For the second time this season, Chase Elliott will drive the No. 17 for Hendrick Motorsports in a NASCAR Xfinity Series race: the former Cup Series champion will pull double duty at the Pocono Raceway next week.

Elliott, fresh off a third-place finish in Mexico City, will compete in both the Explore the Pocono Mountains 250 (Xfinity) and the Great American Getaway 400 (Cup) next weekend, marking his second time competing in the double this year.

It comes after a $500k gesture and new car announcement and after he put the ball in Hendrick’s court with a simple message on his future. The 29-year-old was an Xfinity Series champion for JR Motorsports in 2014 and finished second at Darlington earlier this year, giving Kyle Busch the bird in the process. 

Elliott’s jaunt at the Poconos will mark the first time he’s competed in multiple Xfinity races in the same year since he raced in eight in 2018.

He currently sits in 11th in the Cup Series standings after his strong showing in Mexico City, shrugging off a disappointing second phase and a tough weather conditions to manage a third place finish.

“It was a lot going on, for sure, certainly from the restarts,” Elliott said after the race. “But once it singled out, it really became a normal road course, I thought, but the restarts were crazy.”

Yeah, I think we just pressed so hard to try and get through traffic that, yeah, we it got singled out, I didn’t have a lot of pace left,” he continued.

“I felt like I gained on him there for a little while but it was pretty tough sledding to get to that point. We pressed on. Really proud of our LLumar Chevy group for sticking with it.”

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Elliott has finished in the top 20 of each race he’s competed in this season. Outside of his Xfinity race in Darlington, he’s yet to even finish in the top two.

His winless run dates back to the 2025 BetMGM 300 in the Xfinity Series at the Charlotte Motor Speedway, where he finished ahead of Brandon Jones and Sammy Smith for the victory.

The NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series starts a two-week northeast swing this Friday at Pocono Raceway (5 p.m. ET, FS1, NASCAR Racing Network Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

ENTRY LISTS: Cup Series | Xfinity Series | Craftsman Truck Series

Cup Series regular Carson Hocevar is slated to make his fourth start of the season in the No. 7 Spire Motorsports entry, while Xfinity Series driver Brandon Jones is behind the wheel of the No. 1 machine for the seventh time.

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Bob Pockrass

FOX Motorsports Insider

MEXICO CITY — The Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez circuit in Mexico City has played host to Formula 1 races for several years. This year, the NASCAR Cup Series made its debut at the facility.

INDYCAR could possibly join the fun in 2026 as both NASCAR and INDYCAR look to increase their North American fan bases.

NASCAR fans look on during pre-race ceremonies prior to the NASCAR Cup Series Viva Mexico 250 at Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez 

Whether NASCAR returns will be determined in the next couple of months. NASCAR and promoter OCESA must evaluate the first trip of Cup to Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez and the first visit south of the border of any NASCAR national series in 17 years.

It had been 67 years since NASCAR had staged a Cup points race outside the United States.

“We believe that our communities share a spirit of optimism and desire to improve the lives of our people through collaboration and connection,” NASCAR Commissioner Steve Phelps told the drivers prior to the race. “We believe this is particularly true through sports, and in our case, motorsports. We have the honor and responsibility to excite, entertain and unite through our sport, and I know how much putting on a great show means to all of you.

“We hope that NASCAR can continue to foster meaningful relationships here in Mexico for many years to come.”

Both NASCAR and INDYCAR have Mexican drivers competing at their highest levels. Daniel Suarez was a fan favorite this past weekend. INDYCAR driver Pato O’Ward — who, like Suarez, is from Monterrey — has a following that is likely double or more than Suarez as Mexican fans tend to follow open-wheel racing.

“We would love to go there,” O’Ward said after his second-place INDYCAR finish Sunday at World Wide Technology Raceway outside of St. Louis. “I think it would be fantastic to have INDYCAR there, and we’re sure as hell going to try and pack the whole place up.”

INDYCAR star and Mexican driver Pato O’Ward would love for the series to run a race in Mexico.

NASCAR Executive Vice President Ben Kennedy’s primary role is spearheading the expansion of the schedule to new venues. He said finding the right spot on the calendar will be the key to returning to the venue, which hosts a Formula 1 race each year and quite possibly an INDYCAR race next season.

