Inside The Garage: Why the Chase Elliott-Alan Gustafson Pairing Works

Here’s what’s happening this week Inside The Garage: Alan Gustafson doesn’t need social media for his crew chief job, so he doesn’t spend time scrolling and looking at what people say about him. He knows he’s the crew chief for the sport’s most popular driver. And considering that the 2020 Cup champion had only three wins from 2023-25, Gustafson knows his fans wouldn’t be happy. Gustafson has worked as a Hendrick Motorsports crew chief for 22 seasons, starting in 2005 with Kyle Busch. He has confidence in what he can do and has the experience to know he must change with the times. He showed what he can do Sunday as he made a strategic call to pit earlier than most in the final stage of the Cup race at Martinsville Speedway. The strategy worked as they got the benefit of a timely caution (they feel they would have been good either way), giving Chase Elliott the track position he needed to win. “Whether it was Dale Earnhardt Jr. or Chase Elliott, whoever is the popular driver in the series, there’s a lot of critics that want to sit on the sidelines and evaluate it,” said Hendrick Vice Chairman and four-time Cup champion Jeff Gordon during the winners’ post-race news conference. [NASCAR TAKEAWAYS: Chase Elliott Outduels Denny Hamlin at Martinsville] “You cannot let that tear you apart. You got to keep strong on the inside and believe in yourself and believe in your team, all the things you’re doing. That’s what Alan and Chase fall back on.” Gordon knows something about Gustafson, who was his crew chief from 2011-15. If Gordon felt a change was warranted, Hendrick Motorsports would have made one. And it wouldn’t be unprecedented to see an Elliott-Gustafson divorce. Elliott, driver of the No. 9 car, and Alan Gustafson have the longest driver-crew chief pairing in the Cup garage. And at 11 years, it’s not even close to another relationship. Joey Logano and Paul Wolfe are next as they work their seventh season together. “Alan was my crew chief,” Gordon said. “I love the work and effort he puts in, how smart he is, the team he builds. Nobody is a tougher critic than he is of the team and their performance.” That’s why the Elliott-Gustafson relationship works. They are both relatively tough critics. They both want to go about the business of getting their team better with as little sideshow as possible. When I was visiting Hendrick Motorsports on Wednesday shortly after lunchtime, there was Gustafson in the team’s workout room, doing his workout. He didn’t appear stressed that the team had not won yet this year nor that Hendrick Motorsports as a whole hadn’t won. He’s been through the ups and downs. And so has Elliott. “The more you do this, I think the more you keep an eye internally more than you do externally,” Elliott said during the postrace news conference. “For us, we’re just super honest with each other, what we need to do, where our deficiencies are, where the areas are that we’re good at, whatever. “As time has gone on, we’ve done nothing but just get better at being able to kind of sort out our weaknesses in our own meetings, doing what we need to do to get the job done. It is a very, very straightforward approach.” Some Elliott fans won’t want to hear that. They’ll want to hear that Elliott thinks he needs a change in crew chief. And if he really did want a change, there’s also no doubt he could get one. Then there are days like Sunday. At Martinsville, Gustafson talked with his engineers and made a call that could potentially win the race using a different strategy than most of the other teams. “You can’t sit on your hands and run 10th. You got to do something, right?” Gustafson said in his postrace news conference. “I think that was the best shot.” Sometimes when he takes those shots, whether during a race or the car setup, they don’t work. And that’s when fans get frustrated. “[He] made a great call,” Elliott said. “Glad he picked up on that, saw that. I don’t think anybody else did. “[It] goes to show that he’s pretty good at what he does, which I try to tell y’all that all the time. But he does a pretty good job. I’m happy to work with him. Appreciate his effort, hanging in there, to our whole team for doing that, too. I appreciate that out of all of them.” And there’s no plan to change. “I enjoy working with him,” Elliott said. “I genuinely feel that way. I hope he feels the same way about me. I give him all I got every week, even when it’s not pretty. “I think because of that, it works. It’s simple. We just show up and go to work, man. We try to do the best we can to put the best result out there for everybody involved.” Graham Rahal Shows He’s Got It, Too Chase Elliott’s crew chief Alan Gustafson wasn’t the only person who has had his share of criticism about needing to have a good race weekend. On the INDYCAR side, Graham Rahal placed third at Barber (Ala.) Motorsports Park. It was his first podium since May 2023. The veteran driver of the No. 15 car and son of team co-owner Bobby Rahal, now has 34 podiums in 313 career starts. “There’s enough bull—- out