Kyle Larson celebrates in Las Vegas after winning a NASCAR Cup Series car race on Sunday, March 7th, 2021. (AP Photo / John Locher)
CHARLOTTE, NC (AP) – Hendrick Motorsports celebrates every race win with a victory bell that is towed across campus for everyone to ring.
Without the pandemic, the bell would have made two trips so far this season.
The Hendrick people believe that the count should actually be four.
Hendrick Motorsports got off to a brilliant start this season with two wins in NASCAR’s first four races. This is a marked increase for an organization that has gotten deep into the schedule in recent years before its program found a rhythm.
William Byron and Kyle Larson have Hendrick in two races en route to this weekend’s race at Phoenix Raceway, where Chase Elliott won in November to win his first Cup Series championship. Elliott and Alex Bowman are winless for the first month, but Bowman won pole for the Daytona 500 and Elliott, a week after finishing second in that marquee, had the field covered on Daytona’s street circuit until a questionable caution rattled the field.
“I mean, the Hendrick boys certainly came to play,” said Kyle Busch, a former Hendrick driver who has since won two cup championships with Joe Gibbs Racing.
The momentum is a carry-over from last season when Elliott gave Rick Hendrick his first title since Jimmie Johnson won it in 2016. The team had failed to promote a driver to the championship lap in the three years between titles, a stretch that included an embarrassing 2018 season in which Elliott made the only three wins for the entire organization.
Slow rebuilding has focused on behind the scenes reorganizations and improving performance on 1.5 mile routes. Hendrick Motorsports lagged its competitors in nearly all statistical categories, including wins, on these tracks last season.
But after two stops on the NASCAR circuits, Hendrick Motorsports is unbeaten on intermediate tracks. NASCAR diversified the schedule this year, but there are still two 1.5-mile tracks left in the third round of the playoffs where a win automatically takes a place in the championship finals.
“As a group, we’ve been working pretty hard to improve our collective knowledge base,” said Chad Knaus, who moved to Hendrick’s Vice President of Competition this year after nearly two decades as crew chief. “Each team certainly has its own identity and the freedom to do whatever it needs to do, but they really work together.”
Knaus even suggested that winning seven championships with Johnson may have sped up the lean years. Johnson was without a win in his last three seasons and it took the Hendrick organization a long time to adapt to the new Camaro that Chevrolet introduced in 2018 and then again in 2020.
The team has now had a full season with the new Camaro, but Hendrick isn’t following a team’s lead either.
“Sometimes when someone is in there who is too overwhelming, or maybe even too successful, they can lead the group in the wrong direction,” Knaus said. “The success that Jimmie and I had for years has ruined a lot of progress at Hendrick Motorsports. We’ve won races that we maybe shouldn’t have, and what happens is a driver and crew chief say, “Well, let’s just do it like the 48th.” That is not always the healthiest thing. “
That quick start has given Hendrick 265 wins, just three fewer than the Petty Enterprises record. The boss isn’t celebrating yet.
“I think you are slowly gaining momentum in this sport,” said Hendrick. “We still have a lot to do. We have work to do on the pits. But we have a good speed. I just feel like the chemistry is just that good. I don’t know if I can ever remember all four cars being better down the line. “
Follow @AZSports
Comments are closed.