When a Cessna Citation 525 is spotted in the clouds during a Cup Series race weekend, it is more than likely that Chase Elliott is flying it. The Hendrick Motorsports star is a licensed pilot and a rare type of stock car driver who flies himself around the country to racing venues. Talking to Dale Earnhardt Jr. on the “Dale Jr. Download” podcast, he lifted the windows on his affinity for getting into the stratosphere.
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“I don’t know that I would have ever really found aviation if Dad hadn’t been so involved in it. So yeah, I just grew up with a different vantage point on it,” he said. His father, Bill Elliott, owned enough airplanes in his time to fill an entire airfield. Notably, his love for flying touched unprecedented levels when he was almost caught in a fatal crash onboard an F-16 in 1987.
Following in the footsteps of his father, the younger Elliott strives to fly as much as he can. Dale Jr. on the other end of the table is only as fascinated at the prospect as the rest of NASCAR. While he is one of the biggest icons of stock car racing and knows a car to its last nut, flying a plane is a different ballgame requiring a lot more detailed planning.
He put the same thought in front of Elliott. “I enjoy that side of it. I’ve had a lot of help and I’ve had some great teachers over the years too. I’m still learning,” the 2020 Cup Series champion responded.
What makes Elliott want to keep flying airplanes?
Many NASCAR drivers have a challenging hobby or a side project that they work on when they aren’t firing away on the race track. The purpose of it is to keep their minds sharp and responsive. For William Byron it is playing with legos, for Ross Chastain, it is farming watermelons, and for Elliott, it is flying his airplane. He believes that his jets are a means of education for him, particularly since he hasn’t been formally educated in a college.
Despite his love for flying, he has never taken an international trip from a plane’s cockpit. He reasoned to Dale Jr. that international flights are much more complicated with heavy paperwork and that he’d rather not get mixed up with them. Concluding the topic, Dale Jr. asked him if there was a particular plane that he had always wanted to fly. Elliott answered that he viewed the air machines as tools that got him from Point A to Point B and that he did not have a deeper connection with them.
