CONCORD, N.C. -- Chase Elliott took to the Circuit of the Americas, a new venue for the NASCAR Cup Series in the 2021 season, as part of the Goodyear Tire Test on Tuesday.
Elliott, who has a successful background at road courses, believes this course will be just as exciting as any of the other venues on the Cup Series schedule this season.
“The track’s fun. It has a lot of character to it, I feel like,” Elliott said of the Austin, Texas, venue. “I’ve never been here, never seen it before in person before today and really haven’t watched a ton of races here, so it’s really been a pretty steep learning curve for me, trying to piece together all the different parts of the track and understand where you need to be good and how to make it flow. Trying to learn, but it’s been fun.”
With seven road course races on the 2021 Cup Series schedule, Elliott hopes fans enjoy the unique style of racing drivers have to adopt to become accustomed to the twists and turns from these venues.
“It’s just a different type of racing,” Elliott said. “We’re not going near as fast as those cars do, but I feel like the product and the competitiveness on track and us being able to race around each other is much more feasible with the speeds we’re going and how big and heavy these cars are.”
Leaning into his experience on road courses, Elliott also looks to his father, NASCAR Hall of Famer Bill Elliott, for advice on how to make better runs on track.
“Honestly, I’ve talked to my dad more about road-course racing than anybody,” said Elliott. “He was, I feel like, a really good road course racer, very underrated, throughout his career, so he’s been helpful probably more than anybody else over there.”
Winning four of the last five points-paying Cup Series at road courses, Elliott and the No. 9 crew will continue to push the limit to maintain a high level of success on the new track.
“They’ve had fast cars to drive, so the only way to continue that is to just keep pushing forward and keep doing better – everybody on our team to keep pushing each other, me doing better behind the wheel, find that extra little bit in the car and try to take it to the next level,” Elliott said.
Fans can see Elliott and the No. 9 team in action at Circuit of the Americas on May 23 on FS1.