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.
Advertisement
The Hendrick Motorsports driver is facing backlash now 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 different tracks from 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 chose to remind 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 early this year that Amazon Prime would feature on Elliott’s car for three races. The partnership came as a major boost for Hendrick Motorsports after the departure of Hooters as a sponsor. Fans had their reasons not to like this collaboration even back then.
Right now, many are upset that Elliott isn’t as driven about winning as he was earlier.
“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 against Elliott for a while now. His reluctance to participate in fan engagement initiatives such as NASCAR: Full Speed has not been well-received.
Many 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 for him to consider himself a good driver at road courses any longer.
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 that Hamlin caught were largely relatable to this case. Hamlin last won at a superspeedway in 2020 at Talladega.
It is becoming increasingly clear that Elliott will have to pick up his performances if he wants to keep defending the 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.
