Chase Elliott has had a stranglehold on NASCAR’s Most Popular Driver award – until now.
The Hendrick Motorsports driver has won the fan-voted accolade for the last eight years but has removed himself from voting for this year’s award.
His selfless gesture is designed to pave the way for the late Kyle Busch to win the prestigious prize, and is a repeat of what his legendary father, Bill Elliott, did back in 2001 after the death of Dale Earnhardt.
Seven-time champion Earnhardt had famously never won the award, which was dominated by his rival, ‘Million Dollar’ Bill, winning it 15 times between 1984 and 2000.
However, when Earnhardt was killed in a crash in the 2001 Daytona 500, the first race of the year, Elliott withdrew from the ballot to encourage his fanbase to vote for Earnhardt, who posthumously won.
This year, his son, Chase, 30, has done the same in a bid to honor two-time Cup Series champion Busch after his shocking death earlier this year.
Chase Elliott has won Most Popular Driver since 2018 but has pulled out of this year’s vote
NASCAR drivers are urging fans to vote for the late Kyle Busch to posthumously win the award
With voting for the award now open online, Elliott’s name is absent from the list. Other drivers, including Elliott’s teammate, Kyle Larson, have openly encouraged their fans to vote for Busch.
Carson Hocevar, a breakthrough star tipped by many to challenge Elliott’s crown before Busch’s sudden passing, also posted on social media telling his fans: ‘To my fans, don’t vote for me. Vote for Kyle Busch. Thanks.’
While Elliott quietly performed the gesture of withdrawing from the ballot, he indicated he was considering doing so and that he wanted Busch to win shortly after his death.
‘I just feel like he deserves to win the award, truthfully,’ Elliott said in May. ‘I just think it’s one of those things that Kyle is a guy who really deserves an award like that.
He’s a guy that’s had a lot of fans throughout the course of his career. I know the boos, and it was fun, but a lot of supporters, a lot of really passionate fans.
‘Just feel like he deserves to win the award, truthfully. I obviously don’t know what’s going to happen this year, but I just want to throw my support to make sure that I didn’t get in the way of that.’
Elliott has won the award every year since 2018. Before that, Dale Earnhardt Jr won 15 times in a row before Elliott took over the dominance after he retired.
Earnhardt Jr. weighed in on the issue on his podcast after Busch’s death, stating: ‘One of the conversations that’s happened since he passed has been about Most Popular Driver.
Bill Elliott, Chase’s dad, withdrew from the ballot in 2001 after the death of Dale Earnhardt
Elliott spoke publicly in May about his desire to see Busch win the Most Popular Driver award
‘Chase Elliott was so gracious in talking about that and saying he’d love to see Kyle win it. It’s kind of crazy because, as much as Kyle wore that black hat, he didn’t really love it.
‘Human nature is that you want to be loved. I think he believed that, with everything he had accomplished and how successful he’d been, people would eventually get behind him. It was starting to happen more as he got older, and I think that’s part of the natural cycle for a successful, long-term Hall of Fame driver.
‘I’d love to see the fans rally behind him and vote him Most Popular Driver because, I’m telling you, he’d get a kick out of that. He talked about it more than people would ever know.’
Voting runs from Friday through Nov. 9, the day after the Cup Series season finale, with the winner revealed Nov. 10.
