Often reserved and selective with his words, Chase Elliott speaks when the situation truly demands it. Perhaps the current situation in NASCAR is severe enough that Elliott is being quite blunt and honest about arguably the most important part of the sport: safety. This comes in the wake of his Hendrick teammate, along with several other drivers, experiencing severe heat issues at COTA.

Chase Elliott warns of the hot air

At COTA, Alex Bowman suffered a sudden health issue because of which he had to forfeit his race before the laps ran down. Bowman stepped out of the car midway through the race to seek immediate medical assistance. A few days later, it was announced that the #48 driver would be sitting out the forthcoming race at Phoenix on Sunday as well because of vertigo.

But Bowman wasn’t the only driver at COTA who suffered issues in the heat of Austin, Texas. Several drivers faced failures of their cool-suit cooling systems. And with the next race being in the hot environment of a desert in Phoenix, Arizona, the drivers would surely be concerned about heat management.

This was something that Chase Elliott was confronted with on Saturday. The #9 driver was asked by Jeff Gluck whether NASCAR should step in for the sake of drivers’ safety in light of recent cool-shirt failures.

“I don’t know what you do. I mean, these cars are hot. The best example I can give is, if you were going down the straightaway and if you stuck your hand out the window it’s cool and fresh air whereas now if you’re going down the straightaway any track particularly speedways are a great example because when you stick your hand out the window if you don’t have your gloves on you’ll probably burn it,” Elliott responded.

He explained how a lot of hot air comes out of the way the hood scoop of the Next Gen car is shaped. Because of this, it exhausts warm air over the car, which leads to the outside air on top of the car becoming much warmer than usual. Moreover, Elliott claimed the dual exhausts on the Next Gen also contribute to this problem compared to when there was just one exhaust.

It’s worth mentioning that inside a NASCAR car, the temperature can swing anywhere between 120° F and 130° F.

Elliott has a solution, kind of

After acknowledging and addressing the issue of heat because of the nature of Next Gen racing, Chase Elliott admitted that he isn’t sure how one would go about fixing them. He claimed that the cool shirt has been around for a long time, even though it feels like a ‘semi-new thing’ in the garage. The cool shirt was introduced all the way back in 1964 by Paul Goldsmith, inspired by the suits astronauts wore in space.

However, the 2020 Cup champion mentioned the bad reputation of the cool shirts. “They always had a bad rep of failing, and that was why a lot of guys didn’t run them for years and years. But I think the technology has gotten a lot better, and that’s why a lot of us have chosen to try them at different tracks,” he described.

Chase Elliott further commented that the cool shirt failing at cooling a really warm environment, which is ‘saturated with heat,’ shouldn’t be surprising. From his perspective, it is a ‘really rough balance’, as he claimed that a lot of factors play into that.

“So where do you put the lid on all that? You might have to buy new ones all the time,” he ultimately suggested.