After Sunday's Bank of America Roval 400, apparently NBC stood for "Nobody Bother Chase."
Coming off a rough outing at Charlotte Motor Speedway's Road Course, Chase Elliott wanted some time to break things down with Hendrick Motorsports teammate William Byron. That meant a moment of privacy without any TV cameras in his face. Well, one NBC cameraman found that out the hard way.
Kind of like this new aggressive Chase Elliott pic.twitter.com/8J0dwkhZto
— BrakeHard (@BrakeHardBlog) October 9, 2022
Even though the camera wasn't picking up any of the conversation, Elliott thought the NBC crew was a little too close for comfort. You can see him mouth "get away" as he gives the camera a little shove, and when the cameraperson doesn't take the hint, Elliott continues "I said, 'get away,'" before gesturing for the crew to get the hell out of dodge.
"Chase Elliott didn't want our camera there," NBC broadcaster Rick Allen explained.
Eventually, Elliott did take some time to chop it up with the media, during which he mostly expressed disdain over his earlier run-in with AJ Allmendinger.
"I need to watch it obviously, but I thought I gave AJ room there through one and two," Elliott told FOX Sports reporter Bob Pockrass.
"He didn't hit the wall. Then, I don't know if he just drove it in too hard into three or whatever. But, he basically missed the corner. Then, that leaves me out in the junk. We were in an okay spot. I don't know who wrecked me from behind [it was Tyler Reddick], but somebody missed the corner again. And we finished last, that's about it."
Even though Elliott is still holding on to his first-place position in the Cup standings, the 2020 champ added that he'll definitely have his work cut out for him heading into the Round of 8.
"I think it's going to be a really tough round," Elliott said. "Vegas was a struggle for us in the spring. Homestead, we've just been really hit-or-miss there. We did have a test there a couple weeks ago, so hopefully we've learned from that. Martinsville, it's just going to be about how you qualify because I don't see anybody passing there."
"We'll see how it goes. Try to bring our A-game. It would have been nice to have some more points from today, but we didn't and we'll try again out in Las Vegas."
