{"id":190870,"date":"2025-09-01T05:19:12","date_gmt":"2025-09-01T05:19:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/190870\/"},"modified":"2025-09-01T05:19:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-01T05:19:12","slug":"hendrick-motorsports-resolute-after-embarrassing-southern-500","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/190870\/","title":{"rendered":"Hendrick Motorsports resolute after ’embarrassing’ Southern 500"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Southern 500 was a bit of a mess for Hendrick Motorsports<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Upon crossing the finish line in 21st, William Byron<\/a> had crew chief Rudy Fugle in his ear with a message for his entire No. 24 team.<\/p>\n

“We’re embarrassed. We’ve got to execute a lot better all around. Nothing comfortable. We didn’t do shit today. We’ve got to improve and get better and race our ass off every week or it’s going to be a long offseason.”<\/p>\n

And it wasn\u2019t just the No. 24 team as the entire company was stricken with a variety of issues throughout the night at Darlington Raceway. Kyle Larson<\/a> had arguably the fastest car amongst the stable, scoring 12 stage points, but finished 19th due to splitter damage sustained during a late restart. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Chase Elliott<\/a> was the best finisher amongst the four in 17th but just lacked general speed and was forced to rally from a slow pit stop to tighten a wheel nut. Alex Bowman<\/a> started near the back and lost two laps on pit road due to an issue with their pit guns and ultimately finished 31st.<\/p>\n

Hendrick leadership addresses what went wrong
\n \"Crew <\/p>\n

Crew chief Cliff Daniels, Hendrick Motorsports<\/p>\n

Photo by: James Gilbert \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

Holistically, it was just a frustrating start to their chase for the championship.<\/p>\n

After the race in the inspection area, No. 5 crew chief Cliff Daniels, Vice President of Competition Chad Knaus and VP and GM Jeff Andrews were all involved in a prolonged conversation. No. 48 crew chief Blake Harris declined to talk about their race.<\/p>\n

Knaus spoke but was uncharacteristically flanked by several team communications people, which elicited a laugh and joke from the Hall of Fame crew chief. He called them \u2018bulldogs\u2019 in making sure Hendrick leadership didn\u2019t get hounded.<\/p>\n

What went wrong?<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, we just didn\u2019t have speed for one,\u201d Knaus told Motorsport.com. \u201cObviously, we just didn\u2019t have the speed we needed to, which was a little disappointing. Overall, we were just missing a little bit of front turn.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur drivers were not able to turn into the corner as well as what they needed to carry the amount of speed they needed to. So, we have to get to work and see if we can try to figure out that balance issue and kind of move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

Confusion causes lengthy stop for Bowman<\/p>\n

As for the ill-fated No. 48 pit stop, Knaus characterized it as \u2018human error\u2019 and \u2018miscommunication that produced a 40-second stop.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt definitely looked pretty bad,\u201d Knaus said. \u201cWe\u2019ll get it home and we\u2019ll have a talk on that and understand what’s going on. We just, some people like to do things a little bit differently than others.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know, we only get one spare pit gun per pit box. So how that sits and how it’s arranged varies sometimes from team-to-team and we probably need to get our heads wrapped around that and get a collective decision and direction on all of that so we can move forward there as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

As soon as the race ended for Larson, Daniels came over the radio and told them their issues late were purely related to damage to the splitter. The most optimistic Hendrick leadership member was Daniels after the race.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor most of the race, we were a sixth-to-tenth place car but we still need to assess when we get back, that Kyle thought there was a step change in our car when we got the nose damage,\u201d Daniels said. \u201cAll of our issues just seemed to amplify and get worse.<\/p>\n

\u201cCertainly, being a sixth to ninth place car isn\u2019t where we want to be but we kind of know two things already that we need to get back to doing when we had our best intermediate track races earlier in the year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Has HMS fallen behind?
\n \"Kyle <\/p>\n

Kyle Larson, Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet<\/p>\n

Photo by: Logan Riely \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

With that said, Daniels also conceded that he \u2018wasn\u2019t immune to\u2019 the notion that everyone else has made their cars better over the summer.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo we have a little bit of searching to do and I think that\u2019s okay,\u201d Daniels said. \u201cWe kind of see now what didn\u2019t go right, but big picture for the No. 5 team, we got good stage points and even without having a great finish, increased our gap to the cutline by quite a bit.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur pit crew had a great day. We had some radio issues that we battled through, and the starter issue at the start of the race, so while we are going to look at what could have been better, I feel like for us, it could have been a lot worse.\u201d<\/p>\n

Byron had a slow stop because he needed to be pulled back to his stall after being released to tighten a lug nut. And they didn\u2019t have the speed they expected to have at one of their best tracks together during the NextGen era.<\/p>\n

Fugle said he wanted to use the word \u2018embarrassing\u2019 as a rallying call for their team.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don’t have to tell these guys that but sometimes it feels appropriate to say it,\u201d Fugle said. \u201cI want everyone at the track and at the shop to know that we can all dig together and that there is no one else I want to go fix it with than everyone at Hendrick Motorsports.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut we definitely need to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both Fugle and Knaus expressed no long-term concern or nervousness about this lingering into the autumn months.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’ve been down these roads before and it’s all part of it,\u201d Fugle said. \u201cUnfortunately, the 48 team is back there (in points) a little bit with their issue on pit road and not being able to rebound the way they needed.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut overall, we\u2019re in a reasonable spot as company. We\u2019ll get over there (at the shop) to figure it out and we\u2019re going to keep fighting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Knaus pointed out that Hendrick Motorsports has a high batting average responding to adversity.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’ll dig deep and do everything we can,\u201d Knaus said. \u201cIf something happens, it won’t be because we didn\u2019t work hard and put everything together to make our cars better and perform.\u00a0So I’m not worried at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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