MADISON, Ill. — After a difficult playoff opener last weekend, Hendrick Motorsports seeks to turn around its fortune at a track that has not been among its best.
Hendrick Motorsports has not had a car finish better than 10th in two of the three Cup races at World Wide Technology Raceway heading into Sunday’s race (pre-race coverage begins at 2:30 p.m. ET on USA Network).
Some of Hendrick’s teams could use a top-10 result after last week’s woes at Darlington Raceway. No Hendrick car finished better than 17th in the Southern 500.
The result is that Alex Bowman enters Sunday’s race 19 points below the cutline and Chase Elliott is only nine points above it.
Denny Hamlin will be joined on the front row by Kyle Larson in Sunday’s Cup playoff race at World Wide Technology Raceway.
Bowman’s race included a 40-second pit stop when an air hose got disconnected and the team failed to recognize the issue immediately.
“I think after a weekend like that, everybody’s mental state was rough,” Bowman said Saturday. “You’re all like ‘What the hell just happened?’ I think they’re all capable of rebounding and having great stops this weekend.”
Austin Cindric seeks to repeat his 2024 win at the 1.25-mile track.
They’ll need it after Bowman’s car got loose in qualifying and he’ll start 25th — last among the 16 playoff drivers at a place where track position is paramount. Bowman has not finished better than 13th in three starts at this track.
Elliott will start 19th — next-to-last among the playoff drivers. His focus at this track?
“Just looking for a happy balance,” said Elliott, whose best finish is 13th in two starts at World Wide Technology Raceway. “You’ve got to trust whatever your butt is telling you when you get in the seat. I think at the end of the day it’s just about finding a happy spot with the car where you feel like you can go and push and extract some lap time and fall into a rhythm and be able to repeat it.”
The NASCAR circuit will race at the 1.25-mile oval for the first time in the playoffs.
William Byron, the regular season champion, fell to sixth in the playoff standings after he placed 21st at Darlington. Still, he’s 25 points above the cutline. His best finish at World Wide Technology Raceway is eighth in 2023.
“We’re trying to attack every detail and aspect of this weekend that we can,” Byron said. “Just business as usual and try to dot every I, cross every T, maybe a little more than normal.”
Kyle Larson, who is 38 points above the cutline, also has had his challenges at this track.
“We just haven’t been very fast here,” Larson said before qualifying second. “We’ve gotten better each time. We haven’t had much speed and then you’re trying to push things to squeeze more speed out of it and then you’re closer to the edge of grip and making mistakes and sliding around.
“I feel like that’s kind of what I’ve struggled with in the past, just not being able to kind of run the preferred line and you’re always searching.”
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