Chase Elliott’s Crew Chief Comes Clean on Agonising Fear Behind Winning Calls

Chase Elliott’s 42-race winless drought was a 555-day pressure cooker that had fans calling for Alan Gustafson’s head. Elliott is, after all, NASCAR’s most popular driver, a title he has held for years, which means the volume of criticism directed at his crew chief during the slump was much more amplified. So, while the “Golden Boy” has been grinding on track lately, Gustafson has been on the pit box, battling a fear during both his wins.

He recently told Steve Letarte that the call to stay out on old tires against a dominant Denny Hamlin felt like a total game of chicken. The call was between pit again and lose the lead, or stay out and defend it.

“We went through all the numbers together, and it was just really, really strong to stay out because… once you get control of the race, you don’t want to give that up,” Gustafson said.

Elliott started 14th at the Würth 400 at Texas and led 87 laps – the most of any driver that day. His crew also managed to execute the three fastest pit stops of the season. And it was in the final moments that a call by Gustafson ultimately led to Elliott winning.

He decided that the No. 9 would stay out under a late caution. This meant old tires, but it also meant the front row. Gustafson explained his decision, saying:

“I don’t want anybody telling me what to do. I want someone telling me the facts,” he said. “Statistically, what has happened in the past? What has the winner done when our guys pitted? What are the percentages? I want to know those numbers.”

And as for why he stressed so much on statistics, his answer revealed more than obvious facts – it revealed the stakes.

“Basically, what you do—you have to tell everyone what you’re going to do, and then certainly, it’s all about what they do from that point on that makes your decision right or wrong, right?

“And if I stay out, which statistically is the right thing to do—there’s all the reasons in the world you would do that—but ultimately, if everyone behind me pits, I’m done.”

Apparently, his race engineer, Luke Lambert, was running those numbers from the “war room” (as they have called it before). Together, they worked out every scenario and chose the best one. Elliott lined up on the bottom lane, held off a hard charge from Denny Hamlin in a four-lap dash, and took the win. His teammate, Alex Bowman, also helped him out by giving him a push off the final restart that cleared Hamlin heading into Turn 1.

And as Elliott told Jeff Gluck later on, “Goes to show he’s (Gustafson) pretty good what he does — which I tell you all that all time — but he does a pretty good job, and I’m happy to work with him.”

This is not the first time that Gustafson has made a decision that looked like a risk but turned out to be genius. Six races earlier at Martinsville Speedway, Elliott started 10th. He spent the first 250 laps inside the top 10, with no stage points for it.

Denny Hamlin, on the other hand, was dominant. He led 292 of 400 laps and swept both stages. It looked like the race was his for the taking. On lap 262, Gustafson called Elliott to pit, well before the typical window. The plan was to undercut by pitting early.

“We were just kind of trapped in 10th spot,” Gustafson said. “It’s really hard to pass. We just needed to do something different.”

The data war room, led by Luke Mitchell, initially leaned toward the safer one-stop strategy. But Gustafson pushed back.

“He told me that it was close, ultimately felt like it was a safer play to one-stop it,” Gustafson recalled. “I asked him to go do some other calculations based on some different scenarios. He said it was probably a couple seconds faster. That was just enough for me then to say, ‘yeah, it’s worth it.’ We had to give ourselves a shot.”

Elliott came out on fresher tires and leapfrogged the field when everyone else stopped around lap 280. A caution on lap 311, for Ty Dillon’s exploded brake rotor, leveled the tire age for the whole field. Elliott then moved past Ross Chastain on the restart and took the lead.

And he did not give it up. For the final 69 laps, he controlled his pace, keeping Hamlin within half a second but never giving him a clear run, using lap traffic to his advantage and holding on to win by 0.565 seconds. It was his second career Cup win at Martinsville, and the first win of the 2026 season for both Elliott and the entire Chevrolet manufacturer.

Jeff Gordon, Hendrick Motorsports Vice Chairman, framed what Gustafson and team carry best: “You cannot let that (critics) tear you apart. You got to keep strong on the inside and believe in yourself and believe in your team.”

Two wins, two tracks, and two moments where Gustafson turned statistics into a call that changed the whole game – leading Elliott into a historic start.

Alan Gustafson has his eyes firmly set on the championship

The No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet has never reached multiple wins this early in a season before, and the combination of that winning form with the kind of race-to-race consistency that keeps a team near the top of the standings is, as Jeff Gordon put it, exactly what separates contenders from pretenders.

Gordon knows this personally. During his own seasons paired with Gustafson, the No. 24 was frequently a championship threat built on finishing races cleanly and accumulating points. However, Gordon has also always been candid about what that consistency feels like without the wins to back it.

“If you don’t win every eight to ten races, man, just the hard work drains you, the whole team, driver, team, everybody, pit crew,” Gordon said. “You got to have these victories.”

“It could be not just a win of a race, but those race wins are so critical I think to a team’s season and success because that builds the confidence to another level that not only are we heading in the right direction, but we’re capable of winning it all.”

Elliott himself has internalised that logic. Reflecting on the Martinsville win that started this run, he described the mindset shift that followed: “I think having a win early at Martinsville, and I said it then — it’s not like, ‘oh, hey, the pressure is off, we have a win.’ It’s, ‘man, we have a lot longer period of time to build on that.’ That’s genuinely where my mind was at.”

That said, Gustafson believes the No. 9 is not yet operating at its ceiling, and that makes the picture more interesting. Chevrolet, as a manufacturer, is still working to fully optimise its new body style across the fleet, which means the gains being made at Hendrick week by week are happening against a backdrop of improvement that has not yet reached its high.

And Gustafson, for his part, is already doing the mathematics of a championship run. The question of whether that gap against Tyler Reddick, who is leading the standings, is safe was put directly to him before the Texas race.

“Okay. Do the math, right,” Gustafson said. “After 10 Tyler Reddick had over a 100-point lead. Theoretically, if you repeat those races, he could start 16th and win the championship, right? So I think anything is possible. I do think, look, everybody wants as many points as you can get. Certainly, the best teams are going to position themselves towards the top. I’m not sleeping on anybody. I mean, somebody can figure something out and get hot. I don’t think 100 points makes anybody safe.”

And that is the most telling thing about where the No.9 team is at right now and why they should be feared. As Chase Elliott said, “We have a gritty group back home that they just don’t take no for an answer. “

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