CONCORD, N.C. -- Chase Elliott is returning to racing less than a month after he won the NASCAR Cup Series championship. The driver of the No. 9 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 1LE will participate in the 53rd Snowball Derby on Dec. 6 at Five Flags Speedway in Pensacola, Florida.
Elliott signed up for the derby a couple of months before he secured the championship. Even though he won a title in the highest level of racing, Elliott isn’t expecting Super Late Model racing event to be a walk in the park.
“I think it probably will be more of a kick back to reality,” Elliott said of the derby. “Any time you go and enter somebody else’s playground, it’s going to be hard. Having been out of that for so long, and as a team, the guys who help me on that deal, none of us have been doing it for a few years, so I think it’s going to be tough.”
Elliott has participated in the Snowball Derby seven times with his last race coming in 2015. He won the 2015 event and won in 2011, when he was just 16.
Despite the five-year gap between his last Snowball Derby and Sunday’s event, Elliott said he expects the race to be “more normal” than this year’s Cup Series season. The coronavirus pandemic halted the 2020 calendar for over two months before NASCAR reworked its schedule to accommodate all 36 races. The changes included the elimination of practice and qualifying sessions before each race, which forced the Cup Series drivers to take their first laps at a track during the warmups.
“The Snowball will be more normal than the Cup races because we can go practice and it will be a kind of normal race weekend,” Elliott said. “I haven’t been in those cars in a long time, so the practice will be good for me. I haven’t worked on one in years; I’m glad it will be more normal than the Cup stuff.”
Fans can see Elliott in action on Sunday, Dec. 6 at 3 p.m. ET. The race, along with events leading up it, will be broadcast on Speed51. Fans can sign up for access to the stream here.
If fans use promo code CHASE when signing up, $5 will be donated to the Chase Elliott Foundation and they will receive $5 off the four-day ticket, Saturday ticket and Sunday ticket packages.