Standard bearer sliding off course
Statistical look at Hendrick’s hard fall in NASCAR Cup Series
No matter what has happened with Hendrick Motorsports overall as a team the last 16 years, Jimmie Johnson was always a constant by winning races and battling for the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series championship.
The 2010 Cup Series is a good example.
Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jeff Gordon and Mark Martin did not win a race over the course of the season, but Johnson scored six victories on the way to his record-shattering fifth consecutive Cup Series title.
Rick Hendrick has had his share of down years, but always seemed to have at least one driver, who in recent years was Johnson, making a run for championship honors.
This season is different around Hendrick Motorsports. Through 19 of 36 races, Hendrick’s four cars have failed to score a victory.
Making the situation seem more dire, Johnson is well off his form. He has more DNFs (3) than top-5 finishes (2) and had led only 12 laps out of the 5,407 run to date.
If you start connecting the dots, you will realize this slide in performance started in the second half of the 2017 season.
Those paying attention can remember being aghast that Hendrick failed to advance one of his four drivers into last year’s Championship Round at HomesteadMiami Speedway.
Only Chase Elliott, who was in his sophomore season at Hendrick, advanced to Round 3 of the playoffs, where he was eliminated from championship competition following an agonizing second-place finish in the penultimate race at Phoenix.
While Hendrick was not represented in the inaugural 2014 Championship Round, the pain was diminished somewhat by the fact all four drivers won races with a combined count of 13 victories.
Since Hendrick started his Cup Series team in 1984, it has been a stalwart in major-league, stock-car racing. Geoff Bodine set the tone for the team with three wins in Hendrick Motorsports’ start-up season.
Hendrick has 249 wins and 12 championships, mostly recently Jimmie Johnson’s record-tying seventh title in 2016.
Hendrick Motorsports has been compared to Major League Baseball’s New York Yankees in terms of quality players and long-term, dominating performance.
But even the Yankees don’t make the playoffs every year.
Johnson nabbed his last Cup Series win at Dover on June 2, 2017. Kasey Kahne, who is no longer with the team, scored Hendrick Motorsports’ last Cup win on July 23, 2017 when he captured the Brickyard
400 at Indianapolis.
The four-car team has gone winless in its last 35 starts (Johnson has a 41race losing streak), and if no Hendrick driver wins Sunday at New Hampshire, it will mark 12 months since the team has been to Victory Lane.
Hendrick has always aligned itself with the Chevrolet brand and this season the car manufacturer went from the Chevrolet SS to a Camaro body style.
Only one Team Chevy driver has gone to Victory Lane this season. Austin Dillon, who drives the No. 3 Richard Childress Racing entry, wheeled his car to a big triumph in the seasonopening Daytona 500.
The current points standings help tell the story of Chevy’s frustration this season.
Only Kyle Larson, who drives the No. 42 Chip Ganassi Racing Camaro, represents Chevrolet among the top-10 drivers in the standings.
Dillon has drifted to
18th in points. Still that win makes him one of the 16 eligible playoff drivers.
Johnson, who is Chevrolet’s most decorated active driver, is 12th in points, but 14th in the championship chase because of wins by Erik Jones and Dillon.
If you look at the points coupled with the drivers who have won races this season, Hendrick’s drivers are fighting for playoff spots.
Elliott is 15th while Alex Bowman is 16th when you slide Dillon ahead of them in the standings.
William Byron, who is a Cup Series rookie, is 22nd in points.
Hendrick can turn this around quickly, if its performance improves. There are seven races left in the regular season and as the drivers say “get a win and you’re in” the playoffs.