Chase Elliott Reveals His Best NASCAR Moment: Martinsville 2017 Clash with Hamlin
When Chase Elliott looks back on his career so far, one moment stands out—not a win, but a fight. In a recent interview, Elliott called the 2017 Martinsville Speedway race his most defining NASCAR moment, citing the dramatic late-race clash with Denny Hamlin that triggered one of the sport’s most heated rivalries in years.
“It was the first time I felt like I really earned the fans’ respect,” Elliott said. “Even though I didn’t win, the way that whole thing played out just clicked. People saw I wasn’t going to back down.”
In the closing laps of the First Data 500, Elliott was leading and appeared poised to claim his first Cup Series victory. But with just three laps to go, Hamlin made a dive-bomb move into Turn 3, sending Elliott spinning into the wall. The crowd erupted—mostly in boos—as Hamlin took over the lead.
Elliott’s frustration was visible. After limping his damaged car back to pit road, he returned to confront Hamlin on the cool-down lap, intentionally blocking and bumping him before the two drivers exchanged heated words on pit road.
“He wrecked me intentionally,” Elliott said in a post-race interview. “We had a great shot to win and he took it away. That’s not how I race.”
The moment ignited fan outrage, with Hamlin receiving intense backlash, both at the track and online. Meanwhile, Elliott—still a young driver at the time—was suddenly vaulted into the spotlight as a fan favorite and a new face of NASCAR’s next generation.
What followed was a high-stakes rematch just weeks later at Phoenix, where Elliott, now with nothing to lose, returned the favor by squeezing Hamlin into the wall, effectively ending his playoff hopes.
“He had it coming,” Elliott later admitted. “I wasn’t going to let that go unanswered.”
While the two drivers eventually moved past the feud, the 2017 Martinsville clash had already cemented itself as a turning point in Elliott’s career. Fans loved the fire, the emotion, and the raw honesty—traits often associated with NASCAR legends.
More importantly, the incident showed that Elliott, often viewed as mild-mannered and calculated, had a fierce competitor lurking beneath the surface.
“It was the moment people stopped seeing me as just Bill Elliott’s son,” he said. “That night, I became my own driver.”
Since then, Chase Elliott has gone on to win a Cup Series championship and dozens of races—but for many fans, Martinsville 2017 remains the night he truly arrived.
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