HMS ace Chase Elliott’s “good start” fuels optimism for Martinsville Cup race 

Chase Elliott will start on the front row for the NASCAR Martinsville Cup Series race. Despite a mediocre start to the 2025 season, he is fueled with optimism for the race up ahead and penned a hopeful message on his Instagram after the qualifying session was done and dusted.

In the six races that will be counted toward the NASCAR Cup Series championship, Elliott has been adrift of his Hendrick Motorsports teammates. While his teammates have locked out the top three spots in the interim standings, he is down in sixth position, behind the Toyotas of Tyler Reddick and Christopher Bell.

Moreover, since the race in Daytona, he has had a solitary start in the top-three (at the Circuit of the Americas), and Elliott has not been able to finish on the podium so far this season. On the contrary, the 29-year-old has had a change of fortunes in Martinsville as he would start the race in P2, ahead of all of his teammates and with a clear shot at getting back on the podium.

Happy with his qualifying time of 19.735s, a mere two-hundredths of a second behind Christopher Bell, Chase Elliott deemed it to be a "good start" to the Martinsville weekend and captioned the post (via Instagram/@ChaseElliott9):

"Good start to the weekend. Rolling off P2 in Martinsville tomorrow."

Chase Elliott has a solitary win under his belt in the past two seasons and has often struggled in comparison to his teammates.

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Hendrick Motorsports opens up on Chase Elliott's struggles so far

Chase Elliott - Source: Imagn

The 2020 Cup Series champion has not been able to leave a mark on the NASCAR field over the past few seasons. However, he is still a reliable driver in whom Hendrick Motorsports have invested a lot of time.

Though HM would want him to perform at par with his teammates, they understand the intricacies of the intra-team dynamics. Reflecting on the situation at hand, HM Vice-chairman Jeff Gordon said (via Motorsports Wire):

"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. I think the last couple of weeks probably were a little bit frustrating for them.

"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 Gustafson], [Chase Elliott]. 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."

Meanwhile, Bell qualified on pole for the race and will have three HM drivers lined up behind him for the start of the race in Martinsville.