Aside from his preseason Cook Out Clash exhibition race domination at Bowman Gray Stadium, Hendrick Motorsports' Chase Elliott has just one NASCAR Cup Series victory since October 2022, and that win came nearly a year ago at Texas Motor Speedway.
Yet the performance of the driver of the No. 9 Chevrolet has not necessarily declined over the past three seasons. Yes, he missed the playoffs in 2023, one year after leading all drivers in total wins and total points to open up the Next Gen era, but he would have gotten in comfortably had he not missed seven of the regular season's 26 races.
Then last year, he was never really considered a big championship threat, yet in total points scored, he finished third, placing ahead of the entire quartet of Championship 4 drivers.
What Elliott has done better than anybody else is minimize the bad days and make the most out of the races that aren't particularly stellar.
Through five races in 2025, he finds himself with the best worst finish among all drivers.
It may seem arbitrary, specifically compared to IndyCar, where it can be a regular indicator of a season's champion, but it is indeed a category in which the driver of the No. 9 Chevrolet was well ahead of everybody during most of last year's regular season.
Last year, it took him until the season's 20th race to finish outside of the top 19, and his only non-top 21 finish in the regular season ended up being a DNF in the penultimate race at Daytona International Speedway, when he was collected in a wreck.
Skip ahead to the present day, and Elliott has once again not had a flashy start to the year. Yet he once again finds himself tied for third in points, having simply gotten what was available in each race. He is the only full-time driver without a single finish outside of the top 20.
So even with only a single finish higher than 10th place, he trails only teammate William Byron, the Daytona 500 winner, and Joe Gibbs Racing's Christopher Bell, winner of three out of five races this year, in the standings.
Elliott's underrated yet familiar level of success is a bit of a conundrum. So much of the emphasis these days is on the "win and in" nature of the regular season, and specifically of the playoffs, and it's the single reason why Elliott didn't make it to last year's Championship 4.
It's also the reason why he won the 2020 championship, and it's also the reason why he didn't win the 2022 title, even after clinching the unofficial "points" title with multiple races to go.
Yet at the same time, Elliott's ability to rack up stage points and solid points with decent, even if not spectacular, race results has placed him in a solid position, and while wins are still most important, paying out five playoff points each, additional playoff points are paid to drivers who finish in the top 10 of the regular season point standings, on a 15-10-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 scale.
Since NASCAR switched away from the Latford points system in 2011, there is a bigger emphasis on racing not to lose, because sometimes racing to win can result in a DNF and a disastrous result.
That is something that Elliott has mastered, and though he would certainly like to find victory lane again, given the fact that he racked up 18 wins from mid-2018 to 2022 but has scored just one since, his approach has certainly shown to have its own advantages.