“I Would Never Intentionally Do That”: Chase Elliott Speaks Up on Vehicle Interference Penalty at Richmond

Jerry Bonkowski | 17/08/2025
NASCAR Cup Series driver Chase Elliott (9) during practice for the Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway.

Chase Elliott knows what it feels like to have salt rubbed into a wound. It’s bad enough that the former NASCAR Cup champion was involved in a Stage 2 wreck with Kyle Busch, ending Elliott’s night and finishing last in the 38-driver field in Saturday night’s race at Richmond Raceway.

But earlier in the race, Elliott received a vehicle interference penalty, which put him behind the eight ball long before the fateful contact with Busch. NASCAR invoked the penalty upon Elliott for cutting the pit box of Chase Briscoe, when Briscoe’s No. 19 car was already in the box and narrowly avoiding contact between the two cars in NASCAR’s eyes.

While the Hendrick Motorsports driver felt he didn’t do anything wrong, officials thought otherwise and assessed the penalty. “It seems like that’s happened a lot lately,” Elliott said of cars cutting pit boxes of drivers directly behind their own pit stall on a stop.

“It’s a really tough position, especially when you’re directly behind the car that’s pitted right behind your stall because the front tire carriers are carrying two tires. You get in a position where if I get too far over to the right, I’m going to be stopped and now he’s not going to be able to get out of his box.

“Obviously, I’m not trying to hit his guys. I would never intentionally do that or try and make him get further left. That’s not my intent at all. I don’t want to get in a position where I’m angled so far in that now I’ve blocked him in and we have a bad angle for our stop.”

Elliott accepted his penalty, even though he didn’t agree with it

Even though he did not agree with NASCAR’s ruling, Elliott begrudgingly accepted it.

“All I was trying to do was just take as much room as I could to get back straight and not cause another issue at the end of the pit stop,” Elliott said. “It was nothing beyond that. Obviously, I got too aggressive with it, but it was an unfortunate situation.”

Post Edited By: Abhishek Ramesh
Chase Briscoe Chase Elliott Cook Out 400 Richmond Raceway

About the author

Jerry Bonkowski

Jerry Bonkowski

Jerry Bonkowski is a veteran sportswriter who has worked full-time for many of the top media outlets in the world, including USA Today (15 years), ESPN.com (4+ years), Yahoo Sports (4 1/2 years), NBCSports.com (8 years) and others. He has covered virtually every major professional and collegiate sport there is, including the Chicago Bulls' six NBA championships (including heavy focus on Michael Jordan), the Chicago Bears Super Bowl XX-winning season, the Chicago White Sox and Chicago Cubs World Series championships, two of the Chicago Blackhawks' NHL titles, Tiger Woods' PGA Tour debut, as well as many years of beat coverage of the NFL, MLB, NHL and NBA for USA Today. But Jerry's most notable achievement has been covering motorsports, most notably NASCAR, IndyCar, NHRA drag racing and Formula One. He has had a passion for racing since he started going to watch drag races at the old U.S. 30 Dragstrip (otherwise known as "Where the Great Ones Run!") in Hobart, Indiana. Jerry has covered countless NASCAR, IndyCar and NHRA races and championship battles over the years. He's also the author of a book, "Trading Paint: 101 Great NASCAR Debates", published in 2010 (and he's hoping to soon get started on another book). Away from sports, Jerry was a fully sworn part-time police officer for 20 years, enjoys reading and music (especially "hair bands" from the 1980s and 1990s), as well as playing music on his electric keyboard, driving (fast, of course!), spending time with Cyndee his wife of nearly 40 years, the couple's three adult children and three grandchildren (with more to come!), and his three dogs -- including two German Shepherds and an Olde English Bulldog who thinks he's a German Shepherd.. Jerry still gets the same excitement of seeing his byline today as he did when he started in journalism as a 15-year-old high school student. He is looking forward to writing hundreds, if not thousands, of stories in the future for TheSportsRush.com, as well as interacting with readers.

Don’t miss these