Hendrick vows rebound from worst season in team history
Massive restructuring
DAYTONA BEACH, Florida, Feb 6, (AP): Rick Hendrick worked too hard building NASCAR’s top organization to tolerate mediocrity. If his teams had simply been average last season he might not rate it as one of the worst in team history.
The Hendrick cars were pretty bad – seven-time NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson failed to win for the first time in his Cup career – and it took 22 races for the organization to get its first victory. The final tally showed just three Chase Elliott victories and the organization with 12 Cup titles was locked out of the championshipdeciding finale for the second consecutive year.
In a wide-ranging interview with The Associated Press, Hendrick guaranteed this year will be much improved.
“Last year sucked. I ain’t gonna do that no more,” Hendrick said. “I’m too competitive to do that and our organization in 2016.
Bowman is 26, Elliott is 23 and Byron celebrated his 21st birthday during the off season. Johnson is entering his 18th full time Cup season and turns 44 this September.
Johnson was surrounded by inexperienced newcomers at the same time Chevrolet made a body change to its Cup entrant and switched to the Camaro. Although Bowman won the Daytona 500 pole in the Camaro’s debut, and Chevy driver Austin Dillon won the race, that was the lone highlight for most of the season.
Chevy didn’t win again until Elliott’s first career victory in August and Camaro drivers totaled just four victories. Ford won 19 races in its outgoing Fusion and Toyota scored 13 wins in its Camry. Hendrick completed a massive restructuring before the 2018 season and its resources were stretched thin as all four teams were moved into one shop for the first time. The teams had previously been split in pairs, and the consolidation put everyone in the same building with the crew chiefs working as a quartet.
So much change at one time had an impact on performance.
“We really looked like we were out to lunch most of the year,” Hendrick said. “Until Chase won, it didn’t even look like we were in the same ballpark. But we started to close the big gap toward the end of the year and now we’ve turned the page.”
Hendrick had built his team from nothing and weathered the tightest of financial situations. All-Star Racing barely made it through the first two months of its inaugural 1984 season.
Hendrick
United States’ Mikaela Shiffrin celebrates winning the women’s super G during the alpine ski World Championships, in Are, Sweden, on Feb 5. (AP) ARE, Sweden, Feb 6, (AP): Following a stressful Olympic year, Mikaela Shiffrin has been scaling back her schedule at every opportunity this season.
Her latest move involved leaving the site of the world championships in Sweden soon after her super-G victory Tuesday to recharge and prepare for next week’s giant slalom and slalom.
Austrian media reported that Shiffrin left Are by helicopter for training in Trysil, Norway – forcing her ski technician to haul her equipment in a drive of six-plus hours across the border to catch up with her.
“She’s going off the grid for a bit, wants to keep it private,” the US Ski Team told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
Since she will not be competing in Friday’s Alpine combined race, Shiffrin has more than a week before her next events of giant slalom and slalom on Feb. 14 and 16. She is expected back in Are on Monday.
“The slalom and GS are her main goals and targets,” US head coach Paul Kristofic said.
At last year’s Pyeongchang Olympics, Shiffrin got stressed out by schedule changes and postponements and followed her gold-medal performance in giant slalom with only a fourth-place finish in slalom – her best event.
Shiffrin will be a big favorite to win both the GS and slalom in Are, putting her in position to match Anja Paerson’s three-gold performance from the 2007 worlds at the same venue.
“She has the capacity to, absolutely,” Kristofic said.
Paerson actually won five medals in 2007, winning super-G, combined and downhill plus silver in the team event and bronze in the slalom.
Shiffrin won’t compete in Sunday’s downhill or Tuesday’s team event.
“She’s competitive in everything she starts,” Kristofic said. “It’s outstanding and astonishing and it’s hard to put into words ... It’s a huge challenge and she’s up for it all the time.”
Meanwhile, in his next-to-last race before retirement, Aksel Lund Svindal saved his punchiest work for after the super-G.
The Norwegian skier finished in 16th place in Wednesday’s race at the world championships, 0.92 seconds behind winner Dominik Paris , after a run he said he “didn’t enjoy” and “turned out to be a much more difficult than I expected.”
Off the course, Svindal didn’t hold back when commenting on remarks made by the president of the International Ski Federation to a Swiss newspaper.
Gian-Franco Kasper told Tages-Anzeiger that he preferred countries with “dictatorships” to host major sports competitions because “dictators can organize events such as this without asking the people’s permission.”
“From the business side, I say: I just want to go to dictatorships, I do not want to argue with environmentalists,” the 75-year-old Kasper said in the article.