Chase Elliott’s New Hampshire Weekend Ends in Frustration

Chase Elliott entered New Hampshire Motor Speedway with momentum on his side after a crucial top-five finish at Richmond the previous weekend. Instead, the Hendrick Motorsports driver left Loudon with another frustrating result and far more questions than answers.

Elliott finished 25th in the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series Dollar Tree 301, one lap down after starting 29th. The result was particularly disappointing because the No. 9 team had shown promising speed during practice, where Elliott recorded the seventh-fastest lap.

The problem was not simply the final position.

Throughout the 301-lap race, Elliott and crew chief Alan Gustafson struggled to find a setup capable of giving the No. 9 Chevrolet the balance and grip it needed. Elliott repeatedly reported handling problems, including a car that was difficult to rotate and a lack of rear grip that prevented him from making meaningful progress through the field.

And with the regular season now approaching its conclusion, the timing could hardly be more uncomfortable.

Elliott has already secured his place in The Chase, NASCAR’s returning 10-race championship format for 2026. But qualifying for the postseason is no longer the only objective. The bigger question is whether the No. 9 team can rediscover the speed it showed earlier in the year before the championship fight truly begins.

The 25th-Place Finish Tells Only Part of the Story

On paper, 25th place looks like a straightforward bad result.

The circumstances make it more significant.

Elliott qualified 29th at New Hampshire despite having the seventh-fastest practice lap. Once the race began, the No. 9 Chevrolet struggled with its handling almost immediately. Elliott finished the opening stage 23rd and remained caught in traffic for much of the afternoon.

At one point, Elliott described the car as “lazy changing direction,” a complaint that immediately highlighted the difficulty his team was having with the balance of the Chevrolet.

The team attempted multiple adjustments.

Tire strategy, air-pressure changes and handling adjustments were all used in an effort to move Elliott forward. The car occasionally showed flashes of improvement, but the gains were never sustained long enough to turn the afternoon around.

During the second stage, Elliott also reported that the right rear did not want to stick, another indication that the team had not found the grip necessary to attack the corners aggressively.

By the final stage, the No. 9 team was effectively fighting simply to regain track position.

Elliott managed to move forward at times, but the notoriously difficult passing conditions at New Hampshire made the task even harder. He eventually crossed the finish line 25th, ending a day that had started with considerably more promise.

The result also dropped Elliott to eighth in the standings, although his position in The Chase was already secure.

Why Fans Have a Reason to Be Concerned

There is an important distinction between a single poor result and a performance trend.

For Elliott, the New Hampshire race came immediately after a Richmond weekend that appeared to signal a potential turnaround.

At Richmond, Elliott finished fifth, his first top-10 finish in nine races, according to Hendrick Motorsports’ coverage. The result also helped him formally lock up his position in The Chase.

That performance mattered because Elliott had started 2026 strongly.

He opened the season with two victories, and NASCAR’s official driver statistics list him with two wins, six top-five finishes and nine top-10s for the season.

But the middle portion of the season became considerably more inconsistent.

NASCAR noted before New Hampshire that Elliott had gone through a difficult stretch following his strong opening to the year, including nine races without a top-10 finish before Richmond.

That makes the New Hampshire result more than just an isolated disappointment.

Richmond offered evidence that the No. 9 team might finally be turning things around.

New Hampshire immediately challenged that assumption.

Instead of following up the fifth-place finish with another strong performance, Elliott struggled to generate speed and spent much of the race outside the competitive group.

That is precisely the kind of inconsistency that can become dangerous when the championship format places an enormous premium on performance over a limited number of races.

Elliott Has Already Shown He Can Win in 2026

It would be wrong, however, to suggest that Elliott’s 2026 season has been a disaster.

It hasn’t.

Far from it.

Elliott already has victories at Martinsville and Texas this season, demonstrating that the No. 9 team has the ability to produce race-winning speed. NASCAR reported that Elliott’s Martinsville victory came after a strategic call by Gustafson helped him gain track position late in the race.

That is what makes the recent inconsistency so difficult to evaluate.

The speed has not completely disappeared.

The No. 9 team has proven that it can build a winning car.

The bigger problem appears to be finding that level of performance consistently across different track types and race conditions.

That issue is particularly important now because the Chase is approaching.

Elliott will not need to dominate every race to win the championship. But he will need to avoid weekends where the team cannot compete for meaningful points.

A 25th-place finish at New Hampshire is exactly the kind of result that can create pressure if similar performances continue once the championship points reset.

Hendrick Motorsports Is Facing a Bigger Challenge

Elliott’s struggles cannot be separated entirely from the wider situation at Hendrick Motorsports.

The organization remains one of NASCAR’s strongest teams, but 2026 has not produced the same level of sustained dominance that fans have become accustomed to seeing from the four-car operation.

NASCAR recently pointed out that Hendrick’s numbers were significantly behind its pace from the same point in 2025, including fewer wins, fewer top-five finishes, fewer top-10s and substantially fewer laps led.

