NASCAR Cup Series

Of Hendrick drivers, only Kyle Larson has been dominant in the playoffs so far

Updated Sep. 13, 2021 2:48 p.m. ET

By Bob Pockrass
FOX Sports NASCAR Writer

RICHMOND, Va. — Hendrick Motorsports had a regular season in which each of its four drivers won a race. With 11 victories in the 26 races, it appeared that HMS could make the championship event an intra-organizational battle by earning all four championship-eligible spots in the season finale.

After two races, however, the chatter now focuses on whether all four HMS drivers will even advance to the second round.

Of the HMS drivers, only regular-season champion Kyle Larson has clinched a spot in the round of 12, NASCAR’s version of the quarterfinal. Defending champion Chase Elliott is in OK shape, while Alex Bowman and William Byron are on the outside of the bubble looking in as they head to the elimination race Saturday at Bristol Motor Speedway.

What happened? Mistakes, bad luck and Joe Gibbs Racing reminding everyone that it has had the speed for most of the year to challenge.

"What am I going to go do? Cry about it for the next seven days until I go to work at Bristol?" Bowman said after a 12th-place finish at Richmond.

"I’m going to go home and drink some beers [Sunday] afternoon and study for a week and try to haul ass at Bristol."

JGR has swept the first two races of the playoffs, with Denny Hamlin winning Sept. 5 at Darlington and Martin Truex Jr. winning Richmond. They've locked themselves into playoff spots, along with Larson, who built enough of a cushion in the standings with his five regular-season wins and the regular-season championship to clinch a spot on points following Richmond.

The four winless drivers with the fewest points after Bristol will be eliminated from the 16-driver playoff field. Elliott, in seventh and 19 points ahead of the current cutoff, should advance as he heads to a track at which he won the 2020 NASCAR all-star race.

Bowman is tied for the final spot but currently would lose the tiebreaker (best finish in the round) to Kurt Busch. Byron is two spots behind Bowman and 18 points behind the current cutoff.

"It puts us in a really tough spot, but when you have these three-round deals, that’s what happens," Bowman said.

A win at Bristol automatically qualifies a driver into the next round. Drivers get one point for starting the race and an additional point for every place 35th on up. The top 10 earn stage points after each of the first two stages on a 10-to-1 scale. The key for drivers on the brink is to try to cut into their deficits (or pad their cushions) with stage points, which give them a direction for where they need to finish at the end of the race.

"I’ll race as hard as I can, get as many stage points as I can and see where we’re at," Byron said.

It has been a year since drivers have competed on the Bristol concrete; the concrete was covered with dirt for a race earlier this year. No track compares to Bristol, so there is little to correlate whether anyone who has run well this year should be penciled in to run well at Bristol, a 0.533-mile, high-banked track.

But Elliott has reason to feel good. He has five top-10 finishes in 10 points races at Bristol and has led laps in the past five points races there. He has finished outside the top 20 just twice. A top-20 finish and certainly a top-10 should advance him into the next round.

In six starts at Bristol driving Hendrick equipment, Bowman has two top-5s (in the two 2018 races). His past four starts at Bristol have resulted in finishes no better than 15th. Bowman has a veteran crew led by seasoned crew chief Greg Ives.

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"It’s easy to be like, ‘Oh, I’m going to be super aggressive’ and then tear the car up early like I did early at Darlington and not be there at the end for Bristol," Bowman said. "That’s kind of the situation we’re in."

Byron has had it worse. He has just one finish better than 15th in his six starts at the track. His crew chief, Rudy Fugle, is in his first year as a Cup crew chief after an accomplished stint in NASCAR’s truck series, where he and Byron flourished when working together.

Among the drivers they are battling for the final spots, Kurt Busch has five top-10s in his past seven Bristol starts, including a win in August 2018. Brad Keselowski and Kyle Busch, who are ninth and 10th in the standings, are also strong Bristol drivers.

Aric Almirola, currently 11th and three points above the cutline, is the driver most in danger of dropping out based on his Bristol history. He has finished more than 10 laps down in five of his past seven races there, though he did finish fifth in the elimination race a year ago to advance to the second round.

Of course, history predicts only so much. Both Byron and Bowman were surprised at their struggles at Richmond.

"I thought we could run top-10 and be 12th on our worst day," Byron said after finishing 19th.

He seemed at a loss as to what caused his woes at Richmond.

"Some runs I was like a lapped car and way off the pace," Byron said. "I don’t know. I was tight center [of the turn] at the start of the race, thought we got some more drive in the car and thought that was kind of making us faster, and then that kind of ran out, too, and we were just in the way."

Bowman could relate. He struggled early, and the car seemed to get better or worse every time they changed tires, despite no significant changes to the car while in the pits.

"It was just a really up-and-down, kind of weird night," Bowman said. "We didn’t change much on the race car, and from set to set [of tires], our car changed a ton [from] that or track conditions."

Their teammates appeared to have a better handle on their cars. Elliott overcame a horrible pit top — in which he backed up over his jack — and finished fourth. Larson finished a respectable sixth at a track where he typically struggles.

"I’m not sure if we would have had anything for [the JGR cars], but I sure would have liked to have found out," Elliott said.

Still, Elliott was optimistic about the rest of his playoffs.

"If we perform like that the rest of the season, I think we’ll be just fine," he said.

Bowman? Not so much. He hit the wall early at Darlington in an incident that also resulted in damage for Byron. He needs to put two frustrating weekends behind him to try to advance.

"The only person that I can be frustrated with is myself for hitting the wall early last week," Bowman said. "I feel pretty responsible for the 24 [of Byron] on that front as well.

"I’ll take the blame on that one. All the haters on Twitter can come at me for that."

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Thinking out loud

NASCAR announced that its 2021 Hall of Fame class will be inducted next January, a year after originally scheduled. NASCAR won’t have a 2022 class.

Some might think NASCAR needs to keep adding people, but this decision makes sense. Because of the pandemic, fewer people were able to see the displays of the 2020 honorees, but they now have been on display for a full year when the Hall of Fame was open.

To try to do a pair of three-person classes at once would dilute the honor (though they used to induct five-person classes) by limiting the potential size of the induction displays. Also, a main display for six months for each class didn’t seem like enough time to pay tribute to a Hall of Famer’s career.

The move obviously will delay the induction of some stars, but the Hall of Fame is a place to appropriately honor those who made a significant contribution to the sport. The best way to do that is what NASCAR decided: skipping a class.

Social spotlight

Stat of note

In the Xfinity race Saturday, on 9/11, Noah Gragson won in the No. 9, followed across the finish line by Justin Haley in the No. 11.

They said it

"To go to Bristol and know that we’re locked in is nice. We’ll try to be aggressive and get a win." – Kyle Larson

Bob Pockrass has spent decades covering motorsports, including the past 30 Daytona 500s. He joined FOX Sports in 2019 following stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @bobpockrass. Looking for more NASCAR content? Sign up for the FOX Sports NASCAR Newsletter with Bob Pockrass!