Chase Elliott and Alex Bowman Need Help From HMS

Hendrick Motorsports is in a good place to kick off 2024. William Byron in the #24 won the Great American Race at the Daytona 500. Now #5 Kyle Larson has won the Pennzoil 400 in Las Vegas. Chase Elliott and Alex Bowman though? Well, aside from Bowman’s runner-up finish at the Daytona 500, it’s been rough sledding. Quite honestly for the #9 and the #48, it’s been a different universe from the #5 and #24 teams.

Tracing this back to last season, pre-injuries. 2023 began as business as usual for Hendrick Motorsports. Alex Bowman led the Cup Series in points through several races. Chase Elliott finished second in the final race of Fontana’s life. Following that week, Elliott broke his leg in a skiing accident and missed two months of action. Bowman himself suffered an injury following a sprint car wreck and missed a month. A brutal bump into an inspiring campaign.

Following this, the 2023 season ended horribly for both drivers. They both missed the playoffs comfortably. Needing a win in the Coke Zero-Sugar 400, placing 4th and 6th respectively. What makes this situation interesting though, is that Larson and Byron’s cars haven’t only not struggled. They’ve excelled. Larson and Byron both put up multiple wins in 2023 and even made the championship four. They just seemed to have superior speed and have it all put together. While Elliott and Bowman had to scratch and claw for top-15 finishes and considered those great days.

This problem was evident to Hendrick Motorsports back near the halfway point of the season last June. NASCAR legend and HMS co-owner Jeff Gordon went on NASCAR’s Sirius XM channel and had this to say regarding whether the #9 and the #48 teams will receive any extra help or attention in trying to get these teams better finishes or into victory lane.

With two drivers currently below the cutline, will attention and resources get shifted to the No. 9 and No. 48 teams for the final seven races of the regular season?

❌ @JeffGordonWeb says not yet.

More from @TeamHendrick’s Vice Chairman on #TMDNASCAR → https://t.co/qesEcbI9Hq pic.twitter.com/7hiHtAHd1E

— SiriusXM NASCAR Radio (Ch. 90) (@SiriusXMNASCAR) July 13, 2023

I think it’s safe to say the #9 and the #48 never received that extra help. Since that comment last July, Chase Elliott has put together just eight finishes inside the top 10, half of them being on road courses or superspeedways. For Alex Bowman, just five T-10 finishes. His highest being runner-up at the 2024 Daytona 500.

This past weekend’s Pennzoil 400 puts all of this into perspective. It’s one thing for Kyle Larson to dominate the entire field. That’s Kyle Larson for you. He’s one of the three best drivers in worldwide motorsports today. But let’s take a closer look at William Byron’s day. He was a strong car, as usual and expected. He won this race last spring, with Larson and Bowman finishing runner-up and third. Byron was running at the top of the field before a trashbag flew onto the track and covered his grill for a lap or so. He had to come back to pit road, drop a lap down, and fight up the field from 35th at the end of stage two.

Not the bag William Byron was lookin' to get in Las Vegas. #NASCAR pic.twitter.com/ILjsYHR9ra

— Xfinity Racing (@XfinityRacing) March 3, 2024

Byron did just that. He clawed his way back up and finished 10th. When we look at how Chase Elliott and Alex Bowman’s days went. It’s almost like they’re two different teams. Elliott finished 12th with a 6th place finish in stage two after clawing and scratching his way around that 11th-15th pack for most of the day. Meanwhile, Alex Bowman finished 18th with an 8th place finish in stage two, starting first after a two-tire pit stop and getting swarmed not even three laps into the final restart of the stage. Las Vegas is one of the #48’s better tracks historically. Winning in 2022, and finishing third as we mentioned in 2023. It’s a different car from years past. And Chase Elliott isn’t running at the front like we’ve known him to do.

Now, with that in mind, we are just three races into the season. Elliott can look forward to two of his better tracks in Phoenix, Arizona, and Bristol, Tennessee over the next month. But so far, it looks like nothing has changed for these teams from 2023. Which was objectively a bad year for those two cars. They need extra help right now from Hendrick Motorsports. Whether it’s pit crew rotations, or a stronger development and research initiative inside the company. It’s better to catch these things while it’s early.

Kyle Larson and William Byron are already locked into the playoffs. I’m not saying to pull resources from those cars because two cars a week with viable ability to win is one thing. But this is a Hendrick Motorsports team that should and has had all four cars competing for wins at one point or another. 2019-2022 exemplifies this perfectly. Get Chase Elliott and Alex Bowman the attention and changes they need to succeed. And I guarantee there’ll be four cars from Hendrick Motorsports jockeying for position in the playoffs come the late summer and early fall.

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