The organization has still produced important results.

Elliott has two victories.

Kyle Larson remains a major championship threat.

William Byron has continued to score strong finishes.

And Richmond provided a particularly encouraging weekend when all four Hendrick drivers finished inside the top 10.

But New Hampshire immediately brought the uncertainty back.

Larson finished fifth at Loudon while Elliott finished 25th and Byron finished 30th, according to the race results.

That contrast is impossible to ignore.

One Hendrick car was fighting near the front.

Another was buried a lap down.

For Elliott, that creates an obvious question heading into Daytona.

The Message Elliott’s Performance Is Sending

The most concerning part of the New Hampshire weekend is not necessarily what happened on Sunday.

It is what happens next.

Elliott now heads toward Daytona International Speedway, where the regular season will conclude on August 29.

Daytona is notoriously unpredictable, and Elliott will have little opportunity to use the race as a conventional test of the No. 9 team’s true championship pace.

Instead, the real evaluation begins once The Chase starts.

That makes the upcoming period extremely important for Gustafson and the No. 9 team.

They need to determine why the car that showed speed in practice at New Hampshire could not translate that pace into race performance.

They need to understand why Elliott struggled with rear grip.

They need to find a more consistent balance.

And most importantly, they need to make sure the Richmond performance was not simply a temporary correction.

That is where Elliott’s situation becomes particularly intriguing.

He is not entering the postseason as a driver without speed.

He is entering it as a driver whose team has repeatedly shown flashes of championship-level performance but has struggled to maintain them.

Elliott’s Own Standards Make the Situation Even More Interesting

Anyone familiar with Elliott knows that he has never been particularly interested in celebrating mediocre results.

Even during the early stages of his Cup career, Elliott established a reputation for demanding more from himself and his team.

That mentality has remained a defining part of his career.

In 2025, after missing out on a Championship 4 position despite finishing third at Martinsville, Elliott acknowledged that his team simply had not been good enough to accomplish what it needed to accomplish.

That mindset is important when evaluating his current situation.

A driver who is satisfied simply to make The Chase would approach the next few weeks differently.

Elliott is not in that position.

He is a former NASCAR Cup Series champion, a two-time winner in 2026 and one of the most accomplished drivers of his generation. NASCAR lists him with 23 career Cup Series victories, including his 2020 championship season.

For someone with those expectations, finishing 25th after struggling for much of the afternoon is never going to feel acceptable.

The Good News for Elliott

Despite all the concerns, there is still a major reason for optimism.

Elliott has already secured his position in The Chase.

That gives the No. 9 team something incredibly valuable: time to focus on performance rather than simply survival.

There is no need to panic about qualifying for the championship field.

The objective now is different.

It is about finding the speed required to contend when the points reset.

The 2026 Chase will feature 10 races, and the new format rewards consistent accumulation of points over the postseason rather than the elimination-style structure NASCAR used previously.

That could actually suit Elliott.

Hendrick Motorsports noted earlier this year that Elliott’s consistency has historically been one of his greatest strengths. During the Next Gen era, his average finish has ranked among the best in the series.

So while the 25th-place finish at New Hampshire is disappointing, it does not erase what Elliott and the No. 9 team have accomplished this year.

It simply raises the pressure to fix the weaknesses before the championship battle begins.

Daytona Could Change the Conversation Again

The next race will provide another twist.

Daytona is not a conventional intermediate or short-track test. The draft, positioning, strategy and late-race chaos can completely change the outcome.

A strong finish would certainly restore confidence.

But even a poor result at Daytona would not necessarily prove that the No. 9 team is incapable of competing for the championship.

The real test begins after the regular season.

That is when Elliott and Gustafson will need to demonstrate that the issues seen at New Hampshire were understood and corrected.

If they can do that, the 25th-place finish may eventually become little more than an uncomfortable footnote.

If they cannot, however, the result could become an early warning sign.

The Question Now Hanging Over Chase Elliott

There is no evidence that Elliott’s championship hopes are collapsing.

There is also no reason to pretend the New Hampshire result was meaningless.

Both realities can exist at the same time.

The No. 9 team has won twice in 2026.

Elliott has already qualified for The Chase.

Hendrick Motorsports remains loaded with championship-caliber personnel.

But the team also just watched Elliott finish 25th at a track where he struggled to find the necessary balance, while another Hendrick driver finished inside the top five.

That inconsistency is the story.

And now the pressure shifts directly onto Elliott, Gustafson and the entire No. 9 organization.

The message heading into the final regular-season race is simple.

The speed has to come back — and it has to come back quickly.

Elliott does not need to prove that he can win.

He already has.

What he needs to prove is that the No. 9 team can put together 10 consecutive championship-level opportunities when the stakes become highest.

That is why the 25th-place finish at New Hampshire has attracted so much attention.

It was not just a bad number beside Elliott’s name.

It was another reminder that, despite two victories and a secured place in The Chase, the No. 9 team still has important questions to answer.

And with the championship fight now only days away, there is very little time left to find those answers.