HMS legend refuses to throw 'rusty' Chase Elliott under the bus, makes huge Atlanta prediction

Hendrick Motorsports spotter and NASCAR analyst Steve Letarte declined to criticize Chase Elliott after a rocky start to the 2024 season, instead placing Elliott among his top contenders for the Ambetter Health 400 at Atlanta Motor Speedway, according to EssentiallySports. Elliott had won the first stage of the Daytona 500 before finishing 14th after struggles over the remaining laps of the 200-lap race.

Rather than fault Elliott for the Daytona result, Letarte pointed to the driver's own self-assessment, saying Elliott "doesn't hold anyone on the team to a higher level of performance more than himself" and that "he looks in the mirror and says I need to do better," per EssentiallySports.

The retrieved coverage does not specify the exact date the comments were made relative to the Daytona 500 finish, only that they came ahead of the following race weekend at Atlanta, Elliott's home state.

The Atlanta prediction

Letarte framed a potential Atlanta victory in historic terms, telling EssentiallySports: "the only story that would compare to him winning the Daytona 500 would be winning in the home state of Georgia, coming off the winless streak." The outlet's report notes Elliott holds an average finish of 13.0 at Atlanta Motor Speedway, a track record it characterizes as favoring him to contend there.

The framing

EssentiallySports' account centers the story on Letarte's refusal to pile on a driver already facing a winless stretch, choosing instead to highlight Elliott's internal accountability and his statistical strength at a track in his home state as reasons for optimism. The report does not include a response from Elliott himself to Letarte's comments, nor does it specify whether Elliott went on to finish the season with the turnaround Letarte predicted.

The Daytona finish behind the criticism

The 2024 Daytona 500, held February 19, ended with Hendrick Motorsports teammates William Byron and Alex Bowman finishing first and second after a last-lap crash brought out the race-ending caution, according to contemporaneous NASCAR results coverage. Elliott, by contrast, finished 14th — the result that prompted Letarte's comments defending him ahead of the following week's race at Atlanta.

Elliott's history at his home track

Atlanta Motor Speedway sits roughly 30 miles from Elliott's hometown of Dawsonville, Georgia, the detail underlying Letarte's framing of a potential win there as a hometown redemption story. Elliott's statistical record at the reconfigured superspeedway-style Atlanta track built on that reputation in the seasons that followed: coverage of his later Atlanta starts noted he had produced a series-best average finish there and led laps in every start since the track's 2022 reconfiguration, cementing Atlanta's status as one of his strongest venues on the circuit.

Letarte, a former championship-winning crew chief for both Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Jeff Gordon before moving into broadcasting, has continued to cite Elliott's on-track temperament in later analysis of the driver, describing him as someone who "operates at 99% and just chugs along" rather than swinging between extremes — the same even-keeled framing that shaped his refusal to pile on after the Daytona finish.

US In News compiled this archived account from contemporaneous coverage by EssentiallySports, with additional detail on the 2024 Daytona 500 finish and Elliott's subsequent Atlanta Motor Speedway record drawn from later NASCAR results reporting. It restores a story originally published on this site in early 2024; figures are as reported at the time.