Chase Elliott has long been regarded as NASCAR’s most popular driver, an accolade he has claimed consecutively for the past 7 years. The Hendrick Motorsports veteran is slap bang on his father’s footsteps as Bill Elliott also won the award during his time, a record 16 times.
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However, come the 2025 season of racing, as the field approaches Nashville Superspeedway for the 14th points-paying race of the season, Elliott’s chances might be faltering to some extent this year.
If we were to base our opinion on how many followers a driver has on social media combined, a rather surprising fact is that Kyle Busch has Elliott beat in those terms. The Richard Childress Racing driver has a combined 2,126,600 followers on all four major social media platforms, namely Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.
Elliott, on the other hand, boasts of 1,947,300 combined followers across platforms, making him the second most followed driver on social media. However, having more social media followers does not necessarily mean one driver is more popular than the other. After all, Kyle Busch has had Elliott beat in the number of followers for the last six months.
In December, I produced my first list of the most popular NASCAR Cup Series drivers on social media. Now, six months later and halfway through the 2025 regular season, it's time for an update. pic.twitter.com/uylFn6v3TI
— Kyle Dalton (@kdsportswriter) May 30, 2025
Another astonishing fact that has been a reality for a while now is how Kyle Larson, Elliott’s teammate at HMS, has been able to leave the No. 9 driver behind in terms of merchandise sales. Halfway through the 2025 regular season, the No. 5 Chevrolet driver is ahead of Elliott, who sits in the second spot, with Kyle Busch and Ross Chastain following in their tracks.
With Larson’s back-to-back Memorial Day Double attempts last year and this year, despite the results, it is easy to see how fans not only from NASCAR but from other motorsports genres would root for him. This would, in turn, also help his popularity in NASCAR circles.
Heading into this weekend’s Cup Series race at Nashville Superspeedway, Larson would ideally need to turn his on-track fortune around, something which has not favored him for the last two races for whatever reason, to increase his lead and possibly try to dethrone Elliott as the most popular driver this year.
Coupled with his performances that have generally trounced Chase Elliott in recent years, the Elk Grove, California native seems set to challenge his HMS peer off the track this year as well. Who comes out on top? Only time will tell.
