"It was really impressive to watch": Chase Elliott comments on Tony Stewart's legacy as a team owner in NASCAR

Chase Elliott recently shared his candid thoughts on Stewart Haas Racing's legacy in NASCAR. The team, co-owned by Tony Stewart and Gene Haas, announced earlier this year that it'd be closing shop at the end of 2024.

The SHR came into existence in 2002 and since Stewart joined as a driver and an owner in 2009, it has competed in over 700 Cup races with 70 wins. The team also won three championships, two in the Cup Series and one in the Xfinity Series.

The legacy of the team that came into existence in its current form less than two decades ago speaks for itself. And recently, it was NASCAR's most popular driver Chase Elliott, who gave his take on the same.

"My respect and admiration for Tony (Stewart) I think kind of raises my thought of that company and just what they did. I’ve always gotten along really well with him; looked up to him as a kid when I was watching him race. When I look at what they did through the course of however many years it’s been. It was really impressive to watch because at that point in time, there wasn’t a lot of driver-owners that had had success in the sport," Elliott described. [11:00]

The #9 driver pointed to the fact that Tony Stewart stuck out his neck many times in NASCAR for his team. He speculated that being a driver and an owner can lead to that outcome, claiming that it could also be a factor behind their success.

"You hate to see him go, just because I think the overall health of our sport wants and needs healthy race teams. They’ve been a healthy race team and I hate to see that. But I think they’ve had a solid legacy. Anytime you have something end like that, it’s really easy to forget all the good that went on and just look at what’s happened in the past year or whatever," he added.

Chase Elliott mentioned that he admires SHR's efforts to go and be what they've become, which to him, is a 'top-tier team in NASCAR', a difficult thing to achieve which they did.

"He was such a good guy": Chase Elliott admires Tony Stewart as an aspiring racecar driver

During an appearance on The Pure Athlete podcast last year, Chase Elliott revealed Tony Stewart's impact on his life.

The #9 driver claimed that Stewart was the first person he finally manned up enough to say that he admired him.

"He (Tony Stewart) was such a good guy, he was so good with kids, so funny because I see some of the same way he has treated Keelan, Kevin Harvick’s son on pit road and around the race track and I’m like, man, that’s exactly how I remember my childhood being with Tony too," Elliott remarked.

The 2020 Cup champion added that he got a chance to race against the driver he admired growing up. He recalled that the last year of Tony Stewart in the Cup Series as a full-time, 2016, also happened to be his first year as a full-timer. This was something Elliott deemed, 'a pretty cool moment' for him.