A New Era Is Underway at Hendrick Motorsports to Bring Dominance Back to Daytona
There are just a few certainties in life, among them: losing your baby teeth, songs getting stuck in your head (cue “Mr. Brightside”) and Hendrick Motorsports dominating Daytona 500 qualifying.
Once again, the crew blew through qualifying as defending champion Kyle Larson snagged the pole. Alex Bowman will join him on the front row come Sunday while Chase Elliott and William Byron will be close behind in 11th and 23rd, respectively, thanks to Thursday’s Duel races.
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Larson’s first place marks the 15th Daytona 500 pole for Hendrick Motorsports, and the seventh since 2015, the dynamic era of Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Kasey Kahne and Jimmie Johnson. During their respective times with the team, the four drivers amassed 191 Cup Series wins, 130 poles and 11 championships (thanks to Johnson’s seven), walking away with seven Daytona 500 victories. But things started to change internally at Hendrick Motorsports during and after that fateful 2015 season, slowly marking a shift for the team.
• January 2015: Gordon announced it would be his last full-time season, and he kicked off the campaign by snagging the Daytona 500 pole but crashing in the final lap.Throughout his 23 year full-time Cup Series career, Gordon brought home 93 wins and four championships, and is back with the program as the vice chairman after a stint in broadcasting.
• November 2017: Earnhardt Jr. competed in his final Cup Series race as a full-time driver, leaving the team with nine wins, including two at Daytona 500. He was recently inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame and now competes in just one Xfinity race each year while also working as an NBC Sports analyst.
• November 2017: Kahne and Hendrick Motorsports ended their six-year relationship, which featured six wins and five poles over four Cup Series campaigns. He went on to sign with Leavine Family Racing and intended to retire at the end of the 2018 Monster Energy Cup Series, but was forced to sooner as he struggled with health problems throughout the campaign.
• November 2019: Shortly after the season ended, Johnson announced he would be retiring from competing full-time as a Cup Series driver. He went on to join IndyCar following the 2020 NASCAR campaign, racing everything except the ovals in ‘21. Johnson won five consecutive titles from 2006–10 and repeated the championship campaign in ‘13 and ‘16. The California native is tied with Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt for the most titles in history.
As each of the legends retired, young talent replaced them. At just 20 years old, Elliot joined full-time following Gordon’s departure; a 25-year-old Bowman stepped in full-time in the 2018 season after unexpectedly racing Earnhardt Jr.’s car when he was injured in ‘16; and Byron began his Cup Series career at age 20 in Gordon’s No. 24 during the ‘18 campaign. Larson came into the fold in the 2021 season, taking over Johnson’s spot as a 28-year-old and had been competing full-time in the Cup Series since 2014 for other teams.
“I think because we've been doing it so long, racing from an early age and racing with adults too,” Larson says, “I think it kind of makes you grow up quicker and have a different level of maturity.”
A new era is underway at Hendrick Motorsports, and the four drivers under 30 are carrying the weight with ease and meeting the precedent set long before them.
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A Georgia Driver Through and Through
Chase Elliott is known for many things.
Some know him as a legacy driver, the son of NASCAR Hall of Famer Bill Elliott. Fans spot the similarities between the two as the younger Elliott races with the same old-school mentality as his father and uncles, which all started with a small, family-run team in Dawsonville, Ga.
Others know the younger Elliott because he’s made his own name within the sport, amassing 13 wins, 74 top-five finishes and nine pole positions across his six-year Cup Series career, capping it off with a single championship in 2020. All of which happened before he turned 26 years old to boot.
But there’s more to the Georgia native than what happens on the track. He’s a self-described homebody, a Braves and Bulldogs supporter through and through, a big fan of being on the lake or golfing and is an avid pilot. Flying is one of the main ways Chase likes to spend his free time, and when he’s in the air, he finds peace.
“I was lucky enough to grow up around aviation and [Bill] flying us places as a family and flying to races and things of that nature,” Elliott previously said to Sports Illustrated. “So I kind of adopted his approach from that standpoint and that ‘do it yourself’ mindset of getting places and having the ability to do that.”
