Chase Elliott change noticed by Hendricks boss | Sports News

A turbulent stretch can both fracture a driver’s confidence or sharpen it. For Chase Elliott, the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season did the latter, and the shift didn’t go unnoticed inside Hendrick Motorsports.

Elliott’s stat line at first look regarded acquainted: 19 top-10s and 11 top-five finishes, mirroring his 2024 output. But these numbers masked a season that quietly represented one of his most significant steps ahead since adapting to NASCAR’s Next Gen car. 

By the time the calendar flipped towards the ultimate month, Elliott, who has a “unique” hyperlink to NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt Jr., was main laps again, contending weekly, and stacking performances that felt nearer to his championship-caliber type from 2018 by way of 2022.

Few people have a clearer view of Elliott’s evolution than Jeff Gordon, the four-time Cup Series champion and present vice chairman of Hendrick Motorsports. 

Gordon credit Elliott and longtime crew chief Alan Gustafson for his or her skill to tune out exterior noise, however he additionally acknowledged seeing a distinct change in Elliott during 2025.

“More engaged, stepping in, elevating the team, the information he’s bringing and really feeling like this is home for him,” Gordon instructed ESPN. 

“I tell him all the time, ‘You’re a franchise guy. This team is your team.’ He and Alan have a very powerful relationship. Alan is an incredibly talented guy, and I think sometimes it just takes getting all the right pieces in place at the right times.”

Gordon went additional, framing 2025 as a season outlined much less by outcomes and more by renewed alignment inside the staff. 

“But I was very impressed with what they did last year,” he stated. “I think it was a new look and perspective of their commitment to one another, to what they need to do, the details of what it takes to push yourself, push the cars and what our competitors are doing.”

That growth was evident even in races the place the ending place failed to inform the complete story. At Phoenix Raceway within the season finale, Elliott led 30 laps and completed tenth. Gordon, stationed on the pit box, believed Elliott was the strongest Hendrick car within the subject primarily based on how he carved by way of site visitors. 

“When you put a race like that together, and you do that over enough races, it builds confidence,” Gordon stated. “And when you have the final race of the season go like that, even though you’re not in the championship hunt, you build on that over the offseason.”