Chase Elliott’s No. 9 NAPA Chevrolet at Sonoma Raceway in 2024. Photo: TaurusEmerald / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Everyone at Homestead-Miami Speedway was watching Kyle Larson clinch. The sharper question for Hendrick Motorsports sat farther down the board: how does a car that qualified seventh, scored stage points in both segments and ran all 267 laps end up 22nd? Chase Elliott asked it over his team radio, and the answer matters more than the volume he asked it at.
What the official record confirms
Start with what can be checked. Elliott qualified seventh at 32.603 seconds, finished 10th in Stage 1 and eighth in Stage 2, and took the checkered flag 22nd, on the lead lap. NASCAR’s official results credit him with 19 points. His Hendrick teammates finished third (William Byron), 12th (Larson) and 16th (Alex Bowman).
NASCAR has published two videos about his trouble. One says a drill hose caught under the right-rear tire of the No. 9 Chevrolet and cost him double-digit spots on pit road. The other, posted the next day, plays his team radio as he vents while trying to get clarification on what caused the damage he suffered on pit road, and calls the episode a stackup. Neither description names another car or gives a lap, and I’m not going to fill in what they leave out.
Why “hose” and “stackup” are not the same complaint
Here is my read, and it is an interpretation, not a finding. A hose under a tire is a pit-stop execution and equipment problem, and it lives on the team’s side of the wall. A stackup is traffic: cars bunched in tight stalls, and somebody gets hit. Those lead to very different conversations afterward. One is about a crew’s own process. The other is about everyone else on pit road, and maybe about how NASCAR polices it.
Whether those descriptions cover one moment or two, the published record doesn’t say. An angry driver asking what caused the damage isn’t just venting. He is asking which of those two conversations his team needs to have.
The points ledger
Pit road is expensive even in a race that settled nothing at the top. Elliott entered Sunday 10th in the Chase standings with 2,268 points and left 12th with 2,287, according to the final Chase standings. Austin Cindric (2,263 before the race, 2,306 after) and Bubba Wallace (2,257 before, 2,293 after) both jumped him. Wallace banked 36 points for fifth. Elliott needed 26 to hold his spot, and he got 19.
Seven points is roughly seven finishing positions, a gap a clean night can cover. It is also not proof that the hose or the stackup cost him exactly that. The record doesn’t split his 22nd between what went wrong on pit road and what happened on track.
What it says about Hendrick’s finale
The tidy version of Hendrick’s Sunday is a champion and a podium finisher. Larson’s clinch came when he finished fourth in Stage 1, which ended early on Lap 78 after Chase Briscoe’s engine failed. We broke down how he got to needing only nine points and why all three of his 2026 wins came in the Chase. In his post-race comments Larson thanked his teammates, including “the 9 (Chase Elliott),” for the teamwork behind the title.
The less tidy version is a 22nd-place car and a driver who wants an explanation on the record. It also lands in a strange stretch for Elliott, who recently left the Most Popular Driver ballot. A quiet November would suit him.
What to watch next
Two things would settle this. First, whether NASCAR or Hendrick identifies what happened on pit road: the lap, the cause, and whether the hose and the stackup were the same moment. Second, whether the No. 9 team treats the stop as a process problem, because that is the part it controls.
My take: the most useful part of Elliott’s radio call wasn’t the volume. It was the question. Until someone answers it publicly, “unlucky” is the kindest and least informative label for a seventh-to-22nd night.
Lead image: Chase Elliott’s No. 9 NAPA Chevrolet at Sonoma Raceway in 2024. Photo: TaurusEmerald / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
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