Catchfence

As the “regular” NASCAR season closes on the ten-week playoff run, an increasingly examined angle to the season is the fall from relative grace of the sport’s superteam, Hendrick Motorsports. From winning eighteen races in 2007 and two straight driver titles, Hendrick Motorsports was expected to do even more with the signing of Dale Earnhardt Jr., replacing Kyle Busch who went to Joe Gibbs Racing and Toyota. The signing of Junior was considered a coup by the organization; it certainly has been a marketing success with #88 a ubiquitous presence in grandstands seemingly everywhere, and by no means limited to Winston Cup level tracks.

Now closing on September 2008, the Hendrick juggernaut looks not only mortal, but looks like a bloated machine trundling along with size going for it but utility difficult to find. Jimmie Johnson is of course the leader of the Hendrick express, but his win total won’t be 1/3rd of either of the last two seasons without a gigantic rally in the final ten weeks. Some have speculated that Johnson will turn it on come Chase time because of his incredible killer instinct. The problem with that argument is that the Chase is all about keeping the average finish reasonably high – people forget that Johnson dominated the 2004 Chase but lost the title to Kurt Busch.

That, though, is but one aspect of the problems with Hendrick Motorsports. What has happened to the organization to drop it down as precipitously as it has dropped warrants better examination than is usually found in media coverage of racing, but some points should be made in pondering that question.

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One overlooked angle of the issue is how Hendrick Motorsports has handled the Car of Tomorrow. A myth had taken hold that Hendrick Motorsports got a handle on the COT earlier than other teams. Certainly by early wins it appeared that way, but a closer examination showed that Joe Gibbs had a more consistent handle on those cars from the start. Indeed, the most striking aspect of the very first COT race, the 2007 Southeastern 500 at Bristol, was that the JGR fleet was unstoppable, leading well over half the race and with complete control of the race, until troubles knocked out Tony Stewart and Denny Hamlin. Kyle Busch won that race in the Hendrick #5 that is now Junior’s #88.

The 2007 season continued on a pattern where it appeared Hendrick had the COT figured out, but it left everyone overlooking that JGR was improving its COTs more than Hendrick was to its own fleet. It came to haunt Hendrick beginning at this year’s Daytona 500 when the JGR Toyotas were far stronger than the Hendrick fleet from the opening green of the 500 and stayed that way to the finish. From there the pattern has been the same with only relatively brief turnarounds by the Hendrick armada, notably the Brickyard 400.

Quite simply, JGR figured out the COT much better and sooner than Hendrick did, but this was masked because the Hendrick cars in essense lucked their way to wins; when the wildcards of fate stopped swatting at JGR, that team’s superiority in the COT surged to the front and has stayed there.

Another angle lies in the ripple effect changes in key personnel usually have for a team in any sport. In the multicar world of NASCAR a key to making it work is the need for compatability throughout the fleet – the preferred scenario is that the drivers all have what amounts to the same driving style and thus setup choices.

Kyle Busch was fundamentally a better fit for the Hendrick organization than Junior is. Much online ink has been spilled attacking Junior’s crew chief Tony Eury, but more examination should be paid to whether Junior’s driving style and setup choices really get along with the overall Hendrick approach, whether Junior’s feedback really works with Gordon and Jimmie Johnson.

Then there is the overlooked hierarchy of a team structure that has long dominated Hendrick. From the two-car team’s beginning in 1986 with stories of parts earmarked for Geoff Bodine’s #5 winding up being confiscated for Tim Richmond’s #25, the Hendrick structure has never been that of One Team; it’s been one dominant fiefdom and the rest struggling for comparative scraps.

JGR has a clear edge in treating all of its cars as One Team, in that all three run strong every week. Kyle Busch is winning almost all the races, but all three JGR cars run strong. Indeed, JGR’s One Team approach tells us a lot about the lack of this approach by other teams as well as manufacturers.
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Certainly other angles are worth examining here, but it would seem that a combination of Toyota horsepower and technology plus organizational miscues and ineptitude explain what is wrong with Hendrick Motorsports.