Much has been made about the struggles of Hendrick Motorsports and Chevrolet, and, frankly, any non-Toyota team during the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season. Elliott hasn't won more than two races in a season since 2022 and hasn't qualified on the pole on speed since that same year either. It's extremely telling that Elliott was the class of the field during the first year of the Next Gen car, when pure driver skill largely dictated performance, before everybody except for his team figured out how to engineer the vehicle.