Hendrick Motorsports resolute after ’embarrassing’ Southern 500

The Southern 500 was a bit of a mess for Hendrick Motorsports.

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

“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.”

And it wasn’t just the No. 24 team as the entire company was stricken with a variety of issues throughout the night at Darlington Raceway. Kyle Larson had arguably the fastest car amongst the stable, scoring 12 stage points, but finished 19th due to splitter damage sustained during a late restart.  

Chase Elliott 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 started near the back and lost two laps on pit road due to an issue with their pit guns and ultimately finished 31st.

Hendrick leadership addresses what went wrong

Holistically, it was just a frustrating start to their chase for the championship.

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.

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 ‘bulldogs’ in making sure Hendrick leadership didn’t get hounded.

What went wrong?

“Well, we just didn’t have speed for one,” Knaus told Motorsport.com. “Obviously, we just didn’t have the speed we needed to, which was a little disappointing. Overall, we were just missing a little bit of front turn.

“Our 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.”

Confusion causes lengthy stop for Bowman

As for the ill-fated No. 48 pit stop, Knaus characterized it as ‘human error’ and ‘miscommunication that produced a 40-second stop. 

“It definitely looked pretty bad,” Knaus said. “We’ll get it home and we’ll 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.

“You 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.”

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.

“For 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,” Daniels said. “All of our issues just seemed to amplify and get worse.

“Certainly, being a sixth to ninth place car isn’t 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.”

Has HMS fallen behind?

Kyle Larson, Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet

Photo by: Logan Riely / Getty Images

With that said, Daniels also conceded that he ‘wasn’t immune to’ the notion that everyone else has made their cars better over the summer.

“So we have a little bit of searching to do and I think that’s okay,” Daniels said. “We kind of see now what didn’t 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.

“Our 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.”

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’t have the speed they expected to have at one of their best tracks together during the NextGen era.

Fugle said he wanted to use the word ‘embarrassing’ as a rallying call for their team.

“I don’t have to tell these guys that but sometimes it feels appropriate to say it,” Fugle said. “I 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.

“But we definitely need to do that.”

Both Fugle and Knaus expressed no long-term concern or nervousness about this lingering into the autumn months.

“We’ve been down these roads before and it’s all part of it,” Fugle said. “Unfortunately, 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.

“But overall, we’re in a reasonable spot as company. We’ll get over there (at the shop) to figure it out and we’re going to keep fighting.”

Knaus pointed out that Hendrick Motorsports has a high batting average responding to adversity.

“We’ll dig deep and do everything we can,” Knaus said. “If something happens, it won’t be because we didn’t work hard and put everything together to make our cars better and perform. So I’m not worried at all.”