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The “Best Looking” of the Group
Alex Bowman says he is “pretty shy and keeps to” himself, one who is “O.K. with no questions.” But how he chose to describe the other drivers’ personalities showcases more of his own.
“Kyle is super blunt. Obviously, he likes to race a lot of other things, and he's just super fast and can always seem to make the race car work. Chase is kind of quiet and reserved,” Bowman says, “and William is like my little brother that I love to pick on. From my side, at least, I think he wants to burn my house down, but I thoroughly enjoy picking on him sometimes. And then I'm obviously the best looking one.”
Bowman says it has been four years of little jokes with Byron at any opportunity he can get; however, the young college student has yet to fire a comeback. “[It] makes me think that he's internalizing all of it and eventually is going to be like on that TV show Snapped,” Bowman says. “And like [he’s] just gonna be sitting there burning my house down.”
All jokes aside, Bowman says his fellow drivers have taught him a few things as he navigates being a driver and a team owner. Byron has shown him a different viewpoint, Larson has encouraged him to race other vehicles, and Elliott has taught him what he looks for during practice, something Bowman admits he struggled with during his first season with Hendrick.
Since joining the company, Bowman has tallied six wins (four from last season), 24 top-five finishes and two poles.
But when he’s not over at Hendrick Motorsports, Bowman is usually in his garage tinkering on his own race cars. Under his own banner of Alex Bowman Racing, he competed in the Chili Bowl Nationals in 2020 and was a car owner of two entries for 2021.
“I've learned a little bit about kind of working with people and managing people, kind of shown me different sides of it,” Bowman says. “Last year when I wasn't driving the car and was just owning it, just kind of having a driver drive for me and listening to what he had to say, and kind of his point of view and my viewpoint changing from not being in the seat was pretty different and a big learning experience.”
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The College Student
Byron is the youngest one in the group, and based on his performance, one might forget just how rapidly he rose through the NASCAR ranks.
He got his start on an iRacing simulator, not stepping into a Legends car until he was 15. He won 33 races that campaign, and two years later, Byron caught the eye of JR Motorsports, co-owned by Earnhardt Jr., for their late-model program.
Byron dominated during his rookie season in the Truck Series in 2016, tallying seven wins and 16 top-10 finishes driving for Kyle Busch Motorsports and nabbing Rookie of the Year honors. Hendrick signed the rising star, and off Byron went to the Xfinity Series, winning four races, tallying 22 top-10 finishes and was dubbed Rookie of the Year—again. He repeated again in 2018, this time as the Cup Series Rookie of the Year with four top-10 finishes.
Byron’s first Cup Series win was elusive, though, not coming until the 2020 campaign during the Coke Zero Sugar 400. Elliott finished second that day.
Outside of racing, he’s a golfer like Elliott and a dedicated LEGO builder. During the offseason, Byron put together the Titanic, which was roughly 9,000 pieces and the largest set he has ever built. He’s also 11 credits away from earning a college degree from Liberty University in strategic communication.
“I just happen to race cars, and, and at the same time, I like to kind of do things that other people my age do.”
Proud Father Dubbed Reigning “Championship”
Larson raced his way into the record books in 2021 when he not only won the Cup Series championship at Phoenix Raceway, but also led the field 2,581 times—the most since Gordon in 1995.
He posted career-best numbers across the board—victories (10), top-five finishes (20), top-10s (26), laps led (2,581) and stage victories (18)—and brought home $1 million for winning the All-Star race. Last season, Larson won 34% of the races he competed in, tallying 33 victories across 97 events in various vehicles such as dirt late model and sprint car.
The 29-year-old is the only Asian-American to regularly compete in NASCAR and is the first graduate from the Drive for Diversity program to compete full-time in the Cup Series. But as he continues to make history, he learns from his three teammates, typically jotting down a mental note of good moves while on the track.
“I felt like it was a lot of the season where we were upfront, battling for wins,” Larson says. “I felt like each of my wins it seemed like I had to edge out a teammate to get it done. So yeah, it was cool.”
