“This should’ve been a penalty”: Insider backs NASCAR punishing Chase Elliott in Brickyard 400

NASCAR insider Jordan Bianchi has concurred with the officials' decision to slap Chase Elliott with a penalty for violating the blend line rule. The Hendrick Motorsports driver's #9 Chevy blended above the second white line in Turn 2 while coming off the pit road on Lap 25, with all four wheels on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway's asphalt. As a result, the HMS driver had to serve a pass-through penalty in the pits, and exit the lane a lap down.

The Brickyard 400's return to the 2.5-mile oval witnessed Kyle Larson grabbing the inside lane of the front row as Brad Keselowski coasted to the pit lane for fuel. Even though Ryan Blaney's #12 Ford was the control car, being on the outside lane of the Oval, which has no elevation on the straightaway but a banking of 9.2 degrees on the turns, that did not benefit the defending Cup Series champion. Larson was eventually crowned the winner.

However, Larson's teammate and regular season championship contender Chase Elliott's weekend came apart with his blend line rule breach on Lap 25 pitstop. The night before the 167-lap dash kicked off, NASCAR shared a memo to the teams to clear any confusion about the pit road acceleration lane rule.

The Georgian and Brad Keselowski got into trouble as their #9 Chevy and #6 Ford respectively went beyond the acceleration lane. However, Chase Elliott was displeased with the penalty and lashed expletive bombs as, according to him, he followed the sheet to the T.

Jordan Bianchi, however, didn't agree with the 2020 Cup Series champion's take and backed NASCAR's decision to give the former a pass-through pit road penalty.

"The only two were penalized, Brad Keselowski and Chase Elliott. And they both kind of said the same thing that they interpreted it the wrong way. But again, if this was so confusing, you would think by nature that more drivers would have violated this. What Elliott did was pretty egregious. It is very obvious that this should have been a penalty," Bianchi said via Dirty Mo Media on X (0.15).

"I mean what the f*ck?"- Chase Elliott was furious and in disbelief when he learned about the penalty

With the 2024 Texas Motor Speedway win, seven top-5s, and 11 top-10s, Chase Elliott is placed second in the regular season standings and trails leader Kyle Larson by 10 points. The #9 Chevy driver kicked off his 167-lap run from third place but after the Lap 25 blend line rule chaos, Elliott returned to the pitlane on Lap 30 to serve his penalty.

The 29-year-old wasn't happy with NASCAR's decision on his pit exit. He voiced f-bombs and argued about not seeing "line" in the memo, given the day before, but "racing surface."

"I mean what the f*ck?! [...] do exactly what they f*cking tell us to do. They didn't say line, they said racing surface, so you tell me how the F*CK I was on the racing surface," Elliott said via Davey Segal on X.

Because of the penalty, Elliott registered a 17th-place finish in Stage 1. He rebounded to emerge runner-up in the second stage, but again lost several track positions in the final stage for his 11th top-10 finish this season.