit.
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So it did not come across as a surprise when the 2020 NASCAR Cup champion said earlier this week that he is not a big fan of what he calls Bristol-Like Experiments to shake up the status quo and format of the sport. This past Saturday’s annual summer night race at the 0.533-mile Bristol Motor Speedway saw many unusual happenings.
Well, for starters, Goodyear introduced a new style of right-side tire that had never been used in any previous Cup races. There was also the yet-to-be-explained fire in Josh Berry’s car and several other incidents that were very atypical of a usual Bristol race.
“It was chaos, which I think is what they wanted,” Elliott said on the Racing Report with Chris Weaver podcast about NASCAR and track owner, Speedway Motorsports Inc. “So, they got it.”
To which Weaver deadpanned, “It was a tire-shredding spectacle.”
Weaver then asked Elliott if he felt there could be a middle ground achieved that would give NASCAR some new elements, while also keeping some of Bristol’s old standards. Elliott was seen smirking on camera.
“I don’t know,” Elliott said. “I mean, it was cool and fun, I just wonder how cool and fun it would be if you did it all the time, you know what I’m saying? I think you’re trying to put a Band-Aid on a bigger problem with that.
“And I’ve never been a huge proponent of having to manufacture excitement in general. Look, I get it. I understand how it works, and entertainment has value and competition has value,” he added.
Elliott wants true competition and not gimmicks
The Hendrick Motorsports driver was pretty candid about how he wants NASCAR to be.
“Being a competitor at heart, I want just true competition and without the gimmicks. But I certainly understand that there’s an element to these promoters and track owners and operators that they want certain things,” said Elliott.
“I don’t know what the balance is. I think if you’re going to have a race like that, the one thing I just wish [is] that the driver could have a little more to do with how long a tire lived, right? I felt like in the [Bristol] spring race of ‘24, you could have a pretty big impact on the tire and how quickly it came apart,” continued the 29-year-old.
“Whereas this past weekend, it seemed like it was coming apart, whether you did one thing or another. And I think that was a little frustrating,” he added.
That said, Elliott remains optimistic that the balance he seeks can eventually come about, even if it means there still has to be some semblance of manufactured excitement in it, too.
“Maybe there’s a place in there somewhere that you can find a happy spot. And if they get really smart with it, they can surprise us. That’d be really cool. Just not knowing whether it’s going to be one way or the other, or maybe even change a tire overnight if you want to really get crazy with it. So I don’t know. We’ll see,” concluded Elliott.
