Alan Gustafson hits back against media criticism of Chase Elliott: 'What am I missing?'

For the first time since October 2022, Chase Elliott won in the NASCAR Cup Series. Alan Gustafson took time to defend his driver. Over the last year, there was a narrative building about Elliott’s abilities in the Next Gen car.

The 2023 season was winless. Elliott had good finishes when he was healthy and in the car. But never had winning speed outside of one or two races. Gustafson has been there the whole time, a crew chief that has worked with the likes of Jeff Gordon and Mark Martin, and he wants to make something clear.

Chase Elliott has not fallen off. The results have been there. Looking at reality, the broken leg probably has more to do with the “fall off” than anything. Gustafson got a little frustrated, but in a playful way with the media when asked about that narrative.

“You’re talking about Chase like he can’t drive this car, I mean, he really can and he does really good,” Gustafson said in the postrace press conference, via Bob Pockrass of FOX Sports. “I don’t, the winless streak is, I can think of certainly one untimely caution, there was really a couple of times, you know, Charlotte I feel like it was, we had by far the best car at the Roval, right, and the caution comes out and different things happen obviously out of the car. When you’re struggling, yeah, you just kind of have to grind it out a bit more.”

Then, Gustafson laid it all out. Chase Elliott has been good. There have been issues. Every driver has a bad season every once in a while. And he had receipts to back it up.

“I guess my point is, it’s not, if you look at his body of work in this car, regular-season champion the first year of the car, five wins to the playoffs, runs two races, Daytona 500 which we all know is a crapshoot, finishes second at Fontana which is pretty good, has a snowboarding accident, breaks his leg, has maybe not as good a year as we would have liked but still I think the time he was in that car his average finish was third or fourth best of anybody on the track. Now we start this season with this car … fourth in points, one win, three top-5s, average running position before we started was fourth, what am I missing?”

Alan Gustafson disputed the Chase Elliott not running well in Next Gen car theme. This is what he had to say and some of his back-and-forth with the media (fyi, we didn't have microphones so the audio of followups from me and @jeff_gluck comes from my audio recording). pic.twitter.com/e2xXtQoXIK

— Bob Pockrass (@bobpockrass) April 15, 2024

Alan Gustafson and Chase Elliott have won a championship together. They now have 19 wins together in the Cup Series. Gustafson has 39 wins overall as a crew chief in his career. They know what they are doing, and perhaps a few people, me included, forgot those facts.

Recency bias is a hell of a thing. The last year and a half has not been the best for Elliott and the No. 9 team. But now, it seems like they are back on track and ready to repeatedly remind everyone just how good they are.

The Next Gen era has led almost every driver to struggle a bit. Ryan Blaney, Martin Truex Jr., Kevin Harvick, and Brad Keselowski are all champions of the sport who have gone winless for at least one season in the Next Gen era. They were all given, and are currently given, the benefit of the doubt. Chase Elliott deserved the same treatment, but didn’t get it.