There’s no doubt about it, the Hendrick Motorsports camp has had the top speed in the NASCAR Cup Series in 2020. I can make a solid case to where they should have at least five wins right now, if not six.

Their peers agree.

“I think the best group out there right now is Hendrick,” said Ryan Blaney who earned two third place finishes at Charlotte this past week. “They have really great speed right now on the mile-and-a-halfs or the bigger tracks. I’ve seen it. They might not — they’ve kind of had some unfortunate circumstances, which is actually our team has capitalized on. The Penske group has capitalized on at a couple of them tracks, but Hendrick is really strong. I feel like we’re close with our group. We’ve just got to find a little bit more.”

Denny Hamlin agreed, saying that the Chevrolet’s are finally finding their stride in a car built for this package.

“Well, it’s just Chevys in general,” Hamlin said on why Chase Elliott has been so fast this season. “They’re fast, and they’re really the only manufacturer that got to build a car directly for the package that we run. These other cars, the Toyotas and Fords, were built on the low downforce package and then we added a bunch of spoiler and splitter to them. Certainly there was an advantage knowing that, okay, this is the real package, how can we optimize downforce and drag, and I think Chevys have done that.”

In late February, Alex Bowman was getting ready to pass Ryan Blaney for the lead in the closing laps of the second race of the season at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Instead, Ross Chastain brought out a caution. Bowman, pitted instead under that caution period and lost the win as a result. A week later, he made up for it and won in Fontana after leading 110 of 200 laps.

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Elliott swept both stages in Vegas but had a tire go down and opened the door for Blaney and Bowman in Vegas. At Darlington 2, he was in second place coming to the final restart but was crashed by Kyle Busch. The only car in front of him was on older tires. If Elliott doesn’t get wrecked, he wins. Then, last Sunday at Charlotte, Elliott was well on his way to a Coca-Cola 600 triumph. His teammate, William Byron, brought out a late race caution which forced Elliott to pit road in overtime. It cost him a win, just like Bowman in Vegas.

I didn’t even bring up Darlington 1 when Jimmie Johnson, William Byron and Bowman should have finished 1-2-3 in the first stage. They all had the best speed, but Johnson wrecked, Byron didn’t feel a loose wheel and wrecked himself and Elliott with pit road problems.

Elliott, finally got them over the hump on Thursday night in Charlotte. Now, it’s to Bristol, a place they can shine again. They swept the front row for this race last year and will have a shot to close.

Elliott made up for it on Thursday night the way Bowman did in Fontana. Now, it’s to Bristol for a one day show on Sunday.

Bowman, has two top eight finishes in his last four Bristol starts. Johnson has nine top 11s in his last 11 tries while Elliott has three top 11s in four career spring race starts.

They’ll be there, but can they finish?