Is Chase Elliott Finally Ready to Win Again?
Is Chase Elliott Finally Ready to Win Again?
It's been nearly a year and a half since NASCAR's most popular driver last won a race. Does that change this week?
All of last year, one of NASCAR’s dominant storylines was whether Chase Elliott — the sport’s 2020 champion and soon-to-be six-time defending Most Popular Driver — would miss the playoffs. Despite digging himself a hole in the standings by missing seven races (between an early-season snowboarding accident and mid-year suspension), Elliott still could have punched his ticket by simply winning a race, something he’d done at least once in each of the previous five seasons.
He didn’t do that, though, and so NASCAR rolled toward the championship without him.
Now, fast-forward to the present day, and it has been 39 race starts for Elliott — 46 for the Cup Series in total (again, remember those missed races) — since he last won a race. That’s the longest drought of Elliott’s career, at least since he went winless in his first 98 races at the Cup Series level from 2015 to mid-2018.
Even more surprising is Elliott’s drought at road courses specifically. Despite arguably being NASCAR’s best road-course driver in terms of career-wide performance, his last victory at that type of track was on July 4, 2021 at Road America — nearly 1,000 days ago. Since the introduction of the Next-Gen Car in 2022, Elliott has won at every type of track except the ones where he’s supposed to be an automatic contender:
There’s a decent chance, however, that both trends — Elliott’s 39-race drought overall and nearly 3-year winless streak at road courses — could end this weekend as the Cup Series shifts to Austin and the Circuit of the Americas.
Not only is COTA a road course, the type of track where Elliott does remain the active career leader in wins, but it’s Elliott’s best track among those on the 2024 schedule. Granting that it’s a small sample size, only Road America — which was dropped from the series’ track lineup in 2023 to make room for the Chicago Street Course — has seen Elliott post a better average finish (2.5) or a higher Adjusted Points Index (346) than he has at Austin over his career.
Furthermore, among all active drivers at COTA, Elliott has the highest career Adjusted Points Index, well ahead of Ross Chastain (319). Given his record here relative to both the competition and his own history at other tracks — as well as his solid form to start the 2024 season — this could be the perfect opportunity for Elliott to finally get off his losing skid.
To pull it off, he’ll have to contend with Tyler Reddick, the betting favorite at +400. But Elliott and Reddick are tied in my predictive driver ratings for COTA. It’s about time we see flashes of the same Chase Elliott that was so dominant as recently as a few seasons ago.
Filed under: NASCAR