4 Burning Questions: Where’s the Rest of Hendrick Motorsports?

1. Can Martin Truex Jr. wake up from his nightmare season?

Ever since the 400-mile NASCAR Cup Series race at Darlington Raceway in May, Martin Truex Jr. has been a part of a perpetual bad dream that’s become reality.

Sitting second in points after Kansas Speedway with 12 consecutive top 15s and an average finish of 8.9, Truex has since gone on to record two top 10s, four top 15s and an abysmally awful average finish of 23.9 in his last 14 starts. The low point came in Sunday’s (Sept. 1) Southern 500, as Truex made a rookie mistake on lap 2 that took both himself and Ryan Blaney out of the race.

After looking like a playoff lock that was on the cusp of winning multiple races in May, Truex has since completed a slow-motion collapse to end the regular season, only sneaking his way into the playoffs by six points over Chris Buescher.

But with the regular season now over, Truex has the perfect opportunity to reset for the final 10 races of his full-time Cup career.

Because while he has an average finish of 23.9 in his last 14 starts, speed hasn’t been a problem for the No. 19 team.

At Darlington in May, he was swept up in a multi-car crash and relegated to 25th with damage. At World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway in June, Truex had a flat tire under green while running in the top 10, and he was unable to get back on the lead lap en route to a 34th-place finish. At Sonoma Raceway a few weeks later, a fuel sputter in the final corner dropped him from second to 27th.

He was on pace for top-10 finishes at Nashville Superspeedway and the Chicago street course, but he was collected in wrecks at the end of both races. At Richmond Raceway in August, Truex was relegated to dead last with an engine failure after running in the top five all night. And as usual, Truex was swept up in an early Big One at Daytona International Speedway and spent the rest of the night off the pace.

It’s only in recent weeks that Truex’s poor results have been self-inflicted. In the Brickyard 400, he wiped out while battling for fifth. With seven laps to go at Michigan International Speedway, he threw away a top-five finish by hitting the wall. And in the Southern 500, he took himself out with one of the fastest cars after a whopping two laps.

The speed has always been there for the No. 19 team, even in this horrendous stretch. Instead, it’s been a combination of poor luck, poor execution and mistakes that have sent Truex spiraling into one of the worst stretches of his career.

And yet, even with everything that’s gone wrong, Truex is still in the playoffs with a shot at the championship. He’s received the golden reset button and the opportunity to put all his past struggles in the rearview mirror.

Now it’s up to him to make the most out of the opportunity.

2. Fifteen Cup winners in the first 26 races. How many will we have by season’s end?

In a season where Hendrick Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing combined to win the first nine races of the year on non-superspeedways, it almost feels surreal to say that 15 different drivers scored a win in the regular season.

From Austin Cindric capitalizing on Blaney’s fuel miscalculation at Gateway to Daniel Suarez‘s three-wide photo finish win at Atlanta Motor Speedway to Chase Briscoe‘s incredible drive in the Southern 500, the motto of the 2024 season has been to expect the unexpected.

Fifteen drivers have a win, and if Austin Dillon wasn’t stripped of his playoff eligibility for his last-lap antics at Richmond Raceway, Ty Gibbs would’ve been the only winless driver to qualify for the playoffs on points.

If the last few weeks have served as any indication, it looks like the first-time winners this season are far from over. The Cup Series needs four new winners in the final 10 races to tie the all-time record of 19 in a season and five to set a new mark at 20. With 10 races to go, here are five drivers that have the best odds at finding the winner’s circle before season’s end.

Martin Truex Jr.

Truex and the No. 19 have plenty of speed despite all the recent misfortune. he has some of his best tracks on the horizon, as six of the final 10 races are at tracks he’s won at in the past. There are four tracks in particular where Truex will have best shots: Kansas, Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Homestead-Miami Speedway and Martinsville Speedway.

Kyle Busch

It’s too little, too late for Kyle Busch in terms of his playoff hopes, as three straight top fives and back-to-back runner-up finishes to close out the regular season were not enough to join the Round of 16. But the No. 8 team is looking better and better since the Olympic break, and there are plenty of tracks where Busch could contend if the team plays its cards right. This weekend at Atlanta will arguably serve as his best shot, as he was only .007 seconds away from a win in February.

Ty Gibbs

Gibbs’ first Cup win has looked like a matter of when, not if, for quite some time. He had an incredible start to the season, but the summer has been a mix of mid-pack finishes and engine woes sprinkled in with the occasional starts where he contends for the win.

He’ll have plenty of good tracks coming up like Phoenix Raceway and the Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL, but Gibbs’ best chance will lie at Thunder Valley. He’s combined to lead 239 laps in his last two starts at Bristol Motor Speedway, and he might’ve had the winning car in March if it wasn’t for a costly flat tire.

