Chase Elliott has recently found consistency but remains a far cry from his peak form. The 2023 season threw a wrench in his momentum after an untimely injury and a one-race suspension sidelined him for seven events, marking the first time in his full-time Cup career he missed the playoffs.
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While he rebounded last year with a seventh-place finish in the standings, it came with just one win, hardly reflective of his former dominance.
This season, Elliott currently sits fourth in the points table, but has yet to visit Victory Lane. His position owes much to consistency rather than outright pace.
He has posted three top-five finishes and three more in the top ten, quietly stringing together results that have kept him in contention. Once again, like last season, he has finished every one of the first 12 races inside the top 20.
According to NASCAR Insights, this is the third time in Elliott’s career that he has opened a season with 12 straight top-20 finishes, previously achieving the feat in 2019 and 2024. That makes him the only driver in the NASCAR Cup Series history to do it three times.
However, despite the statistical milestone, the firepower that defined his 2022 campaign is still missing. That season remains the last time he won multiple races, four in total, and ended the year fourth in the standings.
Fans have taken note of the drop-off. One remarked, “Historically average…love ya Chase (Elliott) but something gotta change.” Another wrote, “celebrating finishing mid pack. hype.”
A more direct comment read, “Who cares? Get some wins.” One even quipped, “Most consistently mid…”
For the 3rd time in his career, Chase Elliott has finished Top 20 in the first 12 races of a season (2019, 2024, 2025).
He is now the only driver in NASCAR Cup Series HISTORY to accomplish this 3 times. pic.twitter.com/aY9bSJrHw7
— NASCAR Insights (@NASCARInsights) May 13, 2025
Since the start of 2023, Elliott’s win rate has plummeted to 1.3%, a far cry from his 10% win rate between 2018 and 2022, a stretch in which he captured 18 wins in 180 starts and ranked second only to Kevin Harvick. Back then, he consistently outperformed his teammates, finishing ahead of them in 61.7% of shared races.
That trend has since reversed. Through the first 12 races of 2025, Elliott has led only 74 laps, trailing every other Hendrick Motorsports driver: Kyle Larson has led 817, William Byron 386, and Alex Bowman 110.
Was Elliott in contention to win the Kansas race?
If not for a costly misstep on pit road, Chase Elliott might have been the Hendrick Motorsports driver parking in Victory Lane at Kansas Speedway instead of Kyle Larson. The day was trending in his favor until one error triggered a chain reaction, derailing a potential win and dropping him to a P15 finish.
Elliott rolled off from P9 and held steady throughout the early stages, finishing both Stage 1 and Stage 2 in P2. A smooth stop after Stage 2 put the No. 9 Chevrolet in command for the final restart, where he fended off Larson and Brad Keselowski to take the lead.
The tide shifted on lap 195 when Keselowski suffered a flat tire, prompting a round of green-flag pit stops. Elliott led the field onto the pit road and pulled into stall No. 41 near the entrance.
But the stop unraveled when his Jackman dropped the car a split second too early, before the right-rear tire had been secured. Forced to rejack the car, for the lug nut to be tightened, the team lost valuable time.
That single error, though the crew’s only one all day, proved costly. The stop ballooned past 14 seconds, far off the pace in a pit lane where sub-nine-second stops are the standard. Elliott fell from the lead to 16th and never fully recovered.
He clawed his way back to P12 in the closing laps but slipped to 15th as Todd Gilliland, Corey Heim, and Noah Gragson got past before the checkered flag.
