Matt Weaver
There is still a tremendous amount of work to be done for Chase Elliott to return to form in 2024 but he has already accomplished one goal that he failed to reach in 2023.
He made it to Las Vegas Motor Speedway without breaking any limbs.
“We were joking about that coming in here,” Elliott said on Saturday during a media scrum. “I was telling (Hendrick Motorsports president Jeff) Andrews that we’ve improved from where we were last year because we made it to the airplane, coming out here.
“Definitely was no fun and glad we made the trip this time and hopefully we can improve on our troubles more than anything.”
Elliott fractured the tibia in his left leg in a snowboarding accident on March 3 of last year and missed six races as a result. But Elliott wasn’t particularly competitive upon his return either, failing to win a single race, and posting a 14.5 average finish.
Is he feeling any pressure?
“I look at things internally more than anything,” Elliott said. “We have high expectations of ourselves. I have high expectations of myself. Personally, I want to perform better than I have been. I don’t think it’s so much that as I want to meet my own expectations.
“I want to do the job that I think I am capable of doing. I have a really strong team and I want to make sure that we’re capitalizing on a good group of people. For me, it’s really about that more than anything.”
And that means overcoming a track that has not treated him well over the NextGen era, despite Hendrick Motorsports having speed across the entire organization.
“They’ve run really well out here the whole time, really, since I’ve been at HMS,” Elliott said. “It’s been a really solid track for Hendrick as a whole.
“We’ve certainly dug into every avenue, trying to be better, and I think a lot of it falls on me and how I attack the race track and how I drive the car to get it what I need it to do more than anything.
“We put a lot of effort into this place; it’s been our worse track, I would say, hands down over the past two years. A lot of emphasis and effort has gone into this and I’m hopeful it pays off to at least improve from where we’ve been and if we can have a shot to win or at least drive into the top5, that would be awesome. It’s about finding some improvement, finding a better path more than anything right now.”
Elliott was 16th fastest in practice and will start from 11th but did show long run speed, posting the sixth fastest 10 lap average and fifth fastest 5 lap average on Saturday.
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.
