![\"Saucon](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/TMC-L-mattbarndt-01-1.jpg\")
Saucon Valley High graduate Matt Barndt is the car chief for Hendrick Motorsports driver Chase Elliott. (Hendrick Motorsports\/Adrian Lauerman).<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Chase Elliott won a NASCAR Cup race at Pocono in 2022, but it came in the most bizarre fashion.<\/p>\n
Saucon Valley High graduate Matt Barndt is the car chief for Hendrick Motorsports driver Chase Elliott. (Hendrick Motorsports\/Adrian Lauerman).<\/p>\n
Long after the race had ended and the track\u2019s grandstands had cleared, the apparent race winner, Denny Hamlin, and the apparent runner-up, Kyle Busch, were disqualified when their cars didn\u2019t pass inspection.<\/p>\n
Elliott, who had finished third, found out about his \u201cvictory\u201d after he got back home in Georgia.<\/p>\n
Matt Barndt found out about Elliott\u2019s win while getting ready to get on a plane at the Wilkes-Barre\/Scranton International Airport. He was stunned, but happy.<\/p>\n
Barndt, a Lower Saucon Township native and Saucon Valley High School graduate, has one wish this weekend as he returns to familiar turf at Pocono Raceway as Elliott\u2019s car chief.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis time I want us to win because we were the first ones across the finish line,\u201d Barndt said. \u201cI don\u2019t want to win it any other way. And I want to get a celebration in Victory Lane. That didn\u2019t happen the last time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Barndt, a 2009 Saucon grad, has been working with Elliott since Elliott joined Hendrick Motorsports on a full-time basis in 2016. Barndt previously worked with NASCAR legend Jeff Gordon, a staple of Hendrick\u2019s dominant racing team.<\/p>\n
\u201cBasically, everyone who worked on Jeff\u201ds team went on Chase\u2019s team,\u201d Barndt said.<\/p>\n
Bardnt has formed a strong bond with Elliott, who is 29 and five years younger than Barndt.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis experience far exceeds his years because he grew up in a racing family,\u201d Barndt said. \u201cHe\u2019s a great person to work with, and we communicate quite well. We both grew up around race tracks.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of course, Barndt must also work with crew chief Alan Gustafson, who has been working with Elliott since 2016 and entered this season as the longest-running driver-crew chief pairing in the Cup Series. Barndt and Gustafson also have a great rapport.<\/p>\n
During an interview available on the Hendrick Motorsports website, Barndt said he was fortunate that Gustafson saw something in him when he was ready to graduate from college.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou transitioned from design engineer to race engineer to car chief in a really short period of time, and you\u2019re still really young.\u201d Gustafson said. \u201cAnd now you have a really difficult job.\u201d<\/p>\n
Barndt said that NASCAR\u2019s newest car, now in its third season, makes it difficult for any team to gain an advantage. That\u2019s one reason why Hendrick, which used to be considered the Yankees of NASCAR because of its all-star lineup and dominance in the Cup series, no longer dominates.<\/p>\n
But Barndt said Hendrick remains a great place to work. He started working there on an internship while a sophomore at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, which is located right smack dab in the home base for NASCAR and its teams.<\/p>\n
Barndt earned a degree in mechanical engineering, but his heart was in racing, which is something he started at the age of 5.<\/p>\n
\u201cI started in quarter-midgets, then did mini-cups, asphalt late-models, and after starting at local tracks, I went to national events around the country,\u201d he said. \u201cMy sister was racing, too. We were a racing family. The dream was always to make it to this level of the sport, but it happened in a different capacity. That competitive drive and desire to win when I was a kid is still there. But now I\u2019m not on the track, but you still want to find an edge. I still want to win.\u201d<\/p>\n
Elliott, the 2020 Cup Series champion, is a seven-time winner of NASCAR\u2019s Cup Series Most Popular Driver Award as voted on by the fans. His father, Bill, won the same award 16 times.<\/p>\n
There are a lot of people who hope Elliott can end a drought and win a Cup points race for the first time since April 2024 at Texas.<\/p>\n
While he hasn\u2019t won a race, he has a streak of 16 top-20 finishes going for him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI go into every race thinking we can win,\u201d Barndt said. \u201cAnd I feel the same way about this race. We\u2019ve been running well. We would love to get one at Pocono.\u201d<\/p>\n
Win or lose, Barndt, who flew to Pennsylvania late Friday afternoon from Charlotte, said it\u2019s tough to find time to go home and visit with family.<\/p>\n
![\"Saucon](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/TMC-L-mattbarndt3-01-1.jpg\")
Saucon Valley High School graduate Matt Barndt (left) is the car chief for popular Hendrick Motorspots driver Chase Elliott.
