It’s been two years, but Hendrick Motorsports finally will have all four cars in contention for the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series championship.
Chase Elliott and Alex Bowman finally ended their winless streaks that each dated back to 2022, with the latter only snapping his streak at the most recent race at the Chicago street course.
Kyle Larson has also solidified his spot not just in the playoffs, but also atop the standings, despite a scare that he may not receive a waiver for skipping the Coca-Cola 600 in favor of competing in the Indianapolis 500. Larson has three wins on the year, tied with three other drivers for most on the season thus far.
One of those drivers Larson is tied with is his other teammate, William Byron. Byron earned three wins early in the year, including the Daytona 500. Much like last season, the No. 24 jumped out of the gate and took control of the season early, only finishing outside the top 20 once in the first 10 races, at Bristol Motor Speedway.
But ever since Dover Motor Speedway in April, it’s been a forgettable stretch of races for the Charlotte, N.C., native.
Not only has Byron failed to reach victory lane in the last 10 races, he hasn’t come nearly as close as he did at the beginning of the year. He only has two top fives and four top 10s in the last 10 races, compared to four top fives and seven top 10s in the first 10 races.
Byron suffered his first DNF of the season at Dover after getting caught up in a crash with Bubba Wallace and Christopher Bell.
It’s all been downhill from there. An uncharacteristically bad weekend for the entire No. 24 team at Kansas Speedway resulted in a mediocre 23rd-place finish. He rebounded with solid finishes of sixth at Darlington Raceway and third at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
Charlotte in particular is one that likely got away from Byron. He ran in the top five nearly the whole evening and won the first stage. However, a red flag on lap 249 for rain never lifted, and Byron was forced to settle for third as Bell went to victory lane. Still a solid points night, but one that Byron likely wishes went green to the finish.
A quiet 15th-place at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway backed up his two straight top 10s, but Sonoma Raceway resulted in another finish outside the top 30. Contact between Josh Berry and Erik Jones sent the former screaming into a pack of cars in the hairpin, and Byron was among the victims caught up.
That crash put Byron in an unrecoverable position and resulted in a 30th-place result. Fortunately, he tried to swing the momentum back in the other direction at Iowa Speedway with a runner-up finish to Ryan Blaney.
Another uncharacteristically bad weekend at New Hampshire Motor Speedway left Byron irrelevant all weekend. The implementation of the wet-weather tires didn’t help, and Byron left New Hampshire with a 26th-place finish.
The once-favorite for the regular-season championship had fallen well out of contention for the points lead by that point. He only further lost ground on the leaders with a bad weekend at Nashville Superspeedway. Only the late race of attrition and five overtimes allowed Byron to salvage a 19th-place result, though he should have finished much lower than that.
Byron is now fresh off of an eighth-place finish in Chicago, with hopes that it will turn things around. But right now, it’s safe to say the No. 24 team is deep in a summer slump. Since Byron’s last win at Martinsville Speedway, all three of his teammates have won a race (Larson has won two). He has fallen to sixth in the point standings, 72 points behind leader Larson — despite Larson missing the aforementioned Coca-Cola 600.
Even the All-Star Race at North Wilkesboro Speedway didn’t go Byron’s way. After starting 13th in a 20-car field, Byron hit the wall off of turn 4 within the first 75 laps. The contact was enough to break a toe link on the No. 24 and he finished 19th, second-to-last, 14 laps behind race winner Joey Logano.
On the surface, it seems clear that the No. 24 team needs some sort of regrouping effort before the playoffs start.
Or does it?
Stop me if you’ve heard this before: A Hendrick Motorsports driver, who is one of the heavy favorites to win the title, wins a lot early in the season before falling into an uncharacteristic summer slump beginning in or around May.
Sound familiar? Almost as familiar as Jimmie Johnson is with winning Cup titles?
While the performance drop could be cause for concern, it’s not uncommon for Hendrick to be in this situation. Johnson had similar slumps during his prime with Hendrick, only because he could fall back on his early-season wins once the playoffs came around. Johnson and crew chief Chad Knaus were never particularly as hot in the summer as they were come playoff time, when they would turn on the afterburners and win championship after championship.
Granted, Byron’s cold summer is a little bit more extreme than Johnson used to have, as Johnson would still find ways to finish in the top 15 consistently barring any crashes or mechanical issues. However, of Johnson’s 83 victories, only 18 of them (21.7%) came in the middle third of the season (races 13-24), when the summer races are held.
Johnson and Knaus essentially used the summer races as test sessions to see if there were any more advantages they could get on their competition come playoff time. Byron and crew chief Rudy Fugle, who have historically found a lot of success together in years and series past, could be doing the exact same thing.
The summer slump didn’t seem to affect Johnson and Knaus, as the duo went on to win an otherworldly seven championships in 11 seasons. Byron is surely a future Cup champion and could also go on to win multiple titles as well. And don’t forget, Knaus is still with Hendrick, serving as the VP of competition. Knaus was also, coincidentally, a former crew chief for Byron when he first moved up to the Cup Series.
It’s possible Knaus has dispensed some of his wisdom to the team, and now Byron’s team has become the new Johnson team of today.
Because of Hendrick’s past with summer slumps, it’s hard to say whether or not Byron’s struggles are cause for concern or just a result of Hendrick testing various strategies. He seems to be a favorite for the championship yet again this year, but the last 10 races haven’t helped him much in his championship quest.
But who’s to say Byron and Hendrick don’t turn on the afterburners yet again and dominate the playoffs?
We only have six more races until that question is answered.
About the author
Anthony Damcott joined Frontstretch in March 2022. Currently, he is an editor and co-authors Fire on Fridays (Fridays); he is also the primary Truck Series reporter/writer and secondary short track writer. He also serves as an at-track reporter and assists with social media when he can. A proud West Virginia Wesleyan College alum from Akron, Ohio, Anthony is now a grad student. He is a theatre actor and fight-choreographer-in-training in his free time.
You can keep up with Anthony by following @AnthonyDamcott on X.
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