“To Be Frank…”: Chase Elliott Comes Clean on the Real Culprit Behind His NASCAR Woes This Season

The 2023 season has to be one of the worst seasons for Chase Elliott in his NASCAR Cup Series career. The Hendrick Motorsports star driver won the championship with the team back in 2020 and has always been able to make the playoffs and advance through it. Unfortunately, several factors this year led him to miss out on the playoffs.

And speaking ahead of the first playoff race at Darlington, Elliott shared a thing or two regarding the fate of his season. In essence, it sounded like, Elliott took the blame upon himself, after he denied the cars causing any hindrance in his performance in any manner.

Chase Elliott pins the blame on himself for season performance

As mentioned by Sportsnaut, Elliott stated, “To be frank, and I’m not just saying this, but I don’t think the cars are the problem. Look at how William (Byron), Kyle (Larson), and Alex (Bowman) have run at various points throughout the season, and I just don’t think (the cars) are the excuse.”

He added, “That’s just not how I work. I think I can be better to extract pace out of the car and that’s what I’m going to work on.”

Earlier into the season, Elliott had been rendered out of the car following a fractured tibia from a snowboarding accident. It took him several weeks before he was able to return to the car. Again, a few weeks later, at the Coca-Cola 600, the HMS driver’s incident with Denny Hamlin, attracted him to a one-race ban.

Then late into the regular season, he ran out of fuel after a miscalculation. Owing to all of these circumstances, his chances kept diminishing until he was completely out of contention for the playoffs.

Elliott commits to racing with balance through the playoffs

Despite not being in the playoffs, Elliott mentioned that he would prefer to experiment by doing things differently and prepare himself for the next season. However, since his #9 car is in the owner’s championship, he would still have to tread carefully whilst maintaining a balance.

The HMS driver mentioned, “It’s a tough balance, but there are habits that I would like to break. There’s things I want to do better. These next 10 weeks are a great opportunity for me to do that. It still has meaning, so currently trying to find that balance.”

At this point of the season, Elliott’s fans would be hoping he is able to perform well throughout the remainder of the year. At least he still has a shot at winning the owner’s playoffs, even though it may not have been what they would’ve wanted as their first pick.