\n(Hendrick Motorsports\/Adrian Lauerman)<\/p>\n
\u201cWe now put on two-day shows in NASCAR, and things aren\u2019t spread out like they used to be when you\u2019d get to town on Thursday night,\u201d he said. \u201cFrom the time we get there, we\u2019ll be going to work and try to figure out what we need to do to be successful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kurt Busch named grand marshal<\/p>\n
Kurt Busch made his way into Victory Lane at Pocono Raceway three times and won on the Cup circuit 34 times.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s on his way into the NASCAR Hall of Fame in January.<\/p>\n
But he will make a pitstop at Pocono Raceway on Sunday to serve as grand marshal of The Great American Getaway 400, the marquee event of NASCAR\u2019s three-race weekend at Pocono.<\/p>\n
Governor Josh Shapiro will serve as the honorary starter and wave the green flag for the 2 p.m. race being live-streamed by Amazon Prime.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re honored to celebrate Kurt\u2019s Hall of Fame career with our fans,\u201d Pocono Raceway President Ben May said. \u201cPocono Raceway is proud to be a small part of that illustrious career with Kurt being a three-time race winner and two-time polesitter.<\/p>\n
Busch, 46, won at Pocono in 2005, \u201907, and \u201916. He also won the pole in 2005 and \u201911. He totaled 21 top-10 finishes, including 14 in the top five, in 41 career starts in Monroe County.<\/p>\n
In 23 years on the circuit, Busch won the series title in 2004 and the 2017 Daytona 500. He also won at least four times in each of the three NASCAR national series \u2014 Cup, Xfinity, and Craftsman Truck.<\/p>\n
In addition to being named grand marshal, Busch will be honored by Pocono with \u201cTY KURT\u201d painted on the start\/finish line, and the Mattioli Foundation will donate $10,000 to Vet Tix in his honor.<\/p>\n
Pocono Raceway schedule<\/p>\n
Saturday\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n 8 a.m. \u2014 Gates, Fan Fair & Paddock Open<\/p>\n 10 a.m. \u2014 NASCAR Xfinity Series practice<\/p>\n 11:05 a.m. \u2014 NASCAR Xfinity Series qualifying<\/p>\n 12:35 p.m. \u2014 NASCAR Cup Series practice<\/p>\n 1:45 p.m. \u2014 NASCAR Cup Series qualifying<\/p>\n 3:30 p.m.\u00a0 \u2014\u00a0 Explore the Pocono Mountains 250 NASCAR Xfinity Series Race (100 Laps \/ 250 Miles)<\/p>\n Sunday<\/strong><\/p>\n 8 a.m. \u2014 Gates, Fan Fair & Paddock Open<\/p>\n 2 p.m. \u2014\u00a0 The Great American Getaway 400 NASCAR Cup Series Race (160 Laps \/ 400 Miles)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00a0 Chase Elliott won a NASCAR Cup race at Pocono in 2022, but it came in the most…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2270,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[3102,1406,62,3101,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-2269","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-high-school-sports","9":"tag-nascar","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-top-stories-tmc","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114721228685055732","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}