Hendrick Motorsports Tag

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service TALLADEGA, Ala. – Numerologists doubtless will have a field day with the front row for Sunday’s GEICO 500 at Talladega Superspeedway (on FOX at 1 p.m. ET). Touring the 2.66-mile race track in 49.704 seconds (192.661 mph) during Saturday’s time trials, Chase Elliott put the No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet on the pole, making the 20-year-old rookie driver two-for-two at restrictor-plate superspeedways. In his first qualifying run as a full-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series driver, Elliott won the pole for the season-opening Daytona 500.Read More

By NASCAR Wire Service Since 2000, only two drivers have produced five top-10 finishes through the first eight races of their Sunoco Rookie of the Year seasons. One is six-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson. The second, current first-year sensation Chase Elliott. Elliott will try to keep pace with Johnson’s mark when he goes for his sixth top 10-showing of the season in Sunday’s Toyota Owners 400 at Richmond International Raceway (1 p.m. ET on FOX). “Richmond has been a special place for me,” Elliott said. “We hadRead More

By David Morgan, NASCAR Writer With two-time Super Bowl champion Peyton Manning in attendance on behalf of his sponsor Nationwide Insurance, Dale Earnhardt, Jr. looked to find his way back to Bristol’s victory lane for the first time in 12 years, but had his work cut out for him from the very start of the race. After qualifying 20th, the start of the Food City 500 had Earnhardt and his team wondering just what went wrong when Earnhardt’s No. 88 Chevrolet stumbled when the green flag flew, forcing him downRead More

By David Morgan, NASCAR Writer With Darlington Raceway hosting another throwback themed Bojangles’ Southern 500 on Labor Day weekend this season, teams and drivers have been working feverishly on their throwback schemes for this year’s race. After coming to Darlington with a Neil Bonnett throwback last season, Dale Earnhardt, Jr. and his Nationwide team had bigger plans for their 2016 unveil and they did not disappoint. For the 2016 Southern 500, Earnhardt will be piloting a No. 88 Chevrolet with Buddy Baker’s “Gray Ghost” livery that Baker took to victoryRead More

By Josh Farmer, IndyCar Reporter & NASCAR Contributor Rookie Chase Elliott overcame starting in the rear of the field to claim his first career top-five finish in Saturday’s Duck Commander 500. From the drop of the green flag, Elliott wasted no time hanging out in the back as he blasted through the field and made it up to 28th when the competition caution flew on lap 28. Following the round of pitstops, Elliott picked up where he left off and cracked the top-20 on lap 46 and eventually cracked the top-15 asRead More

By Joey Barnes, Editor-in-Chief FORT WORTH, Texas – With intense on-track battles taking place over the past few seasons, six-time Sprint Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson admitted at Texas Motor Speedway on Thursday that Kevin Harvick is on his radar. Johnson, 40, has finished ahead of Harvick eight times since the 2014 season, the year Harvick moved to Stewart-Haas Racing and teamed with crew chief Rodney Childers. Although Harvick has scored nine wins and 53 top 10’s in 78 appearances with SHR, the 2014 Sprint Cup champion has had aRead More

By Joey Barnes, Editor-in-Chief An eventful STP 500 from Martinsville Speedway has been settled and Kyle Busch is the man that grabbed the traditional grandfather clock after holding off AJ Allmendinger in the closing stages. Here are the key topics coming from Sunday’s race at NASCAR’s oldest track. 1) Impatience from start to finish The common theme is patience early and then to take everything late. That certainly wasn’t the case on Sunday, from the drop of the green flag bumpers found each other with drivers more than willing toRead More

By NASCAR Wire Service Chase Elliott would probably like to forget his first career NASCAR Sprint Cup Series start. Debuting in the 2015 STP 500 at Martinsville Speedway with much fanfare, Elliott was forced to take his No. 25 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet to the garage on the 74th go-around of the 500-lap race after sustaining heavy damage from two separate wrecks. His crew feverishly worked to get him back out on the track where he battled his way to a 38th-place finish. “This is a different ball-game,” Elliott said afterRead More

By Joey Barnes, Editor-in-Chief The NASCAR Sprint Cup Series gets back to racing this weekend at Martinsville Speedway and Dale Earnhardt Jr. is worried about some recent changes made by the sanctioning body. Earnhardt, 41, has recorded 13 top-five finishes at Martinsville, including a win in 2014 and addressed his apprehensiveness over NASCAR’s recent gearing adjustment for the .526-mile short track oval. “I think NASCAR took a little bit of the gear away at Martinsville,” said Earnhardt. “That concerns me a little bit because you don’t have the throttle responseRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service FONTANA, Calif. – A collision with Kasey Kahne’s Chevrolet ruined a promising afternoon for Danica Patrick in Sunday’s Auto Club 400 at Auto Club Speedway. Patrick started 31st and had worked her way up to 19th before wrecking hard into the Turn 1 wall on Lap 121 after contact from Kahne’s Chevy. Kahne was a lap down at the time, thanks to an earlier unscheduled pit stop. “We were on a restart, and I had a run on him so I went down low,”Read More