Chase Elliott looks back on when he was "too scared to call" Rick Hendrick after 2023 snowboarding injury

Hendrick Motorsports star and former Cup champion Chase Elliott was "too scared" to call his boss Rick Hendrick following his snowboarding injury last season.

Chase Elliott's disastrous 2023 campaign could be largely attributed to, among other things, his snowboarding accident. The 28-year-old, ahead of the third race of the season in Las Vegas, fractured his left tibia after being involved in the accident.

Elliott underwent surgery and was ruled out for six races last season, finally returning in Martinsville. What followed was a period of trauma for the Georgia native on the track. For the first time in his career, Chase Elliott missed out on the Cup Series playoffs. Furthermore, for the first time since 2017, the Hendrick Motorsports driver failed to secure a single win in the entire campaign, marking a truly forgettable season for his fans.

As Elliott attempts to put behind him the ghosts of last season and rejuvenate his career in the ongoing 2024 campaign, the 28-year-old driver elaborated on his fear of calling team owner Rick Hendrick after his injury. Speaking on a recent episode of Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s Dale Jr Download podcast, he stated:

"I’m like, alright, who do I call? How am I gonna go about this? I hadn’t got my X-rays back but I had a pretty good feeling I couldn’t walk. My knee was about this big already… I was gonna miss the weekend."

Elliott then reached out to his crew chief Alan Gustafson. He said:

"I texted Alan and said 'hey, can I call you? We got a problem.' Because I knew he was gonna be the one facilitating getting somebody else in the car and he needs to know and I was too scared to call Rick at this point."

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Chase Elliott was left surprised by Rick Hendrick's compassionate behavior

However, to Elliott's surprise, the legendary team owner did not show any signs of frustration towards the 2020 NASCAR Cup champion's injury. Elliott told Earnhardt Jr:

"Believe it or not…I was shocked, (he) took every bit of it just awesome and he didn’t even care about the weekend. He was just more worried what was the process, how bad was it when was surgery gonna be if I needed surgery, if he could do anything to help and how long were we looking."

Five races into the season, Chase Elliott is ranked ninth in the NASCAR Cup Series standings. He secured an impressive eight-place finish in the recent Cup race at Bristol Motor Speedway.

Chase Elliott is also set to honor Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s 2014 Daytona 500 victory through his paint scheme in the Darlington Cup race later this season.