NASCAR CUP SERIES
ECHOPARK SPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER QUOTES
FEBRUARY 21, 2026
Chase Elliott, driver of the No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet, met with the media onsite at EchoPark Speedway in advance of NASCAR Cup Series qualifying session. The 30-year-old Dawsonville, Georgia, native returns as the track’s most recent winner in NASCAR’s top division.
Media Availability Quotes:
Chase, it’s a home race for you. You took home the trophy last summer here. Just tell us a little bit about what EchoPark Speedway means to you?
“You know, I say it all the time, but I enjoy coming down here. I’m glad we have two races. I think just the vibe is really good. I think a lot of energy is back with the track since they did the reconfiguration. And you know, just talking to a lot of people from around the area, I think they really enjoy coming down here now and camping out and having a lot of fun, especially for the night race.
I know it’s going to be a little cooler than we’d like tomorrow, but still, I think it’ll be a good race. And yeah, for me, it’s nice to have the option to go home. Still have to deal with the Atlanta traffic, but that’s okay. It’s worth it. I always enjoy being here, and hopefully, it’s a good weekend for us.”
The No. 9 team can win anywhere, but particularly on the superspeedways, as they’ve gone for you lately; being in the mix for the win last week and winning here last time out. Where do you feel like you come in here, confidence-wise, that you guys are capable of doing that again?
“Yeah, I feel good. I mean, like I said a lot going into last week, it’s large in part for just being at HMS and the boss’s commitment to wanting to win, right? That leadership trickles down all the way throughout the entire company. From my perspective and any race car driver, you know, no different than when I drove through the tunnel last week, I felt like we had a shot to win. I felt the same way, you know, driving through the tunnel here today. So, I’m always grateful for that. You know, this stuff, narratives can change quick. You can have a bad week and next thing you know, you can come back and have a good week. But just having those opportunities week in and week out are really important to me, and I’m really appreciative of that.
So, from my standpoint, we show up. I know we have a great team, the right prep and the right people on the job, and I know that if I come in and do my part to the ability that I feel like I can, I know we can go out here and have a shot, and that’s really all there is to it.
My confidence in our whole group maintains at a high level each week, and whether we’re coming off a bad week or coming off a good week, I know that we can get ourselves in the right position to go succeed.”
How are you feeling physically after that hit at the end of the day down to DAYTON 500, but also, how are you feeling emotionally processing how close you came just on both those fronts?
“Yeah, definitely just a huge, huge bummer, for sure. You know, obviously the crashing like that’s never fun… don’t get me wrong. But, it’s more just processing the how close we were as a team to win it. That can be a challenging thing, I guess. Both fortunately and unfortunately throughout my career, I have experienced other losses like that… maybe not at Daytona, but you know, certainly close calls. I think you do this stuff long enough and you just understand that it’s never over till it’s over. You know, hindsight’s always 20/20. You look back at the end of that race and run through things that you could have done differently, and certainly wish I had, right? But, you know, when you’re in those moments, you get faced with decision-making time and it happens really quick. And unfortunately, it didn’t work out in our favor. So, just hope we get another chance, at some point down the road. That’s a really tough race to just be in a position for. We kind of found ourselves in a spot to have a shot. Hopefully we get another chance at some point down the road.”
Last week was the debut of the new updated Chevrolet body. Any changes you could really tell in the draft as part of the DAYTONA 500 week that you can use to translate to Atlanta this weekend?
“Yeah, you know, I thought we had a really, a really good week all the way up to the DAYTONA 500, from a balanced standpoint. Throughout the race, I thought there were some things that we could improve upon. So, certainly, I think we challenged all of our guys to try and find a little bit that we could use to make some of those things better for this week.
But there were some high spots. Whichever side of that scenario you were on, whether you were getting pushed or doing the pushing, I thought that we did a better job of that more efficiently, which has been an area of emphasis that we wanted to improve with this new body change. So, I thought we did that well, and I think from now, it’s just like, okay, how do we fine tune our balances and get everything exactly like we want. As a race car driver, you get done with those races and you’re always going to find something to complain about. And some of it probably isn’t even attainable, but I think the more that I lean on those guys and challenge them and say, hey, you know, these are my wish list items, you never know. You might, unless you say something, that’s the only way to get better. So, hopefully we can continue to process all those small details and just make it a bit better, which I think we will.”
Looking ahead to Phoenix in a couple of weeks, NASCAR and INDYCAR are both at the same track on the same weekend. It’s happened before back at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. What do you think that does for motorsports all around the world?
“Yeah, that’s a good question. I honestly don’t know until we go experience it.
