LINCOLN, Ala. — Hendrick Motorsports entered the NASCAR Cup Series Round of 8 with three cars in contention for the championship.
It very well could leave the round with one or even zero drivers in the Championship 4.
Following the YellaWood 500 at Talladega Superspeedway on Sunday (Oct. 19), Kyle Larson is the only HMS driver above the cut line, holding a 36-point buffer. However, he is fourth in points, trailing Christopher Bell by one. Should Larson fail to out-point Bell next week at Martinsville Speedway, plus a driver below the cut line wins, then Larson is out.
As for the other two HMS Round of 8 drivers, William Byron is fifth at -36 points and Chase Elliott is dead last at -62.
For Elliott, he never really had a chance at Talladega. The No. 9 driver got knocked out on lap 52 of the 188-lap event when a bump from Erik Jones to Noah Gragson went wrong at the front of the pack. Elliott was credited with 40th position in the 40-car field, scoring just one point on the day.
“Unless we won today, we were likely gonna be in a very similar position next week,” Elliott said. “So, I hate it. I don’t know what you do about those situations. Like we weren’t back there doing anything wild or crazy. It turned sideways and [I] slid into the wreck. Kind of thinking back through it, I wish I could have done something different, but I don’t really know what I would have done. I was just trying to get slowed up.
“Yeah, I’m looking forward to Martinsville though. I got one more shot at it.”
As for Larson and Byron, both cars had a great shot at winning and clinching a spot in the Championship 4 a week early. The duo started on the front row in overtime, with Larson taking the lead and coming down in front of Byron once he got clear of the No. 24.
On the backstretch of the last lap, Larson was side-by-side with Bubba Wallace for the win, with Byron and Carson Hocevar of Spire Motorsports (a HMS satellite team) pushing the No. 5. But Larson ran out of fuel, pulling down to the apron as the rest of the field zoomed by. Instead of winning or even getting a solid points day, Larson crossed the finish line 26th.
“Yeah, disappointing, of course,” Larson’s crew chief Cliff Daniels told Frontstretch. “And obviously, we thought we had a little bit more than what we ended up having. That’s the unfortunate part. Obviously, we got to go back and and see what we did wrong, and yeah, just figure out how to be better moving forward.”
However, the No. 5’s fuel issue didn’t exclusively hurt Larson. Since Byron was directly behind his HMS teammate, it caused the No. 24 to slow down and the bottom line lost momentum. Still, Byron was going to finish somewhere around fifth until a bump from Hocevar sent the two-time Daytona 500 champion spinning. Byron went from a shot at winning to sitting sideways in 25th.
What Byron was more focused on, though was that he and Larson weren’t able to fend off the challenge from Wallace and the outside line. Had the HMS duo had retained control of the race, then perhaps he could’ve grabbed the lead and held it when Larson ran out of fuel.
“Yeah, it just didn’t work out,” Byron told Frontstretch. “Obviously, I felt like [turns] 1 and 2 went as good as I could have expected or hoped, and then [Larson and I] got linked down the backstretch, got almost clear maybe. I got clear in the middle of [turns] 3 and 4 for sure and felt like I was still in a good spot coming to turn 4. And then, [we] just couldn’t get linked together soon enough and got kind of drug back.
“So, yeah, not sure how we could do that differently per se, but sometimes they work out, sometimes they don’t.”
As for the contact from Hocevar that ruined his finish, Byron noted, “I’m sure he was getting pushed from behind.”
Now, HMS will try to save face at Martinsville, where’s there’s still optimism they could get two cars into the Championship 4. The most likely scenario for that would be for Larson to score more points than Bell next week while Elliott or Byron win. Byron could still make it on points, but he would need a lot of help while at 62 points back, winning is the only option for Elliott.
However, you have to go back to 2021 to find the last time a Hendrick car has won the fall race at Martinsville. It could be an uphill battle with none of the trio finishing higher than fourth this spring: Elliott (42 laps led) was the only one to spend any time out front.
“Yeah, I mean, certainly the last handful of races, I think we’ve been solid at Martinsville,” Daniels said. “We haven’t been one of the guys that’s been able to go out and lead a lot of laps and win like we’ve seen the 12 [Ryan Blaney] be really good at doing and the 11 [Denny Hamlin] … So, we’ve been studying up and doing our homework.
“Our short track package has certainly evolved for the better in the second half of the summer months and getting into the fall. We’ve had some really optimistic runs, and we’re going to keep building on that and try to put our best foot forward. Our mindset’s going to be to go there and almost consider ourselves a must-win car, because if you’re able to do that, then you keep it in your hands and not leave it up to the math to work out.”
Michael Massie joined Frontstretch in 2017 and has served as the Content Director since 2020.
Massie, a Richmond, Va., native, has covered NASCAR, IndyCar, SRX and the CARS Tour. Outside of motorsports, the Virginia Tech grad and Green Bay Packers minority owner can be seen cheering on his beloved Hokies and Packers.