One person isn't buying the Chase Elliott hype

"I don't really think anybody knows that," Elliott said when asked about the NASCAR community's belief that he's the next big thing in the sport. "It's not for me to judge and I'm not going to. So I look to do my best every week, or what I think is my best -- give it my best effort and beyond that, it's kind of out of my hands. We're hoping we can have a good rest of the season, and it's way too early to be talking about that stuff."

Yet with each strong performance Elliott adds to his statistics, the talk continues. Earlier this season, Jeff Gordon even joined in.

"I mean this kid is phenomenal. He is just a sponge," Gordon said of Elliott at Watkins Glen International. "You just introduce him to new things and he just excels at it."

That ability to succeed even in new environments has made Chase the top title contender his first full season in a NASCAR national series, 20 points ahead of second-place driver Regan Smith. Nearly all of the tracks that the series has visited this year were new to Elliott, yet his record belies that fact. His three-win mark is the highest among series regulars, as are his 13 top-fives.

Even though Elliott won't concede that he has a good chance of winning the championship, he remains confident in his ability to earn solid finishes leading up to the championship -- an end-of-year stretch that includes several tracks he has never driven at, like Kansas Speedway and Homestead-Miami Speedway. He approaches the unknown with a shrug-it-off attitude, trusting that experience doesn't always lead to a solid finish.

"I don't have one place circled that we're worried about more than any other," Elliott said of the remaining weeks on the calendar. "We kind of put the same amount of emphasis on each race track, and when you show up at a place, you have just as good of a chance to have a bad weekend at a place that you've been to 10 times as you do when you've been there once."

Kentucky Speedway, where the Nationwide Series competed in the VisitMyrtleBeach.com 300 this past weekend, was one such track that Elliott had visited a time before. He finished 12th in his first attempt, but led 20 laps in Saturday night's race, battling Ty Dillon for the lead before the two rookies found themselves behind Nationwide Series veterans Brendan Gaughan and Brian Scott.

"All in all, it was disappointing to be leading there at the final 10 laps and not get a win, but we had a chance," Elliott said. "That's the kind of stuff you need to do on a night that you are not perfect, is to give yourself a chance. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the job done -- but we did have a shot."

That ability to take a car he wasn't happy with and drive it to the front of the pack is exactly what has turned so many heads in the NASCAR world. But Elliott remains focused, as ever, on simply doing his best without thinking of where his best may take him.

"A lot of racing -- a lot of stuff can happen in a lap and we don't want to get ahead of ourselves ... think that's the last thing you need to do," he said. "So we're focused on just a race at a time, and we'll see where it all unfolds."

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