Hendrick Motorsports has been playing a game of the tortoise and the hare on flatter race tracks in recent seasons. In this case, though, the hare has been nearly untouchable.
After coming up short in each of the previous three NASCAR Cup Series Championship races to Team Penske at Phoenix Raceway, Hendrick Motorsports knew it had serious work to attend to with its flat-track program. That’s why when three of its entries cracked the top 10 in the finishing order last weekend at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, something it hadn’t accomplished in literally a decade, clear progress was made.
“We weren’t close today in terms of [Penske’s] pace, but I thought we were so much improved for our standard,” two-time Daytona 500 champion William Byron told Jayski.com on Sunday, minutes after hopping out of the No. 24 Chevrolet. “This is definitely a shot in the arm for us. It shows what we’re capable of and that we can put our mind to. I’m excited going forward after today.”
Kyle Larson, the 2021 Cup champion, saw growth as well at that style of venue. The pitfall, however, was Penske combined to lead 263 of 301 laps with its affiliate Wood Brothers Racing entry leading an additional 10. It was a dominant performance.
“Penske was even better than I think they are compared to the rest of the field in the past,” Larson said. “When I was behind [Ryan Blaney], his car was crazy gripped up compared to mine. Mine didn’t even feel that bad that run, and I just let him go and he was flying.”
Improvements were made for all of Hendrick Motorsports, which was an effort that began dating back to the 2024 season when the powerhouse organization realized what its primary weaknesses were, HMS Vice Chairman Jeff Gordon told Jayski. The team had another solid outing at a flush 1.25-mile oval in the Round of 16 at World Wide Technology Raceway, with Chase Elliott leading the way with a third-place finish. Larson led 52 laps before dropping to 12th in the finishing order.
“If we are going to go win a championship at a track like Phoenix, we’ve got to get to work on that,” Gordon recalled of HMS getting to work on its flat-track program. “You can’t lay down on the other tracks though, either. A lot of effort and a lot of collaboration with all of the teams and coming together with ‘how can we make that better? What are we lacking or missing with the speed and the comfort?’
“In order to extract speed, our guys need to have comfort, stability and something to lean on. It seemed like that’s what we were lacking when we were listening to the drivers and their comments. This year, it’s definitely been a step up with how the cars are reacting at those types of tracks.
The dilemma, however, while Gateway and New Hampshire have similar tendencies to Phoenix, it’s not an exact duplicate of the 1-mile desert oval. Gordon believes that the four-car team can take lessons learned from those tracks and apply it to the championship race.
Penske will still be a tough out should any of its three teams advance to the Championship 4.
“I’m very proud of the progression we’ve made, but the Penske cars were incredibly strong,” Gordon said of New Hampshire. “We already know how good they are at Phoenix with what they’ve done the last few years and we have further to go. We’re not there yet.”
The immediate goal for HMS is to play to its strengths and hone in on its vulnerabilities. As all teams do, it attempts to learn from the competition each weekend and analyze data points to see what improvements can still be made. HMS is also working with an everchanging Goodyear tire compound, which will feature a new right-side tire code this weekend at Kansas Speedway.
Kansas has all the ingredients to be a successful weekend for Hendrick. Larson crushed the field in the spring by leading 221 laps – the most ever in a 400-mile race at a 1.5-mile track – and earning a maximum 61 points. It’s arguably the best intermediate track for Elliott and non-playoff driver Alex Bowman, who has a series-high six consecutive top-10 finishes in the “Sunflower State.”
“We’re pushing ourselves, but we’re trying to see what our competitors are doing,” Gordon stated. “Now this weekend, we go to Kansas, a track that we feel is very strong for us. We had a good first race for this round. We follow it up with another solid one and hopefully we’re leading more laps and have more presence at a mile-and-a-half this weekend than we did at New Hampshire. That can put some pressure back on our competitors and hopefully gets us in a position where we can move on to that next round and continue to find speed for when we get to Phoenix.
“First, we have to get to Phoenix. That’s the first goal.”
All three Hendrick cars remaining in the postseason are above the cutline leading into Kansas, with Byron (plus-47) and Larson (plus-41) having sizable gaps over the bubble. Elliott is seventh on the playoff grid, with a 14-point buffer.