Throughout his career, Chase Elliott has been a master at road course racing. However, all that changed when the Next-gen car was brought into the fray. The 2020 Cup Series champion now finds it hard to have a similar impact on road course racing as he did at the start of the decade when he became champion. The #9 driver has the skill and the experience to turn it around and become a master at road courses again but it seems like that’s going to take a lot of time.
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The main issue Elliott has been facing with this car is passing. Road course tracks are narrow and the main overtaking opportunities come at the corners. The Next-Gen is quite a sizeable car and it is quite difficult for two such cars to go through a corner side-by-side without causing some kind of a wreck. That’s not all. Aerodynamically, it is much tougher to drive up to the back of the car and pass them due to the air-blocking technique. Drivers will hope that Goodyear’s new tire compounds will aid them in passing others on Sunday.
“Just the difficulty in passing. It has become, in my opinion, way harder to do and to get the rear tires to live. It’s just hard. Anywhere that we go, the corner entry, the part of the corner that is narrow, is going to be an extreme challenge to pass,” the 2020 Cup Series champion said in a recent media interaction.
One has to be extremely confident in their road course racing abilities to make passes into a corner. That is probably why a driver like Shane van Gisbergen, who has done road course racing all his life, is so dominant at such tracks. Dive bombing into corners is something he is very comfortable with and his braking abilities also give him an edge. The likes of Elliott don’t have half as much experience in that regard.
Elliott has a fantastic road course record
The #9 driver has won seven road course races in his career so far. Two of those wins came at Watkins Glen, in 2018 and 2019. However, since the 2021 season, Elliott has not been able to win at such tracks. The closest he came in the recent past was last season at the Indianapolis Road Course when he finished P2 behind Michael McDowell. A win in that race would have qualified him to the playoffs but it was just meant to be.
This season, the 2020 Cup Series champion has taken part in two road course races so far this season. At COTA, he delivered a disappointing performance as he started from P9 but dropped down to P16 at the end. Then came Sonoma where he started from P4 and finished P4 to cap off a decent day at the office.
This time, he will be looking to earn his third race win at Watkins Glen but that’s easier said than done. The likes of SVG, Juan Pablo Montoya, and AJ Allmendinger will have the edge thanks to their mastery of such tracks. It will take a lot for the Hendrick Motorsports driver to get the job done. However, HMS drivers have won the last five races at this track so that’s something Elliott can draw some confidence from.
