KANSAS CITY, Kan. — Hendrick Motorsports being NASCAR’s premier powerhouse team is nothing new, but the organization’s speed lately is particularly impressive.
Kyle Larson absolutely dominated the Kansas Speedway race on Sunday and led a record 221 laps, but he may have been challenged by each of his teammates — Chase Elliott, Alex Bowman and William Byron — had circumstances played out a bit differently.
“I would argue we could run one through four with the speed of what some of those guys looked like earlier in the day,” Larson crew chief Cliff Daniels said.
Except it didn’t turn out that way. Elliott’s chances of winning were thwarted by a horrible pit stop, which sent him from first to 12th (and he eventually finished 15th). Bowman got fenced as part of a three-wide melee and still managed to finish fifth with a wounded car. Byron was running top-five until he suffered a flat tire and finished 24th.
Still, the speed across all four teams at the same time is noteworthy. Hendrick has famously had a “fourth car” weakness, where at least one driver doesn’t seem to have the competitiveness the others do throughout a season. And although Elliott and Bowman have yet to actually win this season, they look capable of it; Bowman said Sunday this season is the best his team has ever been.
“We’re maturing as a group,” said seven-time Cup Series champion crew chief Chad Knaus, who is now Hendrick’s vice president of competition. “Obviously the crew chiefs are now in their third complete year of working together. Our drivers are maturing, working together. They dive in deep with one another. They lean on each other.
“The communication at Hendrick Motorsports has always been high, but I don’t know that it’s ever been as high as what it is right now. It’s something great to be a part of.”
Bowman echoed the secret sauce was in the company all working well together as one group, particularly for a car which Knaus said is dependent on the smallest details to find success.
“I know the fans think all four should be perfect every week, but it’s hard, man,” Bowman said. “It’s really hard to get all four on the right side of things every week.”
Right now, though, it’s happening.
Kyle Larson and Chase Elliott run side-by-side during Sunday’s race. The two were part of a strong effort across all four of Hendrick Motorsports’ cars. (Chris Graythen / Getty Images)
Daniels, who formerly worked under Knaus as Jimmie Johnson’s engineer on the No. 48 team, said the roots of today’s success can be traced back to seeds planted in 2017. That was when team owner Rick Hendrick told the organization they would no longer be split by shops with communication; formerly, there were two teams in each building and they shared similar agendas.
These days, everything is a completely open book.
“It’s one thing to say, but it’s another thing to practice how closely all four teams really do work,” Daniels said. “There’s no hidden notes. There’s no secret notebook. Everything is shared really out in the open with our engineering corps, with the crew chief group.
“All of our meetings are together. We do everything as a combination of the four teams. There’s never any specific meeting or conversation that just happens between a couple groups.”
If there’s talk about engineering, all four teams are in the same room. If there’s talk about setup theory, all four teams are in the same room. No one is ever excluded.
“That’s just Mr. Hendrick’s vision of how he wanted the company to be led,” Daniels said. “He saw that if the communication, the teamwork — all the cliche things that are so important to live out — if that came into fruition, you’d see what you see today.”
Bundle up?
NASCAR announced last week that the season finale will rotate to various tracks beginning next season, and drivers we spoke with were unanimously in favor of the idea. The question now is which tracks should be included in the rotation?
The Athletic’s Jordan Bianchi laid out a list of possible candidates, but drivers seemed more concerned about weather than anything when listing their potential choices.
In addition to Homestead-Miami Speedway and Phoenix Raceway, Las Vegas Motor Speedway seems like a no-brainer. Once-maligned Texas Motor Speedway got several mentions, as did Charlotte Motor Speedway.
But what about Kansas? All of the drivers love the track, so wouldn’t that be a candidate?
“Kansas would be a great place if the weather cooperated, but that’s too much of a tossup,” Ryan Blaney said.
“You don’t really know what to expect in November,” Larson said. “You might have beautiful weather or it could be freezing or snowing or whatever. It probably needs to stay at tracks where you can count on the weather being favorable. With a big weekend like that, you wouldn’t want any delays.”
But depending on which weather site you look at for historical data, early-November average temperatures in Kansas City are a high of between 55-62 degrees. That doesn’t seem like a dealbreaker, particularly in a city where fans are used to dressing warmly for football weather.
“That’s not bad,” Kyle Busch said. “But you’re not going to want to end in prime time (due to cold), so it’s going to have to be a noon o’clock start, you know what I mean?”
He added, with the classic Busch grin: “And we don’t do those.”
Going flat
There were a rash of tire failures and drivers complaining of vibrations at Kansas (Chase Briscoe said he could barely see at the end of the race because his car had such a severe vibration). So what gives? Was it just low air pressures the teams were experimenting with and got burned?
We asked Knaus for his take.
“There’s no one isolated reason why you have a tire failure,” he said. “The vibrations are high. If you walked up and down pit road at all, you saw the rubber and the debris that was laying on pit road from when they took the tires off, and the rubber is caking on the insides of the wheels. People were busting cords in their tires. That creates a vibration as well.
