Can anyone catch the Hendrick drivers?
September 30, 2009
DOVER, Del. (AP)—Chad Knaus slung the champagne bottle over his shoulder theway a businessman would carry his jacket after a long day of work. The casualapproach seemed fitting for Jimmie Johnson’s crew chief. Winning a Chase raceand celebrating in Victory Lane really has become just another day in the officefor every member of the No. 48 team.
Johnson’s win at Dover International Speedway made Hendrick Motorsports 2for 2 in Chase for the championship races. Mark Martin kicked off the 10-racerun with a win and helped make Hendrick 1-2 in the championship pointsstandings.
Lurking behind them in eighth place is teammate Jeff Gordon, a two-timewinner of this week’s race at Kansas Speedway.
FILE — This is a March 29, 20… AP – Sep 30, 10:30 am EDT FILE — This is a March 29, 20… AP – Sep 30, 10:30 am EDT
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That the Hendrick drivers—except for non-Chase driver Dale Earnhardt Jr.—would be in the hunt for the Sprint Cup title is about as surprising as anotherbaseball postseason with the Red Sox, Yankees, Angels and Phillies. Johnson andGordon have seven championships, and the 50-year-old Martin is in prime positionto shed the “best driver to never win it all” label that has been attached tohim for years. Holding the points lead, this might be his year.
Nine other drivers want to make the Hendrick boys work for a championship.But it could be too late to end team owner Rick Hendrick’s three-year run ofchampionships.
Brian Vickers, Carl Edwards and Kasey Kahne, 10th-12th in the Chasestandings, need top-five runs and an immediate string of bad luck for thedrivers up front to have any realistic shot at contention.
“Everybody is going to have a 15th-or-worse-place finish somewhere alongthe way,” Gordon said. “It could possibly be worse than that when you get toTalladega and Martinsville, those places where the unknown is there.”
Johnson finished 15th in two Chase races last season en route to thisrecord-tying third straight Cup championship. He won three times, includingKansas, and finished in the top 10 the other five times. Do that again, and itmight be impossible for any driver to catch Johnson. He’s off to a fast start inthis year’s Chase, finishing fourth and first.
“If you get off to a quick start, it makes your life a little easier,”Johnson said. “It doesn’t change the fact that you could have a problem lateron in the Chase. It’s 10 races and they all the play the same.”
Johnson also has a record 15 Chase victories since the format’s inception in2004. There’s a reason Johnson seemingly gets better as the season moves along.Yes, a Hendrick team will almost assuredly have the top engines, car andpersonnel in the sport, but it’s a commitment to winning on and off the track,every week, that has them driven to win.
“I think as the season progresses, we get smarter,” Knaus said. “Not thateverybody else doesn’t. But really as a group, we work together and try to getour drivers on the same page, try to get our crew chiefs and teams on the samepage.”
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That all-for-one approach in which all four Hendrick teams share informationhas surprised a veteran like Martin. On the brink of walking away from NASCAR ahandful of times this decade, Martin has enjoyed a career renaissance atHendrick. He leads the series with six wins, winning the Chase race at NewHampshire, and enjoys a 10-point lead over Johnson in the standings.
“We race each other hard on the racetrack, but off the racetrack, we allwork for the same goal,” Martin said.
If any of the three Hendrick drivers are vulnerable over the final eightraces, it might be Martin. He’s had three finishes this season of 40 or worseand four others in the 30s. Neither Johnson nor Gordon have had a 40th-placefinish this season. Most of the poor finishes haven’t been Martin’s fault—hegot caught up in the Big One at Talladega for example—but the fact is he’s hadbad results. Get wrecked at unforgiving Talladega again in November and thissentimental title run could hit a massive stumbling block.
Gordon has the most work ahead to get in the thick of Chase contention. He’s122 points behind Martin and has to pass seven other drivers before he can parkin first place. He does have four titles, but has yet to win one in the Chaseformat. Gordon talked at Dover about how the 10-race format doesn’t necessarilyfit his style and wouldn’t complain if the old system came back. Of course itwon’t, and Gordon realizes that. He also knows he can find a way to make itwork.
“You can have a great year, you can win as many races as you want, butyou’ve got to have everything going your way in those final 10,” Gordon said.“I still think it comes down to the best team, overall team, that’s going towin the championship.”
Wins help in the Chase, and those trips to Victory Lane have dried up forGordon. He has just one this year and was winless last season. He was seventh inthe final standings last year and runner-up in 2007—the closest he’s come tothat fifth championship since 2001.
Gordon wants to keep that championship at Hendrick, and he wants to be thedriver to bring it home.
“There’s going to be times where your teammates are going to out run you,they are going to do a better job of all of the details and you have to givethem credit when they do it,” he said. “But it makes you work that much harderto get those details put together for the next race so that you can go out andaccomplish the same thing.”
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