The chances of Chase Elliott maintaining his streak of winning the Most Popular Driver award are decreasing with each passing day. Whatever he does seems to attract ire.
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The Hendrick Motorsports driver is now facing backlash for his cameo in an advertisement that Prime Video released to promote its coverage of the 2025 Cup Series season. The ad features Dale Earnhardt Jr. taking Steve Letarte on a ride across the tracks where Prime Video will broadcast races.
The schedule starts with the Charlotte Motor Speedway on May 25 and ends with the Pocono Raceway on June 22. Just as the duo races past the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez in Mexico City, Elliott appears on the screen.
Elliott asks with a confident smile, “Did someone say road course?” His words imply that he is still the road course ace he once was before the Next Gen car was introduced.
Unfortunately, that’s not the case, and fans quickly reminded him of that. “The 9 team fell off the map,” one user on X wrote.
“Amazon Prime sponsors him. So there’s that,” another added.
It was announced earlier this year that Amazon Prime would feature on Elliott’s car for three races. This partnership came as a major boost for Hendrick Motorsports after Hooters departed as a sponsor. Fans had their reasons not to like this collaboration even back then.
Right now, many are upset that Elliott is no longer as driven to win as he once was.
“I’ve been a Chase fan since he took over for Gordon, but it has felt like his heart just isn’t in it anymore. Like he got his championship and isn’t driven to do anything,” commented a fan.
This criticism has been directed at Elliott for a while now. His reluctance to participate in fan engagement initiatives, such as NASCAR: Full Speed, has not been well-received.
Some have been led to believe that he is too disconnected from the sport, the fanbase, and, more importantly, the reality of where he stands in the Cup Series hierarchy. Another fan pointed out how absurd it was to still consider Elliott a good road-course racer.
They wrote, “That’s like Denny Hamlin saying, ‘Did someone say superspeedway’?”
The last time Elliott reached Victory Lane at a road course was at Road America in 2021. He has secured several top-five finishes since then, but not P1.
The stray shots Hamlin caught were largely comparable to this situation. Hamlin last won at a superspeedway in 2020 at Talladega.
It is becoming increasingly clear that Elliott will need to improve his performances if he wants to keep defending his “Most Popular Driver” crown. With the rise of drivers like Kyle Larson and Ryan Blaney, the risk of him losing it is higher than ever before.