Chris Buescher

Chris Buescher‘s season is already filled with two what-ifs: He lost by .001 seconds at Kansas Speedway in May, and he was in the catbird’s seat at Darlington a few weeks later until contact with Tyler Reddick cut his tire. RFK Racing has only continued to improve with time, and Buescher has had the speed to win multiple races this year. Will he and the No. 17 team put it all together to grab one of the final 10?

The Talladega Winner

The draft is the great equalizer, and Talladega will present the chance for a winner we wouldn’t see otherwise. After all, did anyone think that Harrison Burton would win his way into the playoffs at Daytona despite being dead last in points among full-timers?

In order to have 19 or 20 winners in the 2024 season, the Talladega winner will have to be someone who isn’t already listed above.

3. What do the Cup drivers think about the playoffs?

While NASCAR’s current playoff system has been polarizing among the fanbase with supporters and detractors ever since its inception in 2014, Bob Pockrass of FOX Sports had the opportunity at NASCAR playoff media day to pass out surveys for the 16 playoff drivers to anonymously answer.

Notably, two of the questions dealt with the current playoff format, among other topics. While it was a mixed bag of answers, there was one thing that the 16 unanimously agreed on: having the finale somewhere other than Phoenix.

Las Vegas received seven votes, while Homestead (which hosted the finale from 2002 to 2019) got six. The third-most-popular response was Charlotte Motor Speedway with four.

Phoenix will play host to the finale this year and next, but its status for 2026 and beyond is unknown.

The other question regarding the playoff format was simple: Do you like the current playoff format?

Eight of the 16 said no, while seven said yes. One driver was undecided.

One driver said, “It sucks ass.”

Another driver gave an idea for an alternate hybrid format, which would eliminate eight drivers after five races and set up a five-race championship round for the eight remaining drivers. The same driver also conceded that they “don’t make those decisions.”

Next year will mark the 12th consecutive year of the elimination playoff format, which has outlived the 10-year run of the 10-race Chase from 2004 to 2013. The system has only been tweaked twice, first in 2017 for the introduction of stages, playoff points and playoff points carrying over to every round with the exception of the finale. The other tweak happened this decade, as the top 30 points rule was removed as a requirement for race winners to make the playoffs.

Aside from those changes, the format itself has largely been set in stone since 2014. Is it possible to see minor adjustments to the format or a new one entirely down the road? While it may seem like a long shot now, it’s already happened twice in the last 20 years.

4. Where’s the rest of Hendrick Motorsports?

There’s no question that Kyle Larson is undisputed top dog at Hendrick. He’s won 21 races since joining HMS in 2021, more than any other driver in the field. And even when Larson’s teammates put together formidable seasons like Chase Elliott in 2022 and William Byron in 2023, Larson has the talent and firepower to remain that surefire championship contender year in and year out.

It’s been no exception in 2024, as Larson is carrying the HMS torch. Sure, all three of his teammates have combined for five wins, but none of them have even come close in matching Larson in speed.

Despite missing the Coca-Cola 600, Larson leads the series in wins (four) and laps led (1,088), and he was only one point away from snatching the regular-season championship from Reddick.

Larson is also fresh off of arguably his most dominant performance of the season, when he led 263 of the 367 laps in the Southern 500 before finishing fourth.

What’s notable is that in just one race, Larson led more laps than Byron (259), Elliott (213) and Alex Bowman (14) have all season.

It’s been a bizarre season for Chevrolet, as Daniel Suarez is the only Chevy driver outside of the HMS quartet to qualify for the playoffs. More concerning is that every HMS driver outside of Larson have gone cold at the worst possible time.

Byron had the hot start of the HMS camp with three wins in the first eight races — including his first Daytona 500 — but he only has a pedestrian three top 10s and 23 laps led across his last 12 starts. Elliott has the second-best average finish this season at 11.6, which is partially due to his remarkable consistency, with only one finish worse than 21st all year. That said, Elliott faded in the regular-season title battle with no finishes better than ninth in his last nine starts, and he has only led 87 laps since his win at Texas Motor Speedway in May.

Likewise, Bowman had an impressive, season-saving win at Chicago in July, but he only has three top 10s in his last 12 starts and enters the playoffs with five consecutive finishes outside the top 15.

Just like Truex, the beginning of the playoffs marks a clean slate for all of HMS. The teams have shown occasional flashes, as Byron came close to beating Reddick in overtime at Michigan in August.

That said, three of HMS’ cars have been lacking consistent race-winning speed for months, and that isn’t going to get them far in the playoffs if they don’t start picking up the pace.