The NASCAR Cup Series race at the Circuit of the Americas last year was not fun to watch for a casual motorsports fan. Stock car racing drivers are not very adept at road course racing and that comes to the forefront in these kinds of races. The issue was that most of the cars dive-bombed into turn 1 at COTA last year and that often led to massive pile-ups. NASCAR and wrecks go hand in hand, but on this occasion, it was too much. As a result, organizers had to take desperate measures and push back the start-finish line to a point where fewer cars would be able to dive into that first corner.

It is safe to say that the race was not liked by a lot of people, including Chase Elliott, who was shelved due to a leg injury. He did, however, see the race from home and believes that it was embarrassing.

Chase Elliott compares last year’s COTA cars to bumper cars

Speaking to the media ahead of the race on Sunday, the Hendrick Motorsports star compared other motorsports races at COTA to the Cup Series one and called it embarrassing. The driver of the #9 car got a fresh perspective of the race last year as an outsider and iterated how he didn’t like what he saw.

“I hope it’s different. Just from my perspective, not being in the race, I thought it was really embarrassing. I just remember like not wanting to watch. I was like, ‘Is this really what we look like all the time?’ I could just imagine myself being like from other forms of motorsports and watching the end of that thing, I would be like…that’s not…the integrity of the product, it was like bumper cars, it’s just kind of silly. We’re all better than that,” he shared.

However, Chase Elliott did not hate everything he saw when NASCAR went to Austin last year. The race was won by 23XI Racing driver Tyler Reddick and the Hendrick Motorsports star was full of praise for his competitor.

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Hendrick Motorsports star hails 23XI Racing counterpart

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The driver of the #9 car said that he was relieved that Reddick won last year’s race at the track as he deserved ir. He even hailed the #45 23XI Racing crew for building a car that was capable of making its way up the pack, even if they found themselves at the back of the pack on multiple occasions.

“I’m just glad that the best car won because Tyler could have easily got crashed or knocked out of the way and that would have been disappointing from my seat because of how dominant he was. He really deserved to win the race, and he did a great job to protect what he could and fortunately he had a fast enough car that even when he did get booted out of the way, he could get himself back to the front,” Elliott added.

For Chase Elliott, the COTA race brings the promise of a much-needed win. He has always been good on road courses and this is the first of the year. However, there will be a lot of competition with Tyler Reddick being considered the favorite to win the event. Do you think Chase Elliott will be able to make it?

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