Jeff Gordon reacts to Chase Elliott’s struggles in 2025 season

The first six races of the season for Chase Elliott have not been bad, but is there reason to worry? Jeff Gordon doesn’t think so. With a stable of four highly talented NASCAR drivers, not everyone can be a winner every week.

At Homestead-Miami, Kyle Larson, Alex Bowman, and William Byron were all great. They all looked like they had cars capable of winning the race if one thing or another went their way.

For Chase Elliott, things were different. He finished P18 and was really a non-factor in the race. Again.

Jeff Gordon addressed the “struggles” after the race at Homestead. A P18 finish for the No. 9 team. It is hard to call it “struggles” because Elliott hasn’t finished outside of the top 20 all season long and is 6th in points this year.

“Similar to the 48 [team of Alex Bowman]. I feel like they came into the season with a lot of momentum as well and started strong, meaning just you could just sense that they’ve got a lot of confidence and coming to the racetrack ready to go,” Gordon said about Elliott and his team. The Hendrick Vice Chairman went on.

“I think the last couple of weeks probably were a little bit frustrating for them. I think today is probably going to be a little bit frustrating for them, too. But they’re a really solid team. Just a lot of depth and a lot of belief in one another.”

Here’s the tell-tale sign things are not going well – Elliott has only led two laps in the first six races. Byron has led for 111, Larson for 92, and Bowman has led for 62 laps so far in 2025.

Zane Smith, Todd Gilliland, Carson Hocevar, and Ty Dillon all have more laps led this season. Corey LaJoie has TWO starts this season and even HE has more laps led.

“You know, you’ve got to get through the rocky times,” Gordon continued. “I think hopefully some of their better tracks and better performances…Again, it’s a high standard at Hendrick, what everybody brings, like the 5 team did today. And so a lot of times you’re really measuring yourself against the best that there are out there, and a lot of times that’s right in your own stable.

“So if you’re not achieving what you want to achieve, then you know you’ve got to go to work, and you know that you’re not meeting expectations. So those guys have high expectations, Alan, Chase. It’s not unusual for them to get down a little bit on, ‘Hey, this isn’t good enough,’ but I’ve seen them react really well and positively to that too.”

Chase Elliott and Alan Gustafson have to get to the front of these races. Whatever is lacking from that car has to be found. We see Kyle Larson and William Byron and now Alex Bowman getting to the front and leading laps.

When are we going to see that same fire and speed from Elliott again? It either has to be the car, the driver, or the crew chief at this point. Which is it?