Chase Elliott was a bit confused about his chances of winning the Cup Series championship this year; however, Rick Hendrick’s close aide, who has been with the team much longer, has a different perspective on his future, even with the Toyota dominance.

Elliott chasing the championship in 2026?

“They don’t need anything, they’re there. I think this team is there, I think it’s been there,” said Chad Knaus. Having been a part of Hendrick Motorsports since 1993 as one of the most successful crew chiefs in the sport, Knaus is well-versed with the workings of teams, and he feels that the #9 is doing just fine to win the title.

“Alan is an amazing leader, a great crew chief with a ton of experience, as we know. Chase is a wealth of experience, even though he’s only 30 years old. […] You know, I think he is getting better and better. They rocket on pit road so they do a really good job,” he told Jeff Gluck.

Alan Gustafson has worked with Elliott ever since he began racing full-time a decade ago in 2016. Together, they’ve been in the Victory Lane 23 times so far, and also won the 2020 Championship. But what makes Elliott eligible for a championship this season is the sheer performance he has shown.

He narrowly missed out on winning the Daytona 500 as Tyler Reddick took the victory. Even with the latter dominating with the most wins so far and Toyota’s pace, Knaus is confident about Elliott. The #9 team has been incredibly stable, even when Elliott’s teammates and other Chevrolet drivers have struggled on the field. The OEM has been rather slow this year compared to Toyota due to the modifications made to the ZL1’s body.

Chase Elliott continued this performance and became the first Chevy winner of the season at Martinsville. He then won at Texas once again after two consecutive top 10 finishes.

“The reality is that the team is a very rock steady team. They find themselves towards the front usually towards the end of the races, they’re able to grind it out if they have a bad qualifying effort, they’re able to grind it out if they have a mishap and things don’t go quite right on the race track at some point throughout the course of the race. So they’re championship contenders in every sense of the word,” Knaus added.

Although Hendrick Motorsports has been a bit distant from the top relative to their usual performance, the team seems to be making some important gains in the past few races. Elliott, despite being a bit cautious about winning the championship, feels like there has been an improvement.

Chase Elliott reflects on HMS’ performance

Chase Elliott wasn’t the most confident when asked about winning the championship this season earlier; “still really early,” he told Dale Earnhardt Jr. He went ahead to hint at some of the performance-based issues the team is facing in its current form adapting to the new Chevy body: “I think there are still areas that are deficient that we can go and extract more out of.”

But it is no secret that Rick Hendrick & Co. have been making quite an impression in the field in the past few races compared to their position earlier in the race. Kyle Larson has been in winning contention multiple times. Even Alex Bowman, who has struggled for a huge part of the season, managed to finish in the top five consecutively at Talladega and Texas.

Elliott had earlier hinted that the team had been doing certain tests at North Wilkesboro and Chicago, and had been making changes. It is not difficult to join the dots and see the improvement that the team has had following those tests.

“We tested at (North) Wilkesboro earlier in the year, and then (Hendrick Motorsports teammate) Kyle (Larson) tested at Chicago last week, or maybe a couple of weeks ago. Nonetheless, in the last couple of weeks. I think all those things, you start putting pieces together and improving and getting to a good place,” Elliott said.

Safe to say, Chase Elliott and his teammates have been working quite hard on the car. While it is the entire team that has been making a strong impact on the grid, Elliott has been the loudest. As of now, he is the only Chevrolet driver in the table’s top-5. Considering how the Chase format works, this supports a championship campaign for Elliott and the rest of the #9 crew.