Another week, another "good points day" for Chase Elliott and the No. 9 team in the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season.
NASCAR's most popular driver finished fifth in Sunday's Great American Getaway 400 at Pocono Raceway, marking his second consecutive top five finish.
In fact, remarkably, Elliott has yet to finish worse than 20th in any race this season.
Consistency is key for @chaseelliott (P5), who is the only driver to finish in the top 20 every race this season. pic.twitter.com/5KwuDdpfGs
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) June 23, 2025
It's not as impressive as it sounds. And it changes absolutely nothing in regard to the long-overdue overhaul that is desperately needed involving the group surrounding a driver who is supposed to be at the height of a Hall of Fame career.
"Consistency" is only an illusion of luck, and it means nothing in today's NASCAR
Let's start with the obvious: winning, or finishing within striking distance of the lead, is more impressive than merely "not losing". A top 20 finish in today's Cup Series, in which the fields can be as small as 36 cars, doesn't even guarantee that you finished in the top half of the running order.
More importantly, though, avoiding bad finishes is much more of a measurement of luck than skill. Sure, it requires a driver to be mistake-free, and yes, Elliott is perhaps the best in the sport at that.
It also requires them to have nothing go terminally wrong to end their day beyond their control, which no one can escape forever.
The infatuation with "consistency" from NASCAR fans has always been a strawman fallacy at best, for this exact reason. It's why seasons such as Matt Kenseth's 2003 campaign and Terry Labonte's 1996 effort are grossly overrated and, with a better points system in which a win is more beneficial to a driver's standing than a poor finish is harmful, we would never have needed to institute a playoff format to begin with.
Of course, given the reality that the playoffs are here, it only makes a season like Elliott is having all the more insignificant.
In fact, if there are five or more new winners in the next nine races and he's not one of them, he would be eliminated from title contention, even with a second place finish in points. Is that wrong? Probably. But it would also provide the wakeup call to face the uncomfortable truth that the No. 9 team must address, in spite of their smoke-and-mirrors results.
Chase Elliott is one of the most talented drivers in NASCAR. He's a Cup Series champion. He had won 18 races at the top level by his mid-20s. But he should be winning four or five times a year and competing with teammates Kyle Larson and William Byron for championships on an annual basis.
Plus, hello, he's the sport's most popular driver. The landscape of American motorsports needs him in Victory Lane.
Instead, he's gone two and a half seasons with only a single victory and barely 700 laps led, as he remains a victim of what might be the stalest and most complacent individual race team in the entire Cup garage. There have been 18 different winners since his most recent victory 14 months ago. But, hey, at least he doesn't finish outside the top 20, though – that's all that really matters, right?