Chase Elliott was not happy after a stack-up on pit road during Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series Championship Race at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
Prior to the incident, the driver of the No. 9 ran solidly around the top 10. When the field came to pit road during a caution period, the major stack-up caused damage to the front of Elliott’s Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet.
Elliott ultimately could not recover from the incident and wound up finishing 22nd.
Elliott After Homestead Pit Road Incident: ‘I Don’t Give a [Expletive]’
When the pit road stack-up occurred, Elliott was unsure whether he was at fault or something happened in front of him.
“Did they stop or did I [expletive] something up? I need to understand here,” Elliott said.
The No. 9 team assured Elliott he was not at fault and believes Ryan Blaney, who led the field down pit road, triggered the incident.
“You didn’t do anything wrong. They were playing games; it’s like the 12 (Blaney) is trying to check everybody up or something.”
Elliott expressed frustration with having to come down pit road single-file on the narrow Homestead-Miami Speedway pit lane, believing that the incident would not have happened if there were different rules.
“You know, I just want it to be known that their dumb [expletive] of making you be in line here, of all places, is the reason that just happened. … Scared the [expletive] to death … to see up the road and plow in the back of the people stopped.,” Elliott said.
Elliott was not the only one who suffered damage in the stack-up, something spotter Trey Poole made him aware of.
“No consolation, doesn’t help anything, but we’re not the only one. A lot of people suffered damage in that. Not everybody came to fix it,” Poole said.
However, Elliott made it clear that he did not care he was not the only one who got tangled up in the pit road fender-bender.
“I don’t give a [expletive],” Elliott said.
Elliott Finishes 2026 Season 12th in The Standings
The 2026 Cup Series season started out promising for Chase Elliott. NASCAR’s most popular driver won the seventh race of the season at Martinsville Speedway, the earliest he has ever won a race in a Cup season.
Elliott added his second win of the season four races later at Texas Motor Speedway. After 11 races, Elliott had two wins and ranked third in the standings.
But it all went downhill from there.
The 30-year-old out of Dawsonville, Georgia fell to eighth in the standings by the time the Chase began. Between his Texas win and the start of the Chase, Elliott only scored one top-5 finish, which was a fifth-place result at Richmond.
The 10-race Chase was a struggle for Elliott, too. The HMS star recorded only two top-5 finishes, a third at Phoenix and second at Martinsville. An alarming stat for Elliott is that he only led one lap during the entire Chase.
Elliott finished 12th in the final standings, the second-lowest he has ever finished in the points standings. What started out as a strong season turned into a difficult one through the latter two-thirds of the campaign.
‘I Don’t Give a [Expletive]’: Chase Elliott’s Fiery Remarks After Homestead Incident