The last few years of Chase Elliott in the Cup Series have not been ideal as he first missed seven races last year and missed the playoff for the first time in his NASCAR career. Some questions have been raised against the No. 9 NAPA driver as he may be struggling with the Next Gen cars,
Recently, Chase Elliott’s veteran crew chief Alan Gustafson made things clear and completely disagreed with the opinion. He argued the fact by giving an example of Chase Elliott’s first-year performance after the introduction of Next Gen cars Chase was the regular season champion with 5 wins that year.
Alan Gustafson disputed the Chase Elliott not running well in Next Gen car theme. This is what he had to say and some of his back-and-forth with the media (fyi, we didn't have microphones so the audio of followups from me and @jeff_gluck comes from my audio recording). pic.twitter.com/e2xXtQoXIK
— Bob Pockrass (@bobpockrass) April 15, 2024
Talking with Bob Pockrass after the win at Texas Alan said, “Yeah, I guess my point is, like, it’s not, if you look at his body of work in this car, regular season champion the first, right, the first year of the car, five wins, two playoffs, runs two races, Daytona 500, which we all know is a crapshoot, finishes second at Fontana, which, you know, was pretty good.”
“Has a several-wing accident, breaks his leg, you know, has maybe not as good a year as we would have liked, but still, I think the time he was in that car, his average finish was, like, third or fourth best of anybody on the track, right? And now we start this season with this car. I don’t know if anybody knows where we’re at in points now. Have we moved up? Are we fourth in points? One win, three top fives. Our average run position before we started was fourth. Like, what am I missing?” Alan concluded.
Chase Elliott and the Next Gen Car
Chase Elliott, the talented driver from Hendrick Motorsports, has been vocal about the current limitations imposed on NASCAR engines. Specifically, he points to the tapered spacer used in the Next Gen cars. Here’s what he had to say:
“The way we run these engines with a tapered spacer makes them about as inefficient as you can possibly make them. These engines, if unrestricted, would have more power.”
Elliott also considers the reliability aspect. If the engines were allowed to run without restrictions, he believes that the right parts could withstand the increased horsepower. In his words:
“I think with that, you’d certainly have to have parts. I don’t think those parts would cost any more than what they cost now if you bought the right ones to withstand that type of horsepower from a reliability standpoint.”
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