What Sets Chase Elliott Apart

NASCAR’s most successful owner, Rick Hendrick, has the instincts of a film director. No matter the plot twists, Hendrick Motorsports moves its narrative along.

This is Jeff Gordon’s final full season. The four-time Cup champion has one more shot at a fifth, and then Chase Elliott, who by this time next year will be 20, will attempt to fill the No. 24 seat in which Gordon has taken the checkered flag 92 times, third best in the sport’s history.

Perhaps this is madness. Gordon contended for a fifth Sprint Cup championship last year, though he has wound up sixth in the standings the past two seasons. He has finished in the top 10 nine seasons in a row. Elliott has a Hall of Fame father—Bill was recently inducted into the Charlotte shrine—and is defending his championship this year in what is now rebranded the Xfinity Series.

A Triple-A title at 19 is impressive, but it doesn’t necessarily portend greatness in the major leagues.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. won two in a row. So did Martin Truex Jr. So did Ricky Stenhouse Jr. So did Randy LaJoie and Larry Pearson. This year Chase Elliott, whose full name is William Clyde Elliott II, is favored to win his second Xfinity championship in a row.

The kid could hardly have been more impressive. Ray Evernham, once Gordon’s crew chief and mentor, said of Chase Elliott in Jan. 30’s NASCAR Hall of Fame Induction ceremony: “He’s the luckiest kid in the world. He’s got his daddy’s talents and his mama’s looks.”

This isn’t just another Hendrick master stroke. NASCAR has been the beneficiary of many coincidences over the years.

To wit:

In 1964, the sport lost its two-time defending champion, Joe Weatherly, and biggest star, Glenn “Fireball” Roberts. Richard Petty filled the void, winning the first of seven championships and becoming the greatest figure in the sport’s history.

When the major automobile manufacturers withdrew their factory-backed teams, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco came on board in 1971 with its Winston Cup program (started the following year) and provided a lavish source of income and promotion during a time of crisis.

The last of Petty’s seven championships (1979) preceded the first of Dale Earnhardt’s seven (1980).

Petty’s final race, in 1992, was Gordon’s first.

It’s asking a lot to expect Chase Elliott to be the second coming of both Gordon and his father, but he’s got more to offer than just the ability to make commercials, draw sponsorship and charm the masses.

In a series in which 22 of the 33 races were won by Sprint Cup carpetbaggers, Elliott won three times, finished in the top five 17 times and collected 26 top 10s. In 2013, he competed in seven Camping World Truck Series races, winning one of them and finishing in the top 10 in the other six.

He’s 19. Now. A year away from Sprint Cup. When Gordon became known as Wonder Boy, in 1993, he was 21.

Bill Elliott, himself a former Cup champion and winner of 44 races, is hardly a disinterested observer of his 19-year-old son, but his assessment isn’t far off the consensus.

And the consensus is high.

“He's an incredibly good race car driver, and I’m not saying it’s because he’s my kid,” the elder Elliott said in the Jan. 30 Hall of Fame press conference. “I’ve watched him week in and week out through the short tracks, through all the stuff that the kid has done, and he’s a pretty phenomenal race car driver. I’ve said all along he’s better than I ever thought about being as far as driving a race car and the way he processes, knowing the things he wants out of the race car and [being] able to go to the next level.”

The driver formerly known as Awesome Bill has a son he says is going to be better? In fact, he said he is better. What’s that make Chase? Awe...inspiring?

Next up for the youngest Nationwide Series champion ever is defending the title in what is now branded the Xfinity Series. Then he arrives in Sprint Cup a year from now—he will have a famous car number, the tire marks of one of the sport’s greatest drivers, the pedigree of another and one or two touring-series championships already in his dossier.

Hendrick’s master plan is quite impressive. His plans usually are. Out with the best of the old. In with the best of the young. For the owner who has everything.

Chase Elliott’s response when offered the No. 24 for 2016 was to dismiss the pressure. Asked what it felt like to try to fill Gordon’s shoes, he told NASCAR Race Hub’s Adam Alexander, “I don’t look at it like that. I’m looking at it being another era where I’m going.”

If that seems brash in print, it didn’t when paired with picture and sound. Just as the father often projects a small-town humility, the son seems reasoned, agreeably modest and relaxed. At 19, he sounds like Gordon at 43.

He is scheduled to compete five times this season in a Hendrick Motorsports Chevy wearing No. 25 at the Sprint Cup level: Martinsville, Virginia on March 29; Richmond, Virginia on April 25; Charlotte, North Carolina on May 24; Indianapolis on July 26; and Darlington, South Carolina on Sept. 6.

“This is going to be a big learning curve for me,” said the presumptive next big name to Race Hub on Jan. 30. “I need to make the most of them. Those five races are going to go by quickly.

“I’ll try to make the most of those races and know things are not going to get any easier. I realize that, and I’ll just have to use them to get ready to go. You’re never going to replace Jeff Gordon at all. Jeff Gordon is a hero and a legend of the sport, and that’s something you’re never going to do. You obviously have goals, and I’m going to try to be successful here at Hendrick Motorsports, and in the sport in general, but Jeff is Jeff, and there’s never going to be another one.”

Yet that is the task at hand.

Chase Elliott has remarkable on-track judgment. He instinctively knows the line between aggressive and foolhardy. It’s rare in young drivers. He doesn’t seem to require trial and error.

“I never dreamed he’d be as good as he is,” Hendrick admitted in a Jan. 30 Hendrick Motorsports video, “and what timing.”

By the way, the boy does make a damn fine commercial. He makes interviews seem effortless. Neither his father nor Gordon was anywhere near his level of sophistication at a similar age.

None of that means it’s going to be easy, but let’s just say that Chase Elliott, on the cusp of stardom, seems far better prepared for it than other young athletes in similar situations have been.