Chase Elliott is unfazed about being the NASCAR Cup Series points leader.
The Hendrick Motorsports driver comes off unfazed about most things, of course. Elliott is a show up, do the job, and worry about himself type of personality, and as he said at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, when it comes to the point leader, he doesn’t need a sheet of paper to tell him his No. 9 team has been doing a good job.
He’s also not diminishing the position he’s in as the regular season winds down. The driver who sits atop the championship standings after the finale in Daytona will be awarded 15 playoff points. Looking at the provisional playoff grid, Elliott would benefit the most from those.
“Don’t take what I said (about being the points leader) wrong because, yes, it is important, and yes, we want to win those 15 points,” Elliott said. “That’s getting three wins, so it’s a huge deal. The point I’m making is I live it and I see it; we work together on a day-to-day basis, and I know everyone is doing a really good job. I don’t need the points to tell me that.
“We want those bonus points to have, especially only having one win. The extra points would be extremely valuable for us and we would love to get another win or two before the end of the regular season, too. It’s not just, ‘We’re happy with one.’ We want to get the regular-season deal. We want it all like everybody does. That’s the goal.”
Elliott broke through for his first victory since the spring of last year in late June at EchoPark Speedway. Since the beginning of June (a stretch that covers the last eight Cup Series races), Elliott has gone from fifth to first in the standings on the strength of that victory and five top-10 finishes.
Hendrick Motorsports sits first, second, and third in points. A Hendrick Motorsports driver has led the point standings for 19 of 21 races between William Byron, Kyle Larson, and now Elliott.
There are 12 drivers, including Elliott, who have clinched a berth in the postseason. As it stands, Elliott and his six playoff points find themselves well behind the likes of Denny Hamlin, Kyle Larson and Christopher Bell, who are well into double-digits.
Tyler Reddick is the most recent example of the value of playoff points. Reddick won the 2024 regular season title but stumbled through the first two rounds with one top-10 finish and an average finish of 18.16. However, his bonus points helped carry him through into the Round of 8, and after finishing 35th in the first race of the round, he won the second race to lock himself into the championship four.
Elliott is well aware of how far playoff points can carry a driver once in the postseason.
“They’d be huge, for sure,” he said. “I’ve been on both sides of the coin. We’ve had years where I feel like we’ve not had many playoff points, and we’ve had a couple of years where we’ve had a bunch. I promise it is a lot easier when you have a lot in the bank.
“It’s a much better way to go about it, the way the system is [with] so many things being out of your control. It’s nice to have something to fall back on. Of course, we want it all.”