there that I got to deal with,” Rahal said in his postrace news conference. “It’s nice [to perform]. I’ll still hear it. … There’s a whole lot of dumb asses out in this world right now. Got to live with it.” This wasn’t a fluke. Rahal started third and finished third. He sits 12th in the standings among the 25 drivers. “[The podium] is a great reward for the guys and gals,” Rahal said. “Everybody has worked so hard to be back here.” The one eye-opening part of his race is that, while Rahal shined, his two teammates struggled. Granted, they have much less experience with Louis Foster in his second INDYCAR season and Mick Schumacher in his first. “They copied my setup today,” Rahal said. “The last two days they were slightly different. Mick and I are always about the same, which is why we were both good at Phoenix. We both have been very consistently like that. “Louis tends to go off down a little bit of a different tangent. Today they started the day in the exact same car. We all got to sit down and try to understand. I think Louis ran a different gear strategy, but that was kind of small.” What isn’t a small difference? Rahal is listed at 185 pounds in the INDYCAR media guide, 13 pounds heavier than Foster and 31 pounds heavier than Schumacher. “I’m a much heavier driver than they are,” Rahal said. “That does move the center of gravity, that moves the weight distribution and stuff. They tried to get quite close. “We all need to go back and try to understand where the variances may be.” In The News — Denny Hamlin indicated that a contract extension for No. 45 driver Tyler Reddick will be finished soon to keep Reddick at 23XI Racing. Reddick won the regular season in 2024, didn’t win in 2025 but then won four of the first six races of 2026. Hamlin: “He will be [staying here]. Tyler’s one of those guys that was very important for us to get our hands on him very early. … Certainly, last year was not great, but like when his not great years are still in the top 10, those are the elite drivers.” — NASCAR has announced the nominees for the 2027 NASCAR Hall of Fame class. There are four new nominees, one more than usual. Typically, there are three to replace the three inductees but Bob Welborn, a star in NASCAR’s convertible series in NASCAR’s beginning years, was dropped off the Pioneer Ballot. There are 10 nominees in the Modern Era ballot, with two getting in and five nominees from the Pioneer ballot with one getting in. FOX analyst and 60-time race winner Kevin Harvick is on the Modern Era ballot in his first year of eligibility. Engine builder Ernie Elliott and West Series star Ray Elder also were added to the Modern Era ballot. Crew chief Harry Hyde moved from the Modern Era to Pioneer after being on the ballot for 10 years without getting voted in. Herb Nab, a crew chief with 92 victories, was also added to the Pioneer ballot. Voting is May 19. — Musician Darius Rucker has joined Legacy Motor Club as an investor. The news release stated: “As an investor, Rucker will collaborate with the organization on select initiatives that bridge sports, music and fan engagement, while supporting the Club’s continued business and brand development.” — Indianapolis Motor Speedway announced its Carb Day concert for the Friday before the Indianapolis 500. Counting Crows will headline, with Switchfoot opening the show. Under The Radar Eleventh isn’t always a great result. But for two drivers this past NASCAR weekend at Martinsville, it was big as it showed continued relative strength. Shane van Gisbergen was a solid 11th in the Cup race at Martinsville as the three-time Supercars champion continues to adjust to the ovals. The Trackhouse driver is 14th in the Cup standings. In the O’Reilly Series, Parker Retzlaff was 11th. The Viking Motorsports driver, who has shown glimpses of talent but not the consistency (which could be attributed to him, the teams he drove for or a little bit of both) is ninth in the O’Reilly standings. They Said What? Alex Palou, after earning his 13th career pole, wasn’t sure if that number was a good thing or if he should be superstitious about it. You would think the four-time champion wouldn’t get superstitious but the Chip Ganassi Racing driver does. “There’s a lot of superstitions,” he said in his pole-winning news conference. “I could get superstitious about this [red plastic] cup. These glasses? I changed the glasses. I’ve been with the same sunglasses for five years. I changed them this year. … I didn’t know if it was sunglasses [that make a difference].” [PALOU’S REPEAT: 4 Takeaways From Alex Palou’s Victory at Barber] They Said It “We finished P2; we shouldn’t be that frustrated. But when you are up against a car that’s been the most competitive and best car in INDYCAR for the past many years, to have a chance to beat him fair and square, that hurts.” — Arrow McLaren driver Christian Lundgaard after finishing second to Alex Palou at Barber. In Inside The Garage, Bob Pockrass takes us behind the scenes of the motorsports world the way only he can. [SPEED: Dale Earnhardt Jr. Divulges Biggest Regret of Illustrious Racing Career]