Larson is the latest to join the Hendrick Motorsports squad, racing for Chip Ganassi Racing before being handed a suspension in April 2020 and mandatory sensitivity training for using a racial slur during an iRacing event. His reinstatement was effective Jan. 1, 2021.
He tallied six victories, 101 top-10 finishes and four playoff appearances in 223 starts with his former team. But there’s more to Larson than what happens on the various tracks—he’s also a proud “family man.”
Owen, his 7-year-old son, plays baseball while he and his wife are hoping to get 3-year-old Audrey into gymnastics. “That's kind of all things that you have to be home for and as gone as I am, it makes it hard to get there,” he says.
One of Larson’s favorite memories of his kids at a race dates back to his championship at Phoenix. He drove Owen around victory lane and vividly remembers Audrey running around and playing in the confetti. And while the conversations may be a blur from the excitement that day, the mics picked up his young daughter saying, “Daddy, you won.”
“For the next couple of weeks, instead of calling me the champion, she was calling me the championship.”
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Who is Hendrick Motorsports?
The answer is not as simple as one may think.
Larson put it plainly: It’s Rick Hendrick, the team owner. Elliott echoed the sentiment, elaborating with how he “has helped guide it to being the winningest team in NASCAR so to me, Mr. Hendrick is kind of the guy, the reason that we're all doing what we're doing.”
Hendrick has a long history in the car industry, becoming the youngest Chevrolet dealer in the U.S. at just 26 years old in 1976. He founded Hendrick Motorsports in ‘84, and since then, it has grown into a 430,000-square-foot facility on 140 acres, home of four Cup Series drivers and more than 600 employees.
“What makes Hendrick Motorsports what it is, is the depth of knowledge. So obviously, no one person or part or piece makes that. It's the depth of knowledge and the depths of people,” Bowman says. “So I think that's something that Mr. H has built throughout the course of the years and having that amount of super knowledgeable people and different viewpoints on things and all that has really allowed us to build the best race cars we possibly can and to assemble the best race teams we can.”
Although racing is an individual sport, there is a unique dynamic when it comes to teams competing under the same company name. On the track, Bowman says they’re limited in what they can do to help one another out, such as creating a hole for them when they are falling back. “It’s more like not taking advantage of your teammates,” he adds, “not being on the wrong side of it, more than it is, you know, something that you can actually do to help them.”
“It is a super unique dynamic,” Elliot says, “and it's really kind of hard to compare it to stick-and-ball sports or most other things. But when you race under the same umbrella, obviously, our cars are all built in the same place so it does become super unique. And I'd say probably a lot of people don't really understand that. But, you know, we race each other as hard as we race anybody else on track.”
And it pays off. Throughout the 2021 campaign, Hendrick Motorsports consistently dominated, the drivers often finding themselves competing with each other for wins. Bowman’s Dover International Speedway victory resulted in a 1-2-3-4 finish for the team, a first for the organization and only the fourth in NASCAR history to complete the sweep.
Hendrick Motorsports had a driver in the Cup Series victory lane 12 times during the regular season in 2021, including multiple stretches of consecutive victories. The most was four, dating from Bowman’s May 16 victory to Larson’s June 6 Sonoma win. The playoffs, however, were a different story.
From Oct.10 to the season finale in November, Larson won four of the five races, Bowman taking home the only other victory in that stretch.
But now, it’s a new chapter for NASCAR with the Next Gen car, and Byron says it’s a guessing game. “It’s kind of seeing how everyone's gonna unload and what’s the right setup.” Although the Clash at the Coliseum was a good run, Daytona is a completely different ballgame.
“You think like, ‘Oh, yeah, you have an edge up on [Byron],’ but I think the young guys have so much speed and are aggressive that it kind of equals each other out,” Larson says. “And you have to race the younger guys a little differently than your veterans just because of the aggression level. But like I said, when you're out there, there's veterans who are aggressive as well.”
A pilot, a team owner, a college student and a proud dad will be walking onto a race track with a new car in tow, starting a new season that Hendrick Motorsports hopes will end with a three-peat of the Cup Series title.
