Chase Elliott’s Unsure of a Bristol Finish as Voltage Issues Plague HMS’ Golden Boy

Shortly after his teammate, William Byron, hit a ditch at Bristol Motor Speedway, getting into the wall and snapping the #24 Chevy’s toe link, NASCAR’s golden boy, Chase Elliott‘s Chevy, developed trouble in stage 1 of the race. The 2020 Cup Series champion was looking for a decisive race result to break his winless streak and register his first win after last year’s March accident.

Unfortunately, it looks like the Georgia native will have to wait for that even further. Out of the past four races excluding Bristol, Elliott hasn’t picked up a top-10 finish let alone a win. Heading to the repaved BMS, Elliott had high hopes of racking up a win but alternator issues became the villain, limiting the driver and keeping him from racking up a victory.

Electrical faults keep Chase Elliott waiting despite a promising performance

Sunday’s short track extravaganza at the newly repaved Bristol track had quite a few memorable moments. For HMS fans, they were carried away by Chase Elliott who led the early laps, handing HMS another milestone before the JGR Toyotas got back to the race and trounced the competition once again. Seeing their favorite driver back on at the top, running up front, fans were on cloud nine only to be dropped back to reality in a few laps after the #9 HMS Chevy developed some electrical faults.

Fate has other plans for the driver. Even though Elliott got the lead, passing Denny Hamlin in lap 53 to lead Hendrick Motorsports’ 80,000th lap in NASCAR’s elite faction, the driver voltage issues quickly got the driver alarmed.

After the restart, Elliott said his voltage started dropping again. With the alternator on the car acting strange, Elliott was asked about the situation on the radio: “What are your volts now?” to which he replied, “12.8 now, been flashing at me for 10, 15 laps. The only thing I have blowing is just my helmet fan, that’s it.” 

Before everything went south for Elliott, the HMS speedster brought in another accolade for Rick Hendrick at Bristol, extending the legacy of greats like Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson.

Chase Elliott and Kyle Larson make Rick Hendrick proud as HMS crosses the 80,000 mark

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Since its inception in 1984, Hendrick’s outfit has led 79,997 laps and stands clear at the top of the game, being the most winningest team in the organization. Starting from Geoff Bodine’s time in the outfit in 1984, HMS has led 79,997 laps in its 40-year stretch in the NASCAR Cup Series, and in Sunday’s race Chase Elliott got that number beyond 80,000 and Larson extended it even further when he led the field for a brief time.

The team has already kicked off its 40th year of operation in a grand fashion by opening the season with a stellar win at Daytona only to repeat that again at Vegas, collecting two wins in the first four races of the season. Reaching the 80,000 milestone at Bristol will only add further cheer to the celebrations. Reflecting on the new milestone, Elliott said to NASCAR, “It’s a lot of laps, for sure, and a lot of race wins encapsulated into all those laps that they’ve led as a company. Definitely proud to have been a very, very small part of that, but I’ve enjoyed my time, and hopefully we can keep adding to it.

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Now what is more fascinating is that both Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon have led 43,877 laps for a staggering 55% of the Hendrick total. Larson also chimed in, saying, “It’s really, really amazing when you think about the amount of laps led, not only wins with whatever we’re at, 303 or 304 and almost the 80,000 laps led, it’s crazy. Yeah, to be a part of that, 2021, we had a great season and kind of broke the record for laps led in a season, so that was really neat. This year, in general, just a lot of history with Rick (Hendrick’s) 40th season, so to break records this year is pretty cool.”