Chase Elliott’s Atlanta update: HMS slam the culprit that almost ruined the NASCAR champion’s home race

Chase Elliott's #9 Chevrolet Camaro ran among the frontrunners at his home track, the Atlanta Motor Speedway, however, the cascading effect of Chase Briscoe and Ricky Stenhouse Jr.'s contact collected the Hendrick Motorsports star's NextGen car. The result forced Elliott's ride to slam onto the outside wall and wiggle on the top lane before colliding again, with Corey LaJoie and Brad Keselowski.

Chase Elliott entered the pits running in ninth position on Lap 137, but merely 12 laps later, the misery struck his Chevy, nearly ending his 400-mile battle.

The sight of NASCAR's seven-time Most Popular Driver getting careened onto the wall didn't sit well with the HMS crew. Following this, Trey Poole, Elliott's spotter, slammed #47 driver Stenhouse Jr. for derailing the #9 Chevy dominance.

"The 47 put us in the f----g wall," Poole said via Jeff Gluck.

Elliott's right-hand man, Alan Gustafson, agreed to what Poole said, though he wasn't at the spotter's helm from where things don't go unnoticed.

"Sounds about right," Gustafson said.

The 2020 Cup Series champion chimed in on the radio, updating about what Stenhouse Jr.'s actions have propelled into.

"Bent that toe link and I couldn't get it straight," Chase Elliott said.

Nonetheless, Elliott's crew repaired the #9 NAPA Chevrolet. It passed the minimum speed required, confirming the homeboy's return to the superspeedway. It's worth mentioning that had the HMS driver been involved in a worse wreck, he might've never returned to the track.

Chase Elliott made his feelings clear about the forceful situation upon drivers amid the rise of road courses on NASCAR's schedule

Since NASCAR's first street race at the Chicago Street Circuit in 2023, the sanctioning body has been heavily inclined to provide more road course races on the roster. One of the biggest factors behind the drastic change is the feedback received from the fans.

Though NASCAR is traditionally tied to oval racing on superspeedways, short tracks, dirt tracks, and more, the recent surge of road courses has resulted in a mixed palette of tracks throughout the season.

That being said, Chase Elliott highlighted that drivers would have to sharpen their road course racing skills as performing poorly in six races will undoubtedly impact the standings.

"The road course thing — in the past, I would agree that it was kind of an outlier. Well now, we have 15 of them (6 in Cup), it seems like, so they kind of matter, too. It used to be that you could get away with just not being a road racer for two weeks a year, and it didn’t really matter because it was in the summer. If you ran good, great. And if you didn’t, no big deal, right? Where now, you have so many of them so you kind of have to embrace. I would argue that that one matters, as well,” Chase Elliott said via Speedway Digest.

The Circuit of The Americas, Chicago Street Circuit, Sonoma Raceway, Watkins Glen, Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez in Mexico, and the Charlotte ROVAL are the six road course venues on NASCAR's 2025 Cup Series calendar.