NASCAR: Is Chase Elliott ready to win a championship?

The 2020 season will be Chase Elliott’s fifth as a full-time driver in the NASCAR Cup Series. Is he ready to make the leap and win a championship?

It feels like it was just yesterday when Chase Elliott was a rookie in the NASCAR Cup Series in 2016, but 2020 will already be his fifth full-time season.

Elliott started his career in the #24 Chevrolet for Hendrick Motorsports, as he replaced four-time champion Jeff Gordon, who called it a career after the 2015 season. For two seasons, Elliott piloted the #24 Chevrolet until he made the switch to the #9 Chevrolet in 2018.

Since then, he has been behind the wheel of the #9 Chevrolet, and he will continue to race that car for many years to come.

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Elliott has accomplished a lot in his first four seasons. After going 98 races without a win, he got the job done and scored his first career victory at Watkins Glen International in 2018.

After those first 98 races, he has scored six victories in the 51 races. Three of his victories have come at road courses, with two at Watkins Glen International and one at the Charlotte Motor Speedway roval.

His most recent win at the Charlotte Motor Speedway roval came even after he drove into turn one on a restart as the leader. His drive back to the front to win in dominant fashion was a sign that he has the drive and the talent to win many races in the Cup Series.

After that win, Elliott was able to fight through adversity again and get to the round of 8 for the third consecutive year after starting the round of 12 in the garage at Dover International Speedway and finishing in 38th place with a mechanical failure.

One thing Elliott has won multiple times is the Most Popular Driver Award. He has taken that award the last two years, and it seems like he will continue to do so. That is a great award to win, but he wants something much bigger than that: a Cup Series championship.

With the improvement that Elliott has shown each year, there is no doubt that he is ready to make the next step and compete for the championship in 2020. Another year of experience with crew chief Alan Gustafson and spotter Eddie D’Hondt will only help the 24-year-old from Dawsonville, Georgia.

Along with the experience, the Chevrolet teams will have an updated Camaro with the Camaro ZL1 1LE instead of the Camaro ZL1. This change was made to increase the performance of the Camaros, as they have struggled since being introduced ahead of the 2018 season. They have won only 11 races, and Elliott is responsible for six of those wins.

With all of these changes and another year of experience for Elliott, it seems like he is primed for a championship contending season. He has a good chance to get back into the round of 8 for a fourth straight season, and if he can get over the hump and get into the Championship 4 for the first time, he will have a chance to compete for a championship at Phoenix Raceway, one of his better tracks, in November.

But Elliott is a very streaky driver, so he can go on a roll during which he wins multiple races and runs up front for a month, and he can also have a string of races during which he does not finish well and loses a lot of momentum.

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It still may be too early for Chase Elliott to break through and actually win a NASCAR Cup Series championship, but he will be a championship contender towards the end of the 2020 season if he can put it all together at the right time.

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