BROOKLYN, Mich – It’s been a while since Hendrick Motorsports had a day like they had on Sunday at the Michigan International Speedway. In fact, it’s been since the end of June and early July.

At the Chicagoland Speedway, they looked stout for a change. Alex Bowman won the Camping World 400 that day while Jimmie Johnson, William Byron and Chase Elliott finished fourth, eighth and 11th respectively behind. A week later in Daytona, they finished 2-3 in the rain shortened event.

But, other than Elliott’s butt whooping that he put on the field last weekend in Watkins Glen, the last month or so has been dismal for HMS.

Really, other than his victory in Chicago, Bowman headed to Michigan this weekend with just one top five finish in his last 10 starts and only two top 10’s in his last nine. His last five finishes were – 21st, 17th, 14th, 20th and 14th respectively.

Byron’s last four finishes were 18th, 12th, 4th and 21st respectively himself.

Johnson’s were 30th, 30th, 15th and 19th while Elliott’s win last weekend was his first top 10 in seven races.

In Sunday’s Consumers Energy 400, HMS put three of their four cars in the top 10 as Johnson was the only one who had a rough day.

Byron, led the group on Sunday with an eighth place finish in his No. 24 Chevrolet as he scored stage points in both stages. While his car wasn’t ideal for him, it was a good result nevertheless.

“Honestly, I thought we tried a little different approach today and our car was just really hard to handle,” Byron said. “We struggled in traffic a lot. But, to come out with a top 10 is good. I feel like we ran in and around there. We just struggled on restarts. But, not bad overall. I think we made up a lot of points. Just kind of needed a couple of different things to play a little bit differently for us to have a better finish.

Byron, notes that the speed is coming on and he’s confident as he now is +89 on the playoff bubble.

“Yeah, I think so. Besides last week. I think we’ve finished in the top 10 in a two out of three, I guess. That’s great. And we can really build on that. It seems like Chad (Knaus) just calls really solid races. I think if we get our practice structure to be a little bit better, I think we’ll be in good shape.”

Elliott, ran out of gas on the last lap and fell from sixth to ninth in his No. 9 Chevrolet. It was another top 10 result at Michigan for the Georgia native as he too is starting to finally heat up again. This is his usual time of year to get going as Elliott can make some noise in the playoffs if he can keep this going.

“We finally got our car going pretty good there at the end and then ran out of gas on that last lap,” Elliott said of his 9th top 10 finish of the season. “I just needed to save a little better after the caution. … I need to be better, for sure. I just need to be a little faster. I needed to do a better job of saving.”

Bowman, got his first top 10 finish since his win on June 30 but his car still wasn’t to his liking though.

“We had a really good car in practice and just took off really right there in the race and nothing touched it,” Bowman said. “It was really tight. It was on the splitter all day. Track position was so key. A lot of opportunities to take a big swing at it and Greg did a good job calling the race. Strategy kind of bit us a little bit there getting buried. We didn’t have it today.”

While he didn’t have it, HMS still got three cars in the top 10 and can build on this heading towards the playoffs.