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Some will look at the playoff opener at Darlington Raceway and have concerns about the Hendrick Motorsports contingent.
When Chase Elliott finishes best among their four drivers — all playoff drivers — in 17th, that’s not something that sparks confidence.
“We just struggled all night,” said regular-season champion William Byron after a 21st-place finish. “I thought the short run was a struggle.
William Byron had a disappointing 21st-place finish at Darlington. <!–>
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“I was hoping we’d be able to pay on the back end and have some long-run pace, but we would just fall off a cliff. … We’ve definitely got some work to do. We’ll go to Gateway and try to be better there.”
Gateway. That truly could be the more telling playoff race, as the NASCAR Cup Series heads there this weekend at World Wide Technology Raceway (commonly known as Gateway). The track, a flat 1.25-mile oval, is somewhat comparable to the one-mile Phoenix Raceway, the site of the championship race in nine weeks.
Hendrick drivers who have made the championship race the last three years have seen their title hopes dashed. And that’s because Team Penske has ruled at the fall Phoenix race with Joey Logano winning in 2022 and 2024 and Ryan Blaney capturing the crown in 2023.
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The Hendrick drivers entered the playoffs feeling relatively good, with Kyle Larson having three wins this year, Byron with two, Elliott one and Alex Bowman earning a spot on points.
Larson (+38 above the cutline) and Byron (+25) left Darlington still with somewhat comfortable margins while Elliott (+9) controls his own destiny and Bowman (-19) will need strong runs and possibly some help if he doesn’t win a race.
Kyle Larson still holds a comfortable playoff margin. <!–>
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As Elliott said prior to the start of the playoffs, making a playoff run means managing a lot of racing.
“You’re talking about 10 races. A lot of racing,” Elliott said. “That’s enough time to be really good for a stretch, to be really bad for a stretch and then get really good again.
“And so I think sometimes it gets lost just how many races and how long 10 weeks is, and how much can change through that period of time. For me personally, it’s what can I do this week to be better when we get to the racetrack on Saturday? And how can my Saturday help us on Sunday?”
Chase Elliott won the Cup in 2020. And he knows that Gateway has not been his best track since Cup began racing there in 2022. At the track, he has finishes of 21st and 13th. He didn’t race there in 2023 because of a suspension.
“I don’t have a key to Gateway,” Elliott said. “I wish I did. Maybe I’ll find one when I get there this time.”
Chase Elliott races through Turn 2 during the running of the NASCAR Cup Series Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington. <!–>
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In the hopes of finding the key to Gateway, Larson was among those who did a tire test there during the summer. And the organization hopes his experience will help them at a track where Logano, Kyle Busch and Austin Cindric have won the races there.
“We had a great test at Gateway earlier this year, and that’s kind of led us down a different path with our short-track package here lately — and it seems to be better,” Larson said. “I would say we’re still not anywhere close to Penske, and we’ve gotten closer to Gibbs but we’ve gotten better, which is a plus.
“We still have a few more short tracks to go to kind of fine-tune our package and hopefully hit where we need to at Phoenix.”
The 2021 Cup champion, Larson said Gateway shows who will be good at Phoenix.
“We’ve been really bad at Gateway but a little bit better at Phoenix,” Larson said. “If we can be good at Gateway in the same ballpark as [Penske and Gibbs], that would give us some confidence going to Phoenix.
“Based off how we ran at Phoenix at the end of last year, and then in the spring this year, we knew we had no shot to win the championship with the setup that we had. We had to go to work, and we’ve still been continuing to work on it.”
The braking is heavier at Gateway than at Phoenix but the corners are similar, Byron said. He hopes the team can get a good gauge of its mile-track program with Gateway and then the one-mile New Hampshire being in the first four races of the playoffs. Neither track was in the playoffs last year.
“We’ll try to get better at Gateway and apply that stuff to New Hampshire and then carry that forward to Phoenix,” Byron said. “So those races are going to be really important, not just the result, but having things to learn from them.”
The drivers aren’t presumptuous that they will make it to Phoenix. And while the drivers, as Elliott said, focus on week-to-week, the organization has to look ahead. They know they will be racing there regardless of being eligible for the championship.
“We’ve really struggled there [at Phoenix], but at the same time, we — to be blunt — just have a lot of work to do there, to catch the Penske cars. They’re incredibly fast there,” Bowman said.
“We have been getting to work, trying to improve that stuff. So a lot of smart people back at HMS working on it.”
Elliott said it has been “a huge initiative” within the walls of Hendrick to get better at the faster short tracks such as Richmond, New Hampshire, Phoenix and Gateway.
At Richmond, Elliott was clipped by a spinning Kyle Busch, ruining a potential solid run.
“I thought that as hit-or-miss as Richmond has been for us, I thought we were setting ourselves up for an opportunity to have a good a good evening,” Elliott said.
“I’m optimistic about that, and usually any time as a company we put our heads down and put a lot of emphasis on something, I think that there will be improvements made. And I look forward to getting to some of these places and seeing how much.”
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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