One of NASCAR’s fastest and most popular drivers – Chase Elliott – appreciates slowing things down off the racetrack. One of his favorite ways to do that? Fly fishing.
It’s only healthy for professional athletes to find a hobby outside of their job. Obviously, no one would fault Elliott – the driver of the #9 car for Hendrick Motorsports, the 2020 NASCAR Cup Series champion, and NASCAR’s Most Popular Driver for eight years in a row – for living and breathing NASCAR if he did so.
And he admitted to USA Today that he’s the type of person that can only really focus on one thing at a time… which is why he’s found fly fishing to be so beneficial for him:
“I’m a little bit of a one-track mind. When I’m racing, I’m locked into that. It’s the same with fishing — when I’m out there, that’s where my mind is.”
Where exactly is Chase Elliott when he’s wetting lines? Typically in waterways near Dawsonville, Georgia. The NASCAR driver still calls the north Georgia area home, and living there allows for him to discover rivers and streams that are worthwhile when it comes to fly fishing.
Believe it or not, Elliott believes there are a lot of similarities between racing and fishing:
“People think racing is, you’re just white-knuckling, as hard as you can go all the time, living on the edge. It’s more… you’re thinking about the tiniest sensations. Am I feeling something in the seat, in my feet, in the pedals? It’s all in the tiny stuff that can easily be overlooked.
That’s what makes somebody great, instead of just good. What I enjoy most about a lot of these different activities and sports, including fly-fishing, it’s all in the details. There are a lot of differences, and those differences aren’t very big.”
Maybe besides traveling 200 miles per hour… that seems like a big difference between racing and anything else.
Elliott went on to say that fishing – like racing – was sort of passed down to him. Chase Elliott’s father, Bill, won 44 Cup Series races in his heyday. So obviously, Chase was always interested in racing. But he’s also always had a love and admiration for fishing. He says that one of his dad’s friends, and his uncle, were the ones that got him hooked. Now, all these years later, Chase Elliott is always thinking about his next fishing adventure.
And just as he knows a lot about the details of racing, the 30-year-old is enthralled with everything there is to know about the art of fly fishing:
“It’s about more than just reeling. When you’re trying to get a trout on a fly rod, you’re so mindful not to break him off. You’re dealing with rocks on the bottom of the (river). He’s trying to hide and get behind things. You want to let him have his way a little bit, to not break the tension of the line. But you don’t want him to run off in a corner and rip the line, either.”
Clearly Chase Elliott and his competitive nature isn’t just feared on the racetrack. The driver’s one-track-mindedness translates to success in anything he puts his mind to. The stakes might not be as high when he’s fly fishing, but he clearly approaches the activity with as much passion as he does when he gets behind the wheel.