“Where is the Ringer Chase Elliott?”: Hendrick Star’s Prowess Questioned After Notable Absence on Road Course List

Although fans eagerly anticipate watching Kyle Busch and Chase Elliott tackle the twists and turns of the Mexico road course, the reality for both stars has diverged sharply. While Busch continues to grapple with a lack of speed, Elliott finds himself battling an entirely different beast, declining results in a discipline he once ruled.

Widely regarded as one of NASCAR’s premier road course specialists, the driver of the No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet once made road racing his personal playground. Across 34 starts at venues like COTA, the Charlotte Roval, Watkins Glen, Sonoma, the Indianapolis Road Course, and Daytona’s infield layout, Elliott holds an impressive average finish of 8.8 with seven career victories.

But suspiciously, all seven of those wins came before the introduction of the Next Gen car.

That distinction became glaringly apparent when NASCAR Insights recently posted a stat on X listing the 12 different road course winners in the Next Gen era. Elliott’s name was absent, a shock to many fans.

As per the stats, Tyler Reddick and Kyle Larson have led the charge with three road course wins apiece in the Next Gen car. Christopher Bell and William Byron have each won two, while Chris Buescher, AJ Allmendinger, Alex Bowman, Michael McDowell, Ross Chastain, Daniel Suárez, Shane van Gisbergen, and Martin Truex Jr. have all scored one.

Elliott, on the other hand, stands at zero.

Since the arrival of the Next Gen car, Elliott has run 15 road course races without a single win and has finished outside the top 10 in five of them. A stark contrast to the 15 such races prior, where he claimed seven wins, including a dominant four-race road course win streak from 2019 through 2020. During that stretch, tracks like Watkins Glen and COTA felt like Elliott’s backyard.

Fans didn’t hold back in their disbelief. “Where is the ringer Chase Elliott?” one asked. Another quipped, “Where’s Elliott?” A third chimed in, “I don’t see Chase ”Road Course King” Elliott anywhere though?? ”

Elliott’s last road course win came in 2021 at Road America. Since then, he’s pointed to a key challenge brought on by the Next Gen platform, passing. In a 2022 interview, Elliott pulled no punches in laying out the issue.

“Just the difficulty in passing. It has become, in my opinion, way harder to do and to get the rear tires to live. It’s just hard. Anywhere that we go, the corner entry, the part of the corner that is narrow, is going to be an extreme challenge to pass,” he explained.

It’s precisely that dynamic that has allowed a driver like Shane van Gisbergen to leapfrog the road course field. With a background in Supercars, a discipline whose machines mirror the handling of NASCAR’s Next Gen cars, SVG has used his road racing acumen to outclass even the most seasoned Cup veterans. For Elliott, once the undisputed king of the curves, the path back to the throne now cuts through unfamiliar territory.