Nine races through the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season, Chase Elliott sits fifth in the point standings with a pair of top five finishes and five top 10 finishes, and no finishes worse than 20th. On the surface, it seems as if everything is fine.
It's far from fine. And it hasn't been fine for the past three years. For any driver, especially one competing on one of NASCAR's premier teams, the goal isn't to finish in the top 10; the goal is to win races.
In his 79 most recent starts, Elliott has won only one points-paying race. Hendrick Motorsports teammates Kyle Larson and William Byron, during that same span, have combined to win 23.
More concerningly, though, is the fact that Elliott is barely even contending for wins. Since the start of the 2023 season, he has led a combined 670 laps, a lower number than his total in each of the three previous seasons individually, when he was among the dominant faces in the sport.
Between 2020 and 2022, Elliott won 12 times and had one of the most electrifying playoff runs NASCAR has ever seen to capture the 2020 championship.
He did all of that between the ages of 24 and 26, theoretically just entering his prime. He was supposed to only get better. Instead, he has become just another pretty good driver. Something isn't working, and it's long past time for those around him to be held accountable for it.
It's time for a shakeup at Chase Elliott's No. 9 team
The easy culprit to point to is crew chief Alan Gustafson. Even when Elliott was dominating, it can be argued that much of his success came in spite of the man atop the pit box, rather than because of him.
During that title-winning 2020 campaign, the seven-time Most Popular Driver Award winner was unlucky not to record even more than the five wins he captured, and many of that can be blamed on poor team execution. Most notable was when Gustafson inexplicably called his driver to pit road from the lead in the Coca-Cola 600 prior to an overtime restart, singlehandedly costing him his first crown jewel victory.
Throughout his career, Gustafson has had the privilege of working with nothing but Hall of Famers, including Kyle Busch, Mark Martin, Jeff Gordon, and now Elliott. There was a point in time during which their talents could mask his deficiencies, but that time has passed.
With the Next Gen car, in which the field is more condensed and track position is more paramount than ever, he is simply not putting Elliott in positions where he can compete to win races. He is only putting him in positions "not to lose".
A driver who was considered a generational talent only three years ago, who still hasn't even turned 30 years old, should not be racing "not to lose". It's an unacceptable standard.
Elliott desperately needs a change in surroundings to reignite his fire, especially because of his Most Popular Driver status. He moves the needle for the sport as a whole when he wins, and aside from maybe Larson or Bubba Wallace, his success is more vital to NASCAR's overall health than any other driver.
After Elliott's winless 2023 campaign, his poor performance could be blamed on the broken leg he suffered near the start of the year, which caused him to miss several races. The 2024 season was a positive step back in the right direction, but with just one win, it was still not good enough.
Now the No. 9 team, winless in more than a year for the second time since 2022, has stagnated in that second tier, and the truth cannot be ignored any longer. The prime of one of NASCAR's biggest superstars is being wasted, and something must be done about it.