LDN - Sports

Hendrick restoring rep as racing's strategic maestro

[October 11, 2016] By Jonathan Ingram, The Sports Xchange

Hendrick restoring rep as racing's strategic maestro

NASCAR team owner Rick Hendrick began his racing career with drag boats, where his driver Jimmy Wright once set a record of 222 mph in a boat called "Nitro Fever."

Hendrick himself piloted a boat called "Preparation H." They may have jumped into the water to celebrate victories, but Hendrick never took a champagne bath - until Sunday afternoon at the Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Following a summer that was like a bed of thorns and no roses for Hendrick Motorsport, the team owner has restored his reputation as a maestro of team and equipment preparation. Such was the relief over the end of a 24-race losing streak, Hendrick, now 67 and a Sprint Cup entrant since 1984, took his first champagne bath to celebrate Jimmie Johnson's victory in the opening race of the Chase's Round of 12.

During the summer, it felt more like time for "milk and cookies" instead of time to pop a champagne cork. Back in the earliest days of NASCAR's longest running driver and crew chief pairing, Johnson and his Crew Chief Chad Knaus were at loggerheads. Hendrick called a meeting around milk and cookies to help them settle their differences and they came on to win six Sprint Cups.

But this year, Johnson was absent from the winner's slot in most Chase brackets after years of being a perennial favorite. Such was the Hendrick team's doldrums, including winless seasons from the cars driven by Chase Elliott, Kasey Kahne and Dale Earnhardt, Jr., who stepped aside in August due to concussion issues. Asked before the race if he had considered the "milk and cookie" approach this summer, Hendrick replied, "I came real close."

Things are different these days.

Ever since Johnson's fifth straight title in 2010, NASCAR's premier league has made a headlong shift from a series with technology driven by crew chiefs to one driven by engineers. Teams now must compile information from all of its cars. It's no longer possible to sit down around some "refreshments" and come up with solutions by just involving one crew chief and driver.

Knaus said there have been many meetings, which eventually pulled the Hendrick team together.

There were "a lot of meetings involving the heads of states," said Knaus of the long, cool summer. "We've got the crew chiefs, we've got the management group and Kenny Francis (who directs the team's car building operation). What we were trying to do was identify what areas needed work. We started to hone in on where we thought we needed to get some gains."

What the team found was how to better "skew" their cars within the rules. Other teams were finding ways to get rear axle set-ups that passed NASCAR inspection and helped cornering speeds. Rivals also were proving better at getting their "skewed" bodywork through the inspection process. "Once the genie is out of the bottle, you can't put it back again," said Ken Howes, the vice president of competition at Hendrick, who said the team began using similar tactics.

The Hendrick team's new bodywork was verified in August at the Aerodyne wind tunnel in Mooresville, N.C., where the team owner was present for a marathon 24-hour test. His crews were making the most of the NASCAR rule that limits the number of days of wind tunnel testing by working in shifts. Hendrick was there for the duration. "You have to show your support," said Hendrick, who was also observing how well his team was working together. It turned out, the team was in sync when it came to preparation.

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But mid-race execution problems cropped up, such as poor pit stops late in races and pit road penalties, which Hendrick described as scary when it came to the losing streak. "We've been better than we've finished," he said of the first three Chase races. "This feels good. I've never taken a champagne bath in thirty-some years. This is like our first win."

Some luck was involved on a weekend when Hurricane Matthew's draft brought rain and strong winds that forced a postponement of the scheduled Saturday night start. The sunshine for Sunday's green flag at noon burned brightly, almost reminiscent of summer - except for the way the Hendrick cars circulated on a hot track. Johnson and rookie teammate Elliott combined to lead 258 of the 334 laps and Johnson opined that a warmer track helped the Hendrick cars versus the Toyotas that have been so strong at Charlotte recently.

Martin Truex, Jr., who led 392 of 400 laps in his Furniture Row Racing Toyota at Charlotte in May's night race, failed to lead a lap in Sunday's event. Johnson, who finished third in May, said he no longer has to scare himself to record good lap times to keep up. "I can drive consistent laps," he said. "These races are long and the conditions change. You can't drive an entire race at ten tenths. Nobody can. So it's how the car is consistent and stable (that) has allowed us to be competitive to work through traffic and the changing conditions."

The entire sport is about changing conditions. Jimmy Makar, senior vice president of racing operations at Joe Gibbs Racing, has participated in five championships and is hardly surprised that the Chevy entries of Hendrick are proving to be such a tough match for the four JGR Toyotas and the affiliated team of Furniture Row.

"When the Chase starts, everything ramps up," said Makar of the Hendrick resurgence. "The game in the postseason is different than the regular season."

A team, he said, can only get so far ahead while working next to each other in open garages under a very tight box of NASCAR rules. "The smaller the box gets, the harder it is to differentiate yourself," said Makar. "It gets harder to find an advantage. When change happens, you're always trying to be the ones that figure it out first."

There's another angle on timing. If a team finds something coming into the Chase, that's definitely an advantage when it comes to momentum, which Hendrick Motorsports now has. For one thing, Johnson is qualified for the Round of 8 and doesn't have to worry about the wild card of the Talladega Superspeedway. On the other hand, a re-start crash has put Elliott on the bubble headed into the Kansas Speedway on Sunday.

At least one Toyota driver is adopting a no worries approach. Kyle Busch, who had both a tire problem and also suffered from a collision in that same re-start, managed to finish sixth. The defending Sprint Cup champion said he was satisfied with his car's speed after studying the notes of JGR teammate Matt Kenseth, who finished second.

Whether JGR has enough to beat the Chevy entries of Hendrick as the Chase and the Round of 12 continues to unfold is reason enough to keep watching. Hendrick versus rival JGR and Chevy versus Toyota is a lot like the Red Sox versus the Yankees with an international twist.

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