“The failures are from heat, which is a result of low tire pressure, load. There’s so many things that go into it. It’s rarely one singular thing that creates those failures.
“(Goodyear) typically brings a very good product, and what happened today I don’t think was necessarily a Goodyear issue. I think that was a competitor thing where we were really pushing the limits of the cars and the tires, just for what that’s worth.”
And the award goes to…
Brad Keselowski once proclaimed “Kyle Busch is an a—” over the public address system at Bristol Motor Speedway. There had been no thaw between the longtime foes by 2017, when Busch sat alongside Keselowski in the championship preview news conference and said, “Sometimes you just don’t like a guy.”
Nothing in the years since had suggested anything different between the two veteran drivers.
Then came an incredible piece of NASCAR-produced content last Tuesday, a send-up of “Back to the Future” in which Busch and Keselowski revealed the move to Homestead and acted like they were in a buddy comedy. As of Monday morning, it has 1.2 million views on X alone.
How the heck did that happen, Kyle?
“DAP program, let’s just leave it at that,” Busch said of NASCAR’s new Driver Ambassador Program, which offers financial rewards for promoting the sport.
But seriously though. They had to have spent hours together filming that. Does that mean the Keselowski/Busch relationship has changed with both drivers in their 40s?
“We don’t necessarily have a relationship,” Busch said. “I probably don’t have a relationship with half of these guys here anyway. So we just show up and do our deal.”
Still, though, it had to be strange when the two had to film a smiling, leaping high-five.
“That was definitely weird,” Busch said. “But hey, when you’re a good actor, you can make anything work.”
For his part, Keselowski posted a photo of himself on X holding a miniature Oscar.
“Finally, my acting is being recognized and I got my very own Academy Award for this performance,” he wrote. “Thank you to everyone who got me here.”
The new disruptor
Carson Hocevar continues to be NASCAR’s most interesting new personality. Hocevar won Saturday night’s Truck Series race at Kansas after he was nearly wrecked by Layne Riggs on the last lap — only to then hold his middle finger out the window to Riggs all the way to the finish line.
Hocevar then kissed the TV camera during his victory celebration, which isn’t exactly something you see often from NASCAR race winners.
All of this came one week after Hocevar was criticized by yet another veteran — this time Ryan Preece — after causing a crash at Texas. Preece, like Blaney, Kyle Busch and Hocevar mentor Ross Chastain, have expressed frustration for the way Hocevar races.
Carson Hocevar held off Layne Riggs to win the Truck Series race Saturday in Kansas — with a colorful last lap. (Chris Graythen / Getty Images)
But from Hocevar’s point of view, he doesn’t hear those same comments when he reaches out to various drivers (and said he settled things with Preece via phone this week).
“You get the radio transmission or you see the talks after the race or interviews and everything, and then when I have that conversation, it’s just different,” he said. “It’s heat of the moment.”
Hocevar said it comes down to the intent of the move and making sure those drivers know “the intent wasn’t to put them in a bad spot, put me in a bad spot or jump that line where it’s dirty, aggressive or over-aggressive.”
Except the more it happens, the more the veterans won’t give him the benefit of the doubt.
Upping the power?
Last week, NASCAR spokesman Mike Forde gave the first hint of a thaw toward the sanctioning body’s refusal to increase horsepower, indicating on the “Hauler Talk” podcast an engine boost is being explored.
Larson was asked about whether a horsepower increase would help the on-track product.
“We would be all for trying something new,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s going to change the racing drastically or anything. It’s a decent size increase, but it’s not massive.
“I’d be open for it. I know we all are. I think it’s gotten a little bit stale — the racing obviously, the product and all that. We’re in need of a change, a drastic change, to try and help. It would be good to start there.”
Heim Time
23XI had four cars in Sunday’s race, and the highest-finishing driver was … Corey Heim?
Yep, the 14-time Truck Series race winner got his first career top-15 finish in just his fourth Cup start and — aside from one small mistake that led to a crash — reminded everyone why he’s one of the biggest Cup prospects.
“I definitely feel like I’m ready to make Cup starts — I don’t know if I’m ready to be a full-time Cup driver,” he said. “That is what I’m learning as I go. I certainly feel like I am, but it is going out and proving that.”
But Heim should arguably already be in Cup by now. He led the Truck Series in wins last year, one season after he had the most top-fives, most top-10s, best average finish and most laps led. And now he’s back in Trucks for another season (where he’s already won three of the first nine races).
Prospects like Heim don’t typically get stuck at one level for that long. How does he avoid getting impatient at age 22?
“Maybe I was struggling more on the Truck side or seeking other opportunities, it would be different, but I’m really happy with my opportunities in the Truck Series,” he said. “We are competitive every week, and it is really fun. It is rewarding. That is the main thing.”
(Top photo of Kyle Larson celebrating his win Sunday: Jamie Squire / Getty Images)
