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NASCAR Champ Chase Elliott Reveals He Began Talks with Teams for Rolex 24 “A Year Ago”

Published 01/16/2021, 12:32 PM EST

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Chase Elliott has not displayed any signs of slowing down in the offseason. Following the 2020 Cup Series campaign, he went over to compete in the Snowball Derby and recently featured in the much-renowned Chili Bowl.

Now, he has one more event on his list in the 2021 season, the prestigious Rolex 24 at Daytona. Elliott has now revealed that talk for making that opportunity a reality started nearly a year ago.

Elliott stated, “Definitely something I’ve had an interest in for a long time and had hopes an opportunity would come up at some point to do it. I didn’t really anticipate it would be this quick.”

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Chase Elliott will drive for the Action Express Racing team

The announcement of Elliott’s confirmed participation in the event came about early in December 2020. He will now help pilot the No. 31 Whelen Engineering Cadillac DPi-V.R alongside Mike Conway, Pipo Derani, and Felipe Nasr.

“We started talking about it about a year ago – around this time last year – we started discussing it and I expressed interest. There was some mutual interest and opportunity kind of came up and I was all about it.”

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On his road course superiority, Elliott continued and said, “I didn’t, really. A lot of people ask that. I just really kind of came into a good situation. Jeff (Gordon) was a really good road course racer and he and (crew chief) Alan (Gustafson) had a really nice foundation and focused on a lot of things that I think are really important on the road racing front.”

Elliott would look to gain some varied racing experience ahead of the 2021 Cup season

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The 25-year-old from Dawsonville has always expressed an interest in trying out a variety of racing events. After short and dirt track racing, he can now showcase his talent in the Rolex 24 at Daytona spectacle.

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Undoubtedly, this will help raise his competitive sharpness and elevate his racecraft ahead of an important 2021 Cup Series campaign. Of course, the Hendrick Motorsports No.9 will aim to defend his title and secure consecutive championships.

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But for the time being, he will focus on making his best attempt at the upcoming sportscar competition. For all we know, Elliott might just land up on the winning side once again.

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Written by:

Bhargav Gopal

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Hailing from Bengaluru, Bhargav is an F1 and NASCAR author for EssentiallySports. He is a huge fan of Max Verstappen and Red Bull Racing. Bhargav also has an MBA in Sports Management from the Symbiosis School of Sports Sciences, Pune.
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