The accident took place on Friday in Colorado, and has forced Elliott to miss a Cup race for the first time since the 2015 season when he was only running part-time.
Elliott, 27, suffered a fracture of the tibia in his left leg. A three-hour surgery on Friday night was called a success by HMS, and they have yet to set a timeline for his return. The team would only say that they expect it to be several weeks.
“On behalf of Mr. Hendrick, (who) wants to make sure that everyone knows that our concern at this time is the health and well-being first and foremost of Chase Elliott,” began Jeff Andrews, President and General Manager at Hendrick Motorsports.
“We don’t obviously have a lot of details with this being a little bit less than 24 hours old for us now. But Chase did go through a successful surgery last night that lasted about three hours. He’s doing well. The surgery was to repair a fractured tibia and that’s really the extent of what we know.”
Andrews said that HMS would not reevaluate its policies about what drivers may do in their spare time, despite Elliott’s injury.
“These guys have to go out and live a life outside of the race track,” said Andrews. Certainly, what Chase was doing wasn’t anything abnormal for him. He’s an experienced snowboarder and he’s been doing it most of his life. It was an accident. A similar injury could happen falling off a mountain bike, or stepping off a curb while you’re jogging. It was an accident and Chase feels awful about it but our stance on it is just that. It was an accident and our guys have to go out and live their lives.
“Obviously, we’ve let Alex (Bowman) and Kyle (Larson) both drive sprint cars. Chase has been in a midget at various times last year so I don’t anticipate a policy change at Hendrick Motorsports based around this.”
Hendrick Motorsports has already begun the formal process of applying for a playoff waiver, so Elliott can remain eligible for the championship whenever he returns.
NASCAR is not expected to rule on a waiver for Elliott until he is medically cleared to return to racing. In addition, Elliott’s injury/future waiver is the first instance to come up since the rule requiring the driver to be in top 30 in points in the Cup Series to use a win to make the playoffs was eliminated in the offseason.
“Our goals are still the same,” said Alan Gustafson, crew chief for the No. 9 team “Our objectives are still the same. Certainly, things have changed…
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