Our series of weekly NASCAR driver interviews continues with Chase Elliott, the Hendrick Motorsports rookie who is currently 11th in the Sprint Cup Series standings heading into Saturday night's race at Kansas Speedway.
Q: What is an errand or chore in your daily life people might be surprised to learn you do yourself?
A: Shoot, man. I do my laundry when I’m not at home, and I haven’t been home very much lately. And I go flying when I’m home, so that can be an everyday thing because maintenance to an airplane is a regular thing.
Q: If you could do any race over again, which race would you choose?
A: There are tons of races I’d love to do over. In the past two years, the Road America race last summer sticks out in my mind. Just made a lot of really dumb mistakes and would like to redo it..
You’re so hard on yourself after some of these races though.
No use getting out and lying about it. I just speak what I feel like is the truth.
Q: The longest race of the year is 600 miles. How long of a race could you physically handle without a driver change?
A: I think these guys could make it 1,000 miles. It would be kind of racetrack-dependent, but if it was 1,000 miles at Charlotte, I feel pretty confident everybody could make it just fine.
Q: Let’s say president of NASCAR was an elected position voted on by the drivers — and you decided to run. What would one of your campaign promises be?
A: You’re going to get us in trouble. (Chuckles) Obviously, you want to treat folks fairly and treat them like you’d want to be treated. At the same time, if you’re the president and you’re making those decisions, you have to make them whether people like them or not. You can’t please everybody. Some people may not like that and you’ve just got to get over it.
Q: At the start of this year, exactly 2,900 drivers had ever raced in the Sprint Cup Series. Where do you rank among those 2,900?
A: I’d say close to the bottom. Nah, I don’t know. It’s tough to say. There have been so many guys who raced in this deal. You’re talking generations of drivers and I don’t think it’s fair to rank a guy who races now against a guy who may have raced in the 60s. Those guys went through things back then that we don’t go through now and definitely had things a lot tougher then. I think it’s hard to compare.
Q: What do you think your reputation is — and is that reputation accurate?
A: Man, your questions are tough! I don’t know, that’s not for me to judge, to be honest with you. I don’t know how people view me. At the end of the day, I’m going to try to be me and do whatever I think is right, and however people view that, they have a right to that. I’m not going to lose any sleep over it, regardless.
Q: A famous chef wants you to invest in the new restaurant he’s opening, but he wants you to pick the cuisine. What type of food would your restaurant serve?
A: I would say a Southwestern restaurant. Maybe Mexican food with a little bit of a twist.
Q: What is the most daring thing you’ve done outside of racing?
A: I’ve probably been in some dumb situations snowboarding. I’d say snowboarding in general isn’t a dangerous deal, but you can get yourself into some bad spots. Unfortunately, I have probably been pretty dumb with that in getting off the beaten path. Looking back on it, it probably wasn’t the smartest thing.
Q: In a move to generate more excitement, NASCAR decides in an upcoming race they’re going to require every driver to have a passenger in the car. You get to pick the passenger. Who do you choose?
A: I think I would choose my dad (NASCAR Hall of Famer Bill Elliott). That would be cool. Just to have him there with you racing and being in those positions and him seeing how you face things and seeing how the decisions you make might be different than his, I’d be curious to see how much of that would be the same or different.
He’d be like, “I wouldn’t have done that right there!”
Exactly. I think it’d be good to know and would be interesting.
PHOTOS: Family ties in NASCAR
Q: How often do you talk inside the car without hitting the radio button?
A: I don’t, really.
Q: Who will win the Sprint Cup in 2021?
A: I hope we do, man. If you’re not hoping you can do it yourself, you might as well go do something else.
Q: I’ve been asking each driver to give me a question for the next interview. Last week was Carl Edwards, and his question was: When you dream about racing, do you hear the engine?
A: I don’t. In my dreams of it, I’m thinking more of circumstances and how things play out. So no, no engine noise.
And do you have a question for the next interview? It’s with Ryan Newman.
Yeah. I’d like to know what his key was to winning all the poles he’s won over the years. He’s won a ton of poles and I remember him sitting on the pole just about every week in the early 2000s when Dad was racing for Ray (Evernham). I always thought that was interesting and they were so fast. I’d be curious to know what he does to make that happen.
Follow Gluck on Twitter @jeff_gluck
PHOTOS: Behind the wheel with Chase Elliott
