Considering the recent surge of road courses in NASCAR’s roster, Chase Elliott has dropped his take on the increasing need to excel at them. The Hendrick Motorsports ace spoke ahead of the Cup Series qualifying at his home track, Atlanta Motor Speedway, outlining the forceful situation upon drivers to embrace the trend or face consequences.

Earlier, speedways and superspeedways were responsible for nearly the entirety of the NASCAR calendar, with Charlotte ROVAL, Watkins Glen, Sonoma Raceway, and more as the prominent road courses. However, after the sport debuted at the Chicago Street Circuit in 2023 and witnessed plenty of success, the sanctioning body made big moves to increase road course racing.

The 2025 Cup Series calendar features six road course races at the Circuit of The Americas, Mexico’s Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez, Chicago Street Circuit, Sonoma, Watkins Glen International, and the Charlotte ROVAL.

Thus, 2020 Cup Series champion Chase Elliott pressed that earlier, where drivers could essentially perform poorly in road course races without drastically affecting their overall standings; they would now need to compete with mastery on the non-ovals, as six lackluster performances will surely impact the ranking.

The Hendrick Motorsports driver explained (via Speedway Digest)

“The road course thing — in the past, I would agree that it was kind of an outlier. Well now, we have 15 of them (6 in Cup), it seems like, so they kind of matter, too. It used to be that you could get away with just not being a road racer for two weeks a year, and it didn’t really matter because it was in the summer. If you ran good, great. And if you didn’t, no big deal, right? Where now, you have so many of them so you kind of have to embrace. I would argue that that one matters, as well.”

The Dawsonville, Georgia native will kick off the season’s second race at the 1.54-mile oval ranked 10th.

Chase Elliott makes his feelings known on Atlanta having two dates on NASCAR’s schedule

Chase Elliott has made 12 Cup Series appearances at his home track since he debuted as a full-time driver for Rick Hendrick’s HMS in the 2016 season. The #9 Chevrolet Camaro has secured three poles on the superspeedway, with the 2022 front-row start resulting in a race win for the Georgian.

The Atlanta Motor Speedway broke ground in 1958 and underwent a repaving job multiple times. However, after the 1997 work, where the original 1.522-mile oval was stretched to 1.54 miles, the next overhaul happened in 2021, nearly 25 years later, and the new surface opened for racing in 2022.

Their most recent job made Atlanta a drafting track, something Chase Elliott highlighted as a positive factor in attracting the fans as he expressed his love of returning to the Oval.

“I love coming here. I’ve said it a lot, but I’m glad we have two dates here at this track. There was a large investment made to try and make the track better… make it more exciting and I think they achieved all of those things, honestly,” Elliott said via Speedway Digest.

“It seems like the fan engagement and excitement has been elevated since the track reconfiguration and hopefully that continues to get better as time goes,” he added.
Chase Elliott will begin the 400-miler from 19th place on the grid, next to 23XI Racing’s Tyler Reddick.