INDYCAR’s most likely date would come in the spring, where there are fewer races and there are questions about a return to Thermal. NASCAR’s possibly is more closer to the summer, although the 2026 World Cup will have matches in Mexico City from June 11-July 5, which potentially could impact when NASCAR could or would want to race there.

Formula 1 already has announced its 2026 schedule and will race Nov. 1 in Mexico City, whose motorsports calendar also has included a Formula E event (which this year was in January).

Kennedy indicated that the deal with OCESA to promote the race is a multi-year agreement, but it has options year-to-year on whether to continue.

“We’re very hopeful to be back here in the future,” Kennedy said. “We said this time and time again, … we’ve been bold and we’ve been innovative. We’ve done things like races in downtown Los Angeles and building a temporary [track] there [in the L.A. Memorial Coliseum], the first-ever street race in our sports history in downtown Chicago and this was the next milestone moment for us — bringing a race internationally.

“We’re very bold about continuing to bring our NASCAR Cup Series internationally. Mexico is a great place to do it.”

Sunday’s race wasn’t a sellout, but it was an enthusiastic crowd. Kennedy said 90 percent of the fans came from Mexico and 44 percent from Mexico City.

“We were happy with [the attendance],” Kennedy said. “The stadium section was packed … What’s just as important to us as the amount of people is the fact that there were avid fans that were here, there were casual fans that were here, and there were a ton of new fans that had never been to a NASCAR race.”

A general view of an LED display of Mexican-born NASCAR Cup Series driver Daniel Suarez at Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez 

Whether the event made money likely wouldn’t be an issue regarding NASCAR’s decision to return.

“For us, this is more of a strategic move as a sport to expand our footprint globally and internationally and to a new massive fan base,” Kennedy said.

“Just being in a country with 90 million people and over 20 million people in the larger Mexico City metro alone, that, in and of itself, is a success. … That carries a lot more weight than the economics or financials of the event. “

NASCAR did have some challenges, especially with planes it chartered to bring teams and other industry personnel. One plane apparently blew an engine and another was grounded by homeland security due to a paperwork issue.

That resulted in NASCAR having to change its Friday and Saturday schedules, as teams on those planes either had to wait for planes for the next day or two or scramble for commercial flights.

“There are challenges to internationally that are different,” said RFK Racing owner and driver Brad Keselowski, who competed in one of the Mexico races when the Xfinity Series raced there from 2005 through 2008.

“I suspect the industry will re-learn some of those lessons from a decade plus ago and be equipped to handle it better the next time.”

The drivers seemed to embrace the atmosphere and the culture. Several had come to the area in the last couple months to try to create awareness for the race.

“It was a really special thing for us to be able to come down here and do this,” said NASCAR’s most popular driver, Chase Elliott. “I thought it was really well done. I haven’t had any bad experiences throughout either one of my trips to Mexico City.

“I thought the weekend was overall a success.”

Winner Shane Van Gisbergen and more postrace interviews from Viva Mexico 250

NASCAR seemed to have learned from some of its experiences at new road courses and appeared to find a solution with strategically placed tire packs to ward off drivers trying to cut the turns.

“It’s always cool going to different places,” said race winner Shane van Gisbergen. “But I have no say in it.

“I think everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. The racing was cool. I’d love to come back.”

Some might not think the racing was as cool as van Gisbergen, who won by 16.567 seconds over Christopher Bell. While the second half of the race provided little drama, the racing on Saturday in the Xfinity Series certainly delivered, as that series can occasionally get a little chaotic.

Emerging from the chaos was Daniel Suarez, NASCAR’s lone Mexican-born Cup driver and the only Mexican to win a Cup race and the only international driver to win a national series championship.

The fans roared for Suarez, who had made several trips himself to Mexico City to promote the event.

“Every single thing about this weekend exceeded my expectations. The people, the fans, the sponsors, the excitement, the energy,” Suarez said. “I had expectations for this weekend. Not for the results but for the event and I can tell you that it personally exceeded those expectations. 

“So very, very happy for that. Very blessed. I hope that we can do it many more times.”

Daniel Suarez had a successful weekend in Mexico as he won the Xfinity Series race.

We’ll see if that happens.

“Racing here in Mexico City among these passionate fans in such an impressive venue, for the first time in NASCAR Cup Series history is, in a word, spectacular,” Phelps said in his address to the drivers.

“Together, we are doing something that will be remembered in the history of our great sport.”

Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR and INDYCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.

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Half a mile north of Main Campus lies the Georgia Tech Student Competition Center (SCC), home to seven different racing teams run entirely by Tech students who design, build and drive cars competing in competitions all over the country. GT Motorsport, one of the teams in the SCC, returned from competition last month, having achieved an impressive feat, placing third overall from a field of 107 teams competing in the international Formula SAE Michigan competition. 

The Technique spoke with Alexander Merryman, fourth-year BA & NEUR and GT Motorsports team lead, about the work that went into attending the competition, how he views the organization that he leads and his goals for the team going forward.

Preparing for a competition like the Formula SAE Michigan took years of work and dedication from GT Motorsport’s members and their leadership team. Merryman explained that GT Motorsports operates on a two-year design cycle, meaning the work on their 2025 car, which they just returned from competition with, started in Fall 2023.

This two-year design cycle can give the team a competitive advantage over teams that operate on a one-year cycle by allowing more time for performance tests and subsequent adjustments before heading to competition. The extra time also helps handle problems with the car, which are inevitable.

Their 2025 car was finished in December, but shortly after, while the car was in storage overnight, the water used in the engine for cooling froze, expanded and cracked the car’s engine block, setting the team back several weeks.

After the repairs, GT Motorsports was able to test and configure their car until the competition in May, recording about 250 miles on the car, using the dormant Six Flags parking lot as a testing site before race day. Compared to a road car, 250 miles may not seem like a lot, but for a student-built race car, every mile is rich with valuable information that helps fine-tune the car. This amount of testing allows the team to deliver on one of their goals to have a boring competition.

“We want a boring competition, which means nothing’s going wrong,” Merryman said.“We did all the work up front that we needed to do, and we did things the right way so we could go to Michigan to compete. We have exciting moments, like when we do very well, but there’s no crazy surprise like needing to replace an engine or something.” 

During the life cycle of the car, the GT Motorsports team splits up into subsystems, each with its own area of focus for the vehicle. For example, the aerodynamic team will focus on how air flows around the car to decrease drag and increase downforce, while the chassis team will focus on the underlying framework of the car.

Naturally, each subsystem team will have its own priorities for what it would like to test in the car with limited resources, so team leaders must work together to decide what is the most valuable use of testing time to achieve the ultimate result they want. According to Merryman, this is one of the ways that their work can provide experience to those who plan to enter a similar auto manufacturing industry.

“[For] the structure of the dynamics work, the design process is similar to what you might experience somewhere else,” Merryman said. “I’m always very happy that our leads and numbers are so fantastic that they get internships.”  

Performing well at the competition this year was crucial for the team’s long-term goals, especially following a disappointing showing last year, when the team placed 60th. Merryman said that the team has historically performed fairly cyclically, earning a good result about every four years, while in other years, performance has slid. However, Merryman sees a different vision for the team.

He hopes to break this cycle and keep GT Motorsports consistently performing at the top with some of the best schools in the country. This result was the first step towards that, bouncing back from a disappointing showing the previous year and beating their top-seven performance from two years ago.

“We want to be one of the teams that is always in the top 10,” Merryman said. “If we could always win each year that would be awesome, but realistically, we always want to be in the top 10. There’s not really a reason why we shouldn’t be if we do a good job of building on our momentum.” 

Competing is not just about going the fastest; at competition, judges score the car over eight categories, including cost, design, endurance and efficiency, but more important than just getting to the competitions is staying in business. It can become very costly to manufacture, test and transport the car to competition, so GT Motorsports relies heavily on sponsors, including General Motors and Ford, who help the team afford these expenses and provide students with these skill-building experiences. 

Going forward, Merryman hopes the team will continue to build better cars, perform well at their annual competition and avoid complacency from a great result. He believes that to continue building and learning, it starts with getting the right people doing what they love.

“I think one thing I always remind myself is that it is people that build a car, and that we really do have amazing people on this team that put in a lot of work, and I’m hoping they’re seeing all their hard work pay off,” Merryman said. “I’m a strong believer in putting the right people in place first, making sure the people are happy with what they’re doing, they’re doing what they want to do, and they’re operating in the right way, and then the rest follows you.” 

If you would like to learn more or get involved with GT Motorsport, you can find their website here, www.gtms.gatech.edu and their Instagram here, @georgiatech.motorsports.

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