Elliott out to rebound from worst season
DAYTONA BEACH, FLA. >> Chase Elliott wants to race cars. Fast cars that he can drive to a second NASCAR championship.
The rest of the stuff? The crowds, the commercials, the showcasing his every move on social media? That’s just never going to be part of the job that Elliott finds enjoyable.
“I like the private life, outside of racing, what I like to do, I like it private,” Elliott told The Associated Press ahead of this Sunday’s season-opening Daytona 500. “I like the fact that no one knows what I like to do.”
The topic came up as part of a growing narrative around the second-generation racer voted NASCAR’S most popular driver the last six years. Elliott is coming off a winless season marred by injury and a one-race suspension in the worst statistical year among his eight full Cup Series seasons driving for Hendrick Motorsports.
Does Elliott only race because it’s all he has ever known? His father is Hall of Famer Bill Elliott, his uncle a pioneer engine builder and the entire Elliott family has accomplished everything from their home base in Dawsonville, Georgia, more than 200 miles away from most everyone else in NASCAR in and around Charlotte, North Carolina.
If Elliott could just stop racing and slide into a life of snowboarding in Colorado, does team owner Rick Hendrick think the 28-year-old would slip into obscurity?
“No, because I don’t know what other stuff he does,” Hendrick told AP. “He’s not a party guy. He’s not a world traveler. I think he enjoys living in Dawsonville. Chase, he has not given up. In no way is he racing because he’s Chase Elliott. He’s racing because he knows he’s a champion.”
Elliott would argue his public persona is the opposite of a driver who would rather be on the slopes than at the track. Elliott missed six races last year after breaking his leg in a snowboarding accident.
His mood, Elliott said, is reflective of whatever he did that day in the No. 9 Chevrolet and not his overall approach to his profession.
“I still enjoy racing very much. I enjoy the competition aspect of it more than anything, and I think for me, it’s probably misunderstood, I guess, or it sounds like it is, but I just want to be good at it,” Elliott said. “I want to be competitive.
I want to feel like I’m holding up my end of the bargain and I just don’t feel like I have done a very good job.
“Over the last number of months and throughout the course of last season — and no excuse at all — I want to be better and I want to do better. I would argue it’s the exact opposite, that a lot of the times when you see my frustration, it is because I want I be better, not because I don’t want to be there. So I’d be careful coming to those conclusions without knowing the full under