Things were not exactly dire over at Hendrick Motorsports but winning the most recent Cup Series race at Martinsville Speedway in advance of the Easter break was a much needed momentum boost.
Prior to Chase Elliott and crew chief Alan Gustafson breaking through with a pit strategy-aided victory over Denny Hamlin, the narrative surrounding the Chevrolet flagship was an organization and manufacturer that was struggling to get acclimated to a new body.
This season was the first since 2019 that Hendrick failed to win one of its first six races, which isn’t exactly a tremendously large sample size, but it also speaks to the standards over at the campus in Concord.
A consistent theme in talking to everyone at Hendrick is the word ‘potential,’ in terms of the maximum capacity of this body compared to its predecessor and that includes vice chairman Jeff Gordon.
“We know that this new body, whatever the upgrades, they show a lot of potential,” Gordon said during the post-race press conference at Martinsville. “But that doesn't always mean it's just automatic on how you extract it. It's definitely a little bit of a balance change, so we're working through that.
“If you look at the places we've run good this year, we had good notes and ran solid at those places last year. Places that we didn't, we haven't.
“Our competitors have stepped up too. I think you look at Ford in the areas, places they've been good, they've stepped up. Toyota's been solid and consistent with Gibbs and 23XI pretty much every weekend. You have to give credit to them where credit's due. All that does is make us work harder, come together stronger.”
So the question for William Byron crew chief Rudy Fugle is just how much of the narrative is manufactured or reality when it comes to the new body.
“We are learning this new car, 100 percent,” Fugle told Motorsport.com after Martinsville. “We feel it has more potential. It’s a car we want to race and expect it to be faster, but we just have to learn it.
“It's got some new characteristics that we knew we wanted to include, but we have to encounter it in race conditions, and the only way to do that without testing is to race it.”
Fugle said they learned a lot during the Goodyear tire test at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and have been able to incorporate that it into upcoming builds.
“We just don’t have the opportunity to test so the only way to learn is to race it,” he said.
Chad Knaus, the vice president of competition and a Hall of Fame crew chief, says there have been struggles while they learn.
“We’re definitely trying to learn the car and get ourselves put in the right positions to extract the full potential out of the car,” Knaus told Motorsport. “We’re always trying to learn and get better.
“You know, once we got to Las Vegas, a track and race, that’s more normal, we executed and had races to win and that was a great showcase of the potential of the new Chevrolet.”
To his point, the first two races were drafting tracks, and then a road course at Circuit of the Americas, and then Phoenix and Las Vegas. You kind of have to throw the first three races out of the figurative window a bit.
From that standpoint, the six race benchmark was a small sample size, but Fugle admits it’s a grind back at the shop in ways people don’t see.
“We have to execute on race day to a level we usually can overcome on speed because we’re stacking pennies with this car,” Fugle said. “I know that’s a cliché but we have to keep stacking good days and not jump the gun until we’ve extracted the most potential out of this car.
“We’re not that far away. We’re close. At Hendrick Motorsports, there is no one else more capable of taking on a project like this and I’m excited to go to work every day with these guys to do that.”
Cliff Daniels, two-time championship winning crew chief for Kyle Larson said Elliott won on a ‘gutsy’ pit call from Gustafson and he was proud of the No. 9 team for their race.
“Overall, I think we are a very strong company right now,” Daniels said. “We’re probably not quite as strong as we should be, and I only say that because of Vegas. We were right there with the Gibbs cars that have been really, really good on mile-and-a-halfs, and yes, we are still trying to figure out the nuances of this new body.
“I think it’s great, and there is a lot of potential there for us to unlock, and we were in the game at Vegas. At Phoenix, we were kind of hit-or-miss and Darlington was not a great day for us, but only because we pushed ourselves too hard to try too many things.
“But we’re not that far away.”
Full circle, Gordon said winning at Martinsville just took some of the edge that could have been developing within the walls so the work could continue through the Easter break.
“It's a long season,” Gordon said. “We got a lot of fighting to do. Today just feels good. It feels good to pull this off in the way that the 9 team pulled it off, taking some risks, executing, Chase getting after it when he needed to.
“It's always nice to reassure yourself of days like today that you can get it done, even as we're searching a little bit in some of the other areas.”
