Focused Chase Elliott Shuts Down Interest in NASCAR: Full Speed Role With an Unpopular Verdict

NASCAR: Full Speed. The Netflix documentary was NASCAR’s first attempt at shedding light on the raw and unfiltered behind-the-scenes and attracting more eyes to the sport, like Formula 1 did with Drive to Survive. While the broader picture suggests that it’s been received very well by the NASCAR community, the series wasn’t all roses.

Specifically, it didn’t sit well with fans that the series, in its five episodes, only focused on a handful of drivers and missed out on many. One of them was the Cup Series’ Most Popular Driver, Chase Elliott. While his faithful must have been hoping for restitution in Season 2, the 28-year-old recently made a revelation they wouldn’t like.

What Max Verstappen is to Drive to Survive, Chase Elliott is to Full Speed

The idea behind the launch of the docuseries was to bring the stars – the drivers – back into the limelight. Elliott, without a doubt, has the caliber to be the superstar driver of this generation and could cement his status, owing to the exposure from the Netflix series. However, the Hendrick Motorsports driver has his reasons for snubbing the opportunity. And it’s all to do with focusing on his primary goal.

On The Dale Jr. Download podcast, Dale Earnhardt Jr asked Elliott if he’d want to be part of Season 2. The HMS driver explained, “I don’t know. Obviously I didn’t do it last year. I haven’t watched it at all, so I think my step to answering that question would be to watch a little bit of it. Just to see how bad they would p*ss me off being around all the time. It might not be the most popular answer or whatever, but I really just want to go fast and I want to do my job on a high level. If I feel like there’s anything that’s going to take away from that, I’m probably going to say no to it.”

Given Elliott’s struggles in the past season, it does make sense for him to focus all his time and energy on formulating a comeback. From lifting the title in 2020 to being unable to win a single race in 2023, it has not been the progression the driver would have hoped for. So, 2024 is a redemption year for him, where he wants his undivided attention and focus to return to his former self, competing and winning races.

When it comes to Drive to Survive, reigning Formula 1 champion Max Verstappen has similar feelings about Full Speed’s counterpart. In 2021, he revealed, “I am not really a dramatic show kind of person. I just want facts and real things to happen.” Comparing Verstappen’s stance to what Elliott said about seeing “how bad they would p*ss me off being around all the time,” the Red Bull driver recently said, “Some things are just private, right? People don’t need to know what we are doing and what we are saying.”

While Chase Elliott and Max Verstappen’s 2023 seasons were vastly different – the HMS driver couldn’t win a single race, while the Red Bull driver won 19 of 22 – their non-inclination to participate in their respective series is understandable. Coming back to NASCAR’s 2023 season, for the most part, Elliott’s struggles were assumed to have sparked by his snowboarding injury and him missing a good chunk of the season. However, the HMS driver wasn’t sold on the snowboarding theory, and he explained the root cause of his problems, which had started way before.

Elliott explains the root cause of his woeful run in 2023

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The Next-Gen cars made their debut in the 2022 season. For the most part, teams and drivers seemed to struggle with them, but Elliott and his team hit the ground running. From afar, five wins and a fourth-place finish in the charts do look like a successful season for the HMS driver. But this is where his struggles really began in trying to gel with the new race car.

“I think what really happened was no one really knew how to drive this thing at the beginning, and I was getting away with how I drove the old car. It was working to an extent; we had a good stretch till the summer. Then, right before the playoffs started, I feel like everything switched and people started driving these cars differently. From that point forward our struggles began, I saw it happen,” the 28-year-old added.

Fortunately, it looks like Chase Elliott has found his way around the Next Gen car, as he has been consistently delivering decent performances in 2024. At present, with his top-10 finish at Bristol, he has jumped to #6 in the driver’s standings and will be looking to continue the good run going forward.

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