The three Hendrick Motorsports teammates who are still fighting for a spot in the NASCAR Cup Series championship race have all expressed confidence about their chances to advance with one race left in the Round of 8.
But all three drivers face different challenges going into the elimination race. William Byron is the only Hendrick driver sitting in a transfer spot, but he’s on the bubble with a slim seven-point advantage.
“Absolutely,” Byron said of getting the job done at Martinsville Speedway (Sunday, 2 p.m. ET). “We did it in the spring, so we should be able to.”
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Byron’s spring triumph at Martinsville Speedway was his third win in the first eight races of the season. He hasn’t won since.
On Sunday at Homestead-Miami Speedway, Byron finished sixth. It was his fifth consecutive top 10 finish, however, a victory by Tyler Reddick shrunk Byron’s advantage on the cutline by 20 points.
“We kind of had what we had (Sunday),” Byron said. “We weren’t good enough, and we were just trying to get all we could. I feel like a sixth-place finish is good. If it had gone green there, we were going to end up top-five. I don’t know how that changes the points, but we just have to go to Martinsville Speedway and compete for a win.”
Byron sits one spot ahead of Kyle Larson, who is seven points out of a transfer spot. For the second straight week, Larson and his team had to fight from behind after an early race issue.
At Homestead, it was a puncture that caused Larson to hit the wall in the first stage. He then spun in the final stage, with 13 laps to go, while battling Ryan Blaney for the race lead. Larson tried to squeeze between Blaney and Austin Dillon in Turn 3.
“You’re making split-second decisions,” Larson said after finishing 13th. “Austin did nothing wrong. I was just hoping that he would see me coming as (Blaney) got to his inside, and maybe he’d run a lane off the wall just to give me some clean air. He continued to run his line.
“I had a little bit of a hole and I was trying to shoot the gap to get in front of the No. 3 and get to the wall quickly to either hopefully stay on the outside of the No. 12 or build a run to have a shot at him in (Turns) 1 and 2. But yeah, it just didn’t work out.
“I was going as hard as I could. The No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevy team did a great job rebounding after the flat tire.”
Larson was the biggest points loser Sunday. He went from 35 points above the cutline to seven below.
“We’ve been strong at Martinsville at times, so we’ll see,” Larson said. “It’s not my best track, but I’ve been a lot better there since I joined Hendrick Motorsports. We just need to qualify well and give it our best shot.”
Meanwhile, Chase Elliott shaved some points off his deficit towards a transfer spot but is still in a must win situation. Elliott finished fifth at Homestead after an early DNF in the opening race of the round at Las Vegas when collected in a multi-car crash. Elliott is last on the playoff grid in a 43-point hole.
“I just got tighter and tighter as the day went on,” Elliott said of Sunday’s race. “I was just trying to manage that on the front side of a run, and ultimately, I just didn’t do a great job of managing it. When the pace got quicker and everyone started pushing, I didn’t really have anything left to push.
“It was a really solid couple of weeks for the No. 9 NAPA Chevy team, from a pace perspective. That’s encouraging as you move along in the playoffs.”
Elliott, like his teammates, is a winner at Martinsville Speedway. Elliott won the fall race at Martinsville in 2020, which advanced him into the championship race which he went on to win and claim the Cup Series title.
“Very confident,” Elliott said of the upcoming weekend.
Hendrick Motorsports has won five of the last eight Martinsville Speedway races. Following Eliott’s win in 2020, Alex Bowman won in the fall of 2021, Byron in the spring of 2022, and Larson in the spring of 2023. Plus, the aforementioned Byron victory from earlier this season.
And in the spring race from April, Hendrick Motorsports went 1-2-3 in a race that celebrated its 40th anniversary, with Byron leading Larson and Elliott across the finish line.