(At the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Road Course), I mean, I didn’t think it changed a ton back then, so I don’t know that it’s going to change a lot now. But certainly, it could be a good opportunity for fans to go out and experience both series, if they’re a fan of both. I think a lot of times, you have people that if you are interested in one thing, you’re interested in the other. So, if you have the core fan group that likes them both and find it on one weekend, I think that’s a really good thing, from my perspective. We’re so separate from those guys. Like I know Penske Racing, they have an INYDCAR team, so I could kind of see that being really cool for them because they could go watch their teammates that I’m sure they share meetings and stuff with. But, like for us, I don’t really have direct contact to the INDYCAR world, so we’re pretty disconnected. So, it probably just depends on who you talk to or who you ask.”
The fuel saving and the big pack at Daytona, considering the dynamics of all that, is there any kind of scenario where two or three or four cars could attempt to pull away from that and start their own little group up front? Or is that just not a possibility?
“It’s not possible because you’re relative to the people around you when you’re doing that. So, if one group strikes out and they’re making a bunch of pace, well, you’re just giving a free tow to the people behind. With us drafting in the manner that we are at these places, you either have good track position and you’re probably not so good on fuel, or if you don’t have good track position, you’re really good on fuel. You just don’t want to be in the back of the pack and be, you know, bad and have a long pit stop, right? So, you know, if you are going to be on the worst side of the fuel situation, then you certainly want to have some track position to go with that. It’s really tough when you get yourself in that middle ground because it becomes hard to get out of it. You kind of find yourself in this situation where it’s like, well, I need to save because we want to shorten our pit stop, but then you saving so aggressively, you’re not going to go anywhere on track. And then sometimes, like last week, we got three wide there; everybody’s running part throttle and there was nowhere to go. I think that that’s the challenge of just positioning yourself and being really diligent and executing those cycles well.
But no, to answer your question, I just don’t see that being a possibility. I mean, a group could go do that, but they’re putting themselves at a disadvantage by it, and everyone knows that.”
Since the reconfiguration, this track has been grouped in with Daytona and Talladega as a drafting track. But does it feel kind of the same racing here as at Daytona and Talladega, or is it its own animal?
“There are a lot of similarities. I feel like it’s just kind of a mini speedway. You know, like everything happens a little quicker. The runs are really aggressive. The straightaways, being short like they are, it just seems like things happen fast… like everything is just kind of in double time from speedways. But on the flip side of that, you have less straightaway to build runs, so sometimes the runs aren’t as big as what they would be at Daytona. But again, like the summer race here last year, I mean, the runs were so big, you couldn’t hardly block them, and that was why nobody could hold the lead for more than just a lap or two. I don’t know if that had something to do with it being night and the track being really gripped up. You know, if the sun comes out, does that impact it a little differently? I’m not sure. And then obviously, you know, another six months of age on the racetrack, how does that play into kind of the whole situation? So, I think it’s always a little bit of a moving target, and we’ll just have to get started and assess what that is this time.”
I kind of want to build on what you were talking about a while ago with the new package. When we talked with you in Daytona about it, you had run the qualifying race, but that was half the field. So, when you got into a full 40-car field on Sunday, did it react the same or what? Were there any differences? What were the advantages to it that you did find when you got into the full field?
“You know, the Duels always just have a totally different feel than the big race does, and I think a lot of that probably is because of the full field being there. Just the energy in the pack is always higher, at least after we get done saving fuel and you kind of start racing. When that first group pulls off, it really does get racy. And then at that point, the energy level is just really high. But I think the biggest factor that was different from the Duels to the 500 was that I think it was about the warmest day of the week we had down there last week on Sunday. You know, the sun was out and all those scenarios, I think the track grip level was truthfully just lower than it had been really throughout the whole week, certainly in the racing scenarios, comparing to Thursday night. The lanes started to become really important, like lane choices in the race. I think you guys saw how bad some of us were struggling on the bottom, you know, off of (turn) four in particular. That’s just a really treacherous spot to be.
It’s fun, though, because Daytona’s finally getting some age and some character. It’s hard to sit there and run three wide or really be pushing pace and doing that at the same time. So, it’s changing, for sure. I’m really curious where it goes. Certainly, those daytime races down there are always a little tougher than the rest.”
Did the new Chevrolet package work as well in the full car field? Were you pleased with it with the way it worked?
“Yeah, it was very much as we were expecting, and a lot of similarities from Thursday night. Like I said, I thought the pushing and the getting pushed side of things was a huge improvement for us, and I think from there, it’s just fine-tuning our balance and getting that dialed in exactly like we want. But yes, I do think there were some big positives for us.”
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