Chase Elliott wants to figure out a way for Kyle Busch to win ‘Most Popular Driver’
NASCAR driver Chase Elliott said on Saturday he would be open to taking a page out of his famous father’s playbook and paving the way for another racer to win the “Most Popular Driver” award posthumously.
In 2001, after Dale Earnhardt Sr. died in a last-lap crash at the Daytona 500, Chase’s father Bill removed himself from consideration for the “Most Popular Driver” award, which is traditionally selected by fans’ vote.
Elliott, a Georgian who was a NASCAR champion himself, had an extremely active fan club during his career. “Awesome Bill from Dawsonville” had already won the award 15 times by that point. Bill Elliott said at the time: “This is a much different year than others. Dale Earnhardt never won this award, and I think it would be a tremendous honor for the Earnhardt family to receive it this year. I certainly don’t want to stand in the way.”
Chase Elliott said much the same thing on Saturday when a reporter asked if he would remove himself from consideration this year for “Most Popular Driver” and throw his support behind Kyle Busch, who never won the award and died suddenly on Thursday, at age 41. Much like his father, Elliott has won the award every year since 2018.
“Yeah, I would be in extreme favor of Kyle winning the vote,” Elliott said. “I think that he’s a guy that certainly poured a lot of his life into the sport. And although he might have been getting boos a lot of weeks, he also had a lot of fans, and a lot of really passionate fans. ... I would certainly be in favor of him winning, whatever it took. I think he’d be really deserving.”
As for actually taking himself out of the running and telling people not to vote for him, Elliott wasn’t quite ready to commit to doing that.
“So I really haven’t processed all of that, I guess,” he said, “to get to that point.”
But Elliott’s openness to the idea of duplicating a move his father made 25 years ago was greeted with near-unanimous approval online.
“Just when you think you can’t like him more,” wrote one fan on X.
“Chase you are such a class act,” wrote another. “That would be so heartfelt and touching for Kyle to win it.”
