Watch: Alan Gustafson goes on a passionate rant over criticism about Chase Elliott’s Next-Gen era form

During the period the HMS driver received a lot of criticism, especially from the media about his form and questions were asked about his prowess’ behind the wheels of Next-Gen cars. Now the No:9 team crew chief Alan Gustafson has come forward addressing this criticism after Texas win and called some of them out.

You’re talking about Chase like he can’t drive this car, I mean, he really can and he does really good. I don’t, the winless streak is, I can think of certainly one untimely caution, there was really a couple of times, you know, Charlotte I feel like it was, we had by far the best car at the Roval, right, and the caution comes out and different things happen obviously out of the car. When you’re struggling, yeah, you just kind of have to grind it out a bit more. Alan Gustafson said.

Alan Gustafson listed Chase Elliott’s success in the Next-Gen era

The championship winning crew chief went on to list out his driver’s accomplishment in the Next-Gen era. He pointed out that Elliott won five races and the regular season championship in 2022 and only the snowboarding accident is what cost him the momentum in 2023. Gustafson added that so far in 2024 Elliott has solid average running position and results.

I guess my point is, it’s not, if you look at his body of work in this car, regular-season champion the first year of the car, five wins to the playoffs, runs two races, Daytona 500 which we all know is a crapshoot, finishes second at Fontana which is pretty good, has a snowboarding accident, breaks his leg, has maybe not as good a year as we would have…Now we start this season with this car … fourth in points, one win, three top-5s, average running position before we started was fourth, what am I missing? Gustafson said.

The Chevy driver has put him in the championship conversation alongside his teammates Kyle Larson and William Byron with the victory. He now would be hoping to contend for more wins in the coming races and place him in a good position for a potential championship win.