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Chase Elliott broke the tibia in his left leg while snowboarding in Colorado on Friday. Elliott's return date has not been set by Hendrick Motorsports. Josh Berry finished 29th in the No. 9 car last weekend at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. The driver for this weekend's race in Phoenix is yet to be announced by the team.
NASCAR senior vice president of competition Elton Sawyer made some important observations on Tuesday on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio's The Morning Drive.
He expects Chase Elliott to be granted a waiver in order to be eligible for the playoffs when he returns to competition. He cited a similar situation to when Tony Stewart was granted a waiver for an off-track injury.
To be eligible for the playoffs, drivers must start every race. If Chase Elliott wins a race during the regular season, he will need a waiver to compete in the playoffs. This past offseason, NASCAR removed the requirement that Cup drivers finish in the top 30 in points to be eligible for the playoffs.
Sawyer told SiriusXM NASCAR Radio that if Elliott is medically cleared to return, he may be granted a waiver.
“I wouldn’t see any reason that he wouldn’t be granted a waiver, but we’ll go through that process and make sure we’re checking all the boxes.”
Sawyer used the example of Stewart from 2016. Stewart suffered an L1 vertebral burst fracture a few weeks before the season in an all-terrain accident on the California desert sand dunes.
He was unable to compete in the first eight races of the season. NASCAR granted him a playoff waiver shortly before he returned to action. Stewart won at Sonoma that year to advance to the playoffs. He was eliminated in the first round and finished the season in 15th place.
Sawyer explained the decision-making process for Elliott's waiver.
“Whether it’s on the racetrack…or off the racetrack in this particular case, we’ll gather all the information. We’ll sit down and make the right decision to move forward.”
Elliott finished 38th in the season-opening Daytona 500 and was second the next week at Auto Club Speedway before suffering an injury.
Chase Elliott jokes that his leg injury was staged
Chase Elliott's injury ruled him out of the NASCAR Cup Series competition indefinitely. But he seems to have retained a sense of humor. Elliott joked that his broken leg was written into the script for the 2023 NASCAR Cup Series season and that the scriptwriters refused to change it.
"It has come to my attention that the formal request I submitted for a slight edit to the March section of my script was indeed... declined."
Elliott's comments about the injury being scripted are especially amusing in light of recent discussions, particularly after the AFC Championship Game. There were comments on social media about the NFL being scripted and each team having a predetermined outcome set before the season begins in September.
Chase Elliott is hoping that his eventual return will follow the same 'script' as Kyle Busch's did in 2015.
Busch missed the first 11 races of the 2015 season due to a broken leg and foot, but he was granted a playoff waiver. He returned, qualified for the playoffs with four wins in the final 15 races of the regular season, and went on to win the championship.
