Chase Elliott’s Coke bottle explodes during Darlington interview

Hendrick Motorsports had a very polarizing day at Darlington. Chase Elliott snuck into the top-10 after not being around seemingly all afternoon. Despite dominating for most of the race, William Byron experienced dirty air for the first time not in the lead and lost after leading 243 laps on the day.

Byron P2, Elliott P8. Then, you go to Kyle Larson and Alex Bowman. Larson was P37 and 175 laps down. Alex Bowman was P35 and finished 17 laps down. It was a rough day for that pair.

Chase Elliott had another quiet day but didn’t pick up a lot of points in the process. He lost a spot in the point standings as Denny Hamlin and Christopher Bell jumped over him after Sunday.

Chase Elliott continues to be good, not great

While the No. 9 team continues to plug away and earn top-10 and top-20 results, I do have a concern. We saw this last season. Many people compared his 2024 year to Matt Kenseth in 2003. Of course, Elliott didn’t walk away with a championship.

In this era of NASCAR, average finish stats are nice. Wins are king. Elliott has not finished better than P4 this season. He keeps hitting a plateau. This season, I have noticed Elliott during races but never have thought he would win.

Elliott failed to pick up stage points at Darlington. That hurt his day. 29 points is an average day for a Hendrick driver. They are looking to score 30, 35, 40+ points each week. The thing is, we can’t even point to his qualifying speed and argue, well the speed is there but it just isn’t clicking in races.

Chase Elliott has only qualified in the top-10 three times this season. His average start is 12.0 – which again is great on its own. But when you look deeper and see that he isn’t able to take that next step in qualifying or during races, it is very concerning for his championship hopes.