Asked to assess his 2024 NASCAR season with a letter grade, Chase Elliott paused before assigning himself “probably a B, B-plus.” This year’s campaign showed marked improvement for the former Cup Series champ and his No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet team, and Elliott noted, “I’m trying to grade that really honestly.”
Elliott finished seventh in the Cup Series standings this season, wrapping the year up with an eighth-place result in last weekend’s finale at Phoenix Raceway. He fell one round short of reaching the Championship 4, which he qualified for each year from 2020-22, but the outcome — which included an encouraging closing kick — was far preferable to missing out on last year’s playoffs after a jagged 2023 campaign.
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“It’s like anything when you’re trying to compete at this level,” Elliott said Saturday, one day before the season-ending race. “Nothing is ever perfect, I guess, in my eyes, but I am really proud of where we’ve come from and where we have been, particularly over the last few months of the season, and even more so over the last few weeks. I just feel like we have a really good direction, I feel like I have a good direction. I’m giving them better feedback in what I want and what I need, and I think all those things are really positive. So, yeah, I don’t know that you ever have it figured out, but I’m certainly, genuinely proud of where we’ve been and where we are right now.”
Elliott broke a 42-race winless skid in April with his victory at Texas Motor Speedway, cementing a return to the postseason after a one-year absence. He backed that up with a solid playoff effort, scoring seven top-10 finishes in that closing 10-race span and leading multiple laps in each of the final three events.
That performance marked a solid return after Elliott missed seven races in 2023 — six after suffering a broken leg in a snowboarding mishap and one more after a suspension for rough driving in the Coca-Cola 600. Despite receiving waivers to retain playoff eligibility, Elliott was unable to return to Victory Lane to clinch a spot in the 16-driver field. He returned in 2024 eager to fill both those voids.
“It’s always the same things. It’s hard work and effort and focus, and it’s tough when we came off of the year that we had in ’23,” No. 9 crew chief Alan Gustafson said during a media event Oct. 31. “You don’t want to beat a dead horse, right? I mean, like, how much are you going to whip? I’m not going to whip Chase or whip the guys or demand something unreasonable when the deck’s been pretty hard, pretty stacked against you, pretty difficult. So I think, 2023 … look, I would have loved to have won and got in. Could that have happened? Yes. It didn’t. I still think we gave a good effort. …
“But to generate that, what you kind of see from Chase, I think is pretty natural through the progression of performance and the work that we’ve put in together, and that generates optimism and then generates some positive energy and knowing that you’re prepared to go out there and compete at a super-high level and win races. So that’s what I think the difference is. It’s just a little easier or more fruitful to turn the screws or however you want to say it, when the build-up to it’s been much better.”
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Elliott said he’s considering some extracurricular racing in the offseason, mentioning that a soon-approaching opportunity to race in the Snowball Derby Super Late Model event Dec. 8 is “a potential possibility there, but we just haven’t 100% decided.” But Elliott also said that he was looking forward to taking a break, even if completely detaching from the racing world was a long shot.
“The competitor in you is always wanting to think about what you could have done better or what different choice throughout the season could have bettered your results or whatever it may be,” Elliott said. “So yeah, I think naturally you’re going to think about racing, just because that’s what we do. But I certainly intend to just get away, take some time, recharge the batteries, just like everybody in the room here.”