Why Chase Elliott’s 2nd place at Martinsville is his biggest 2026 win

Chase Elliott finished second at Martinsville Speedway on Sunday.

That runner-up finish might be the most important result of his entire 2026 season.

Here's why.

Elliott has been stuck in one of the worst slumps of his career.

After winning the spring race at Martinsville and another at Texas Motor Speedway, the No. 9 team fell apart.

In the 18 races following his Texas win, Elliott scored only two top-10 finishes.

He has led just 52 laps since the race at Michigan International Speedway in June.

For a driver who won the Cup Series championship in 2020, those numbers are alarming.

Elliott hasn't won a pole on speed since 2022.

Since the start of the 2023 season, he has led 1,398 laps.

During his championship campaign alone in 2020, he led 1,247 laps.

That means three full seasons of work have barely outpaced one title-winning year.

Now consider his crew chief, Alan Gustafson.

Gustafson has been the only voice on Elliott's pit box for all 11 years of his Cup Series career.

The combination, according to analysts, has grown stale and complacent.

Far more successful crew chiefs have been replaced for far shorter periods of underachieving.

The best time to make a change was after Elliott's winless, playoff-less 2023 season.

The second-best time was after last year's third consecutive elimination before the Championship 4.

Elliott had made the Championship 4 three straight seasons before that.

Now the third-best time is one week from now.

Here's where the Martinsville finish becomes critical.

When Elliott won the spring race at Martinsville this year, all talk of replacing Gustafson vanished.

The No. 9 team found victory lane again a few weeks later at Texas.

But since then, it's been an unmitigated disaster.

If Elliott had won Sunday, the same pattern would repeat.

The problems would get masked by a trophy.

Management would hesitate to make a move.

Another offseason would pass with the same setup.

But Elliott finished second.

That's not a win.

It's a strong enough result to show the car has speed, but not strong enough to silence the questions.

So the conversation that Hendrick Motorsports has been avoiding is now unavoidable.

Is it time to replace Alan Gustafson?

The argument for change is simple.

Gustafson owes his success to four different Hall of Fame-caliber drivers.

Jeff Gordon drove the No. 24 to four championships with Ray Evernham and Robbie Loomis.

But Gustafson was Gordon's crew chief for only one winless season in 2011.

Then he moved to Mark Martin and won five races.

Then he moved to Dale Earnhardt Jr. and won three races in five seasons.

Then he moved to Chase Elliott and won the 2020 championship.

Critics argue that Gustafson has been carried by elite talent, not the other way around.

Elliott's performance since 2023 suggests the magic is gone.

The driver who won 11 races between 2020 and 2022 has won only four since.

He missed the playoffs entirely in 2023.

He was eliminated before the Championship 4 in 2024 and 2025.

2026 has turned into one of the worst seasons of the series' Most Popular Driver's career.

And it's far from just one blip on the radar.

The No. 9 team has been underachieving for three consecutive seasons.

There is no guarantee that a new crew chief would fix everything.

But there is a guarantee that nothing will change if Gustafson stays.

That's the logic behind the argument that Elliott's second-place finish at Martinsville could be his biggest win of 2026.