The Elliott family is a very popular one among NASCAR fans. On Thursday, Chase Elliott was announced as the 2019 NASCAR Cup Series Most Popular Driver for the second straight season.
Determined by fan vote, Elliott beat out the likes of champion Kyle Busch, Matt DiBenedetto, Martin Truex Jr., and Ryan Blaney.
Although he and his Hendrick Motorsports team-mates could not keep pace with the field in 2019, Elliott tied his 2018 season with three victories at Talladega Superspeedway, Watkins Glen International, and the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval. Regardless, his fifteen top-ten finishes were the lowest in his career as he finished tenth in points, also his worst championship place since his rookie year in 2016.
Elliott’s father Bill holds the most MPD awards in Cup history with sixteen, and Chase’s two makes it eighteen total for the family. Hendrick has won the award every year since 2008, with Dale Earnhardt Jr. scoring the honour every year from 2003 (including five years at Dale Earnhardt, Inc.) to his final season in 2017.
“That (surpassing his father for the most MPDs) would be great,” Elliott said during the Cup Series awards show in Nashville. “Honoured to have two, I was last year honoured to have one, you try to learn things here or there. It’s been a really cool year.
“It’s really more than a trophy or an award; it’s really more about the people that you see at the race track and I think some of them are here tonight, the fans in the house. Just enjoy seeing that.”
With his win, Elliott joins Ross Chastain (Gander Truck Series) and Justin Allgaier (Xfinity Series) to complete a Chevrolet sweep of the MPD. Allgaier is also a member of the Hendrick association through JR Motorsports.
