The 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season is still over a month away but you can go ahead and plan for one award recipient come this time next year.
Chase Elliott will win his eighth consecutive NMPA Most Popular Driver Award.
It’s an award that has run in streaks and has been carried by two families for the past 33 years. Bill Elliott, the father of Chase, won the award from 1991-to-2000 and again in 2002 with Dale Earnhardt Sr. posthumously receiving it in 2001. His son, Dale Earnhardt Jr. received it every season from 2003 until his retirement in 2017.
Now Elliott has won it every year since, and he says it’s a testament to his entire family in terms of the contributions to his father and uncle Ernie, a legendary engine builder behind the early success of ‘Awesome Bill from Dawsonville.’
At the same time, Elliott recognizes that he has earned fans independent of those he inherited and he doesn’t take any of them for granted.
“I’m never surprised by their dedication or support,” Elliott said at the NASCAR Awards event earlier in the month. “You know, that’s something I have witnessed firsthand from my dad’s career and now witnessed it for a number of years in my own. So no, I don’t have question their dedication.
“At the same time, I would feel the same way about them if someone else won the award. Does this last forever? I don’t know. It’s got to end at some point, right?”
That begs the question — what does someone like Kyle Larson have to do to overtake his Hendrick Motorsports teammate?
“I don’t know … get more votes I guess,” Larson said dryly.
“He definitely has a large fanbase in NASCAR for sure. It’s cool to see. My fanbase has grown a lot getting to do all the things I’ve done the last couple of years He usually wins by quite a bit as I understand it but you never know.”
Ryan Blaney of Team Penske feels pretty confident it’s not happening until Elliott clocks out for the final time.
“I don’t know what it’s going to take and I don’t know that it’s going to happen,” Blaney said. “I’ll be really excited to see who that next guy is. I’ll have to peek my head back in to see what that is. It’ll be a huge accomplishment.
“When he retires, I’ll probably be retired too. I don’t know but it’s going to be tough take him off the top spot.”
Larson and Blaney were both in the top-5 alongside Martin Truex Jr. and Kyle Busch. Truex is retiring and Busch is on the backside of his career. Blaney is a year older than Elliott.
There isn’t another Earnhardt or Elliott immediately coming up the latter either. Wyatt Miller, the son of Kelley Earnhardt Miller and LW Miller, is 12-years-old so maybe there’s a runway for both Ellliott and Blaney to race another decade in time for the family streak to continue.
Sometimes, Tyler Reddick hears the crowd and wonders but he is quickly reminded of the continued status quo.
“When you’re at the race track, I always think, hey maybe there’s a chance,” Reddick said. “I don’t know though. If anyone has a chance, it’s Kyle and Ryan but right now, it’s Chase’s award to lose.”
In this case, is Chase at least aiming to beat his father with 17 of these?
“No, no, nothing like that,” Elliott said. “I learned a lot from him, how he treated his fans, and just people in general. I don’t think of it like that, the number of times I win this, but I just think a lot about how much he made me aware that this sport is an escape for some people, sports fans.
“Dad was always big on, ‘if I could make one fan’s day today, then I did a good job. It’s really important to recognize, for me, my ability to change someone’s day or leave a serious impact. He’s done a good job of helping me understand that over the years.”
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.
