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When the 2024 season begins, it’s likely only a few drivers in NASCAR will be happier to have the blank slate a new year provides than Chase Elliott. After all, it’s been much too long since he’s had one.
Last year, Elliott’s 2023 season suffered a massive setback almost instantly. The weekend of the third race of the year at Las Vegas, the 2020 Cup Series champion and NASCAR’s most popular driver suffered a fractured tibia in a snowboarding accident, sidelining him for the next six races and putting him in catchup mode for the rest of the regular season.
For awhile, Elliott making up the ground he’d lost on the playoff bubble by virtue of points alone seemed perfectly possible. But then Elliott self-sabotaged those efforts with a self-inflicted wound in the Coca-Cola 600. After taking exception to the way Denny Hamlin raced him for position, Elliott responded by hooking a left into Hamlin’s right rear quarter panel, sending him head on and hard into the outside wall.
After determining through in-car data that Elliott wrecked Hamlin intentionally, NASCAR officials parked Elliott the next week, bringing him to seven races missed on the year.
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Once more drivers secured a playoff spot by winning over the summer, the points deficit Elliott accrued proved to be too much to overcome. Elliott missed the playoffs after failing to win by the end of the regular season, then played out the string of a winless season on his way to a career-worst 17th-place finish in the final Cup standings.
However, for all that was wrong about Elliott’s 2023 season, his stats and performance in the 29 races he competed in weren’t particularly poor. Elliott had runner-up finishes at Fontana and Indianapolis, had seven top fives and 15 top 10s, and his average finish of 13.1 put him fifth among all full-time Cup drivers. Elliott also led 195 laps, though most came in the penultimate race of the season at Martinsville, where he led 83.
Elliott’s No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports team, led by crew chief Alan Gustafson, will remain largely intact for 2024. But there will be a different eye in the sky for Elliott to adjust to, though it’s a voice he’s very familiar with: Trey Poole, Elliott’s cousin, will take over spotting duties for Eddie D’Hondt, who has moved to Stewart-Haas Racing to become the spotter for Josh Berry.
A change in spotter presents one barrier for Elliott to overcome. But the most important variable for Elliott to control is his health. His leg injury notwithstanding, Elliott underwent offseason shoulder surgery to address an old injury, but noted he would be ready for the 2024 season in a video posted in mid-November.
