Nitro Rallycross Creator Reveals the Unexpected Reason Behind Chase Elliott & Austin Cindric’s Struggles

Earlier, it transpired that NASCAR drivers Chase Elliott and Austin Cindric were competing in the Nitro Rallycross Series. With the 2022 NASCAR Cup Series wrapped up, there is not much for the drivers to do. So, many of them do end up competing in a few other races. The Nitro Rallycross Series was inaugurated last year and Elliott was a participant, along with Kyle Busch.

Now, Elliott is back for a second bite of the cherry in the Rallycross Series. This time, Team Penske’s Austin Cindric is joining him as a competitor. However, the two of them had struggled to get up to pace with the series regulars, so founder Travis Pastrana had some theories. According to him, Cindric and Elliott had a tendency to look at their speedometers before hitting some of the jumps. As a result, that momentary distraction slows them down a little bit.

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What did Pastrana say about Chase Elliott and Austin Cindric?

He attributed it to being part of their NASCAR habits that have been ingrained in them. Pastrana observed that other drivers do not look down at their speedometers before each jump. As a result, they do not lose precious time, which can be very advantageous. Of course, the time lost isn’t too large, but it was still enough to cost them during the races.

It is also worth mentioning that this year’s cars are much different from last year’s edition. The new car was all-electric, as opposed to last year. So the 800 kilowatt vehicle was a bit of a different beast than what Chase Elliott drove. Nevertheless, they had to work with the tools they had, and the lack of experience pretty much hurt them. This was because they were fairly far off the pace. During the first two days of racing, Elliott and Cindric were playing catch-up, and failed to make it to the final round.

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