Hendrick Motorsports at one point was the toast of the town. They had won 2 of the last 3 Cup Series titles and this past spring, looked like they could get at least 2 cars to the Championship 4 this Fall. Now, they may leave 2 cars home from the playoffs.

Think about that.

HMS won 3 of the first 7 races and 4 of the opening 9. They’ve won 3 of the last 15. That’s counting William Byron’s triumph on Sunday in Watkins Glen.

It’s not about him though as he and teammate Kyle Larson are solidly in the postseason field. It’s about Chase Elliott and Alex Bowman not being in the playoffs entering the 26th and final race of the 2023 NASCAR Cup Series regular season.

Bowman has tumbled from a points lead to having just 1 top 5 finish over the last 16 races. In fact, he has 2 top 10’s in that same span too.

Credit that 60 point Richmond penalty and those three races that he missed due to injury. If those don’t occur, he’s likely solidly in as he’s 96 points behind. Give him 60 points back and he’s 36 out. Give him those three races back and he’s probably playoff bound.

Prior to his injury, Bowman had 6 top 10 finishes in 10 starts. His average finish was 10.3. That momentum was lost due to his injury. In the 12 races now since his return, his average finish is 20.83.

That’s why he’s in the position that he’s in coming into Saturday night’s Coke Zero Sugar 400 (7 p.m. ET, NBC, MRN). A must win

But so is his teammate in Elliott as well and it’s a race that both can’t win. Someone will miss out.

Elliott was runner-up in Fontana then broke his leg in an off track snowboarding incident. He missed six weeks to injury. Then, in the six races back, he had a top 12 in five of them. Then came the suspension basically prompting a must win over the final 10 weeks.

Take those seven races that he’s missed and you likely have him on the good side of the cutline too. Elliott is 101 points behind.

Both self-inflicted mistakes that kept him away and both are paying for it.

The problem is, Daytona hasn’t been a great track for HMS lately either.

They have qualifying down pat in Daytona, it’s just the finishing part that they’re lacking. Heading into Saturday night’s race, Hendrick Motorsports is tied with the Wood Brothers for most Daytona wins in NASCAR Cup Series history. Each have 15.

Also, both teams have won those 15 races with 7 different drivers.

In saying that, HMS’ once dominant prowess has since cooled. They won 11 races between 1995 and 2015. In fact, 7 of those 11 occurred from July 2004 and July 2015. They’ve won this race 6 times even.

Since 2016 though, they have just one win. What’s bizarre is, it’s not like they’ve not shown up down here without speed. They’ve arguably had the fastest cars off the truck. It’s just that they’ve not had race day speed to correlate with race day handling.

Larson and Elliott shared the front row of this race last year. It was actually the 4th straight HMS pole at Daytona and 12th in the last 16 tries on the high banked 2.5-mile Florida superspeedway. The only 4 poles they didn’t win was Greg Biffle (July 2016), Joey Logano (July 2019), Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (February 2020) and Kevin Harvick (Aug. 2020).

However, 2 of the 4 weren’t won on speed. Logano’s pole in 2019 was on points. Same for Harvick in 2020 as we didn’t qualify that year.

Still, HMS failed to win with having just 1 win in the last 16 Daytona races now and that’s counting this past February too when they had another front row sweep.

Elliott was runner-up in the 2019 Coke Zero Sugar 400, runner-up in the 2020 Daytona 500, 8th in the 2021 ‘400 and 10th in the 2021 Daytona 500. While he won two superspeedway races last year, he was 38th, 12th and 13th this year.

Larson has never won a superspeedway race and has just 1 top 5 in 39 starts on them at that. He was 18th, 31st, 33rd and 36th on them this season.

Bowman is always quick on superspeedways but he has just one top five finish in his career at Daytona. That was back in February’s Daytona 500. He was 14th, 13th and 26th in the other three superspeedway races.

Byron is the only one I’d consider looking at. He has two top two finishes in his last five Coke Zero Sugar 400 starts. His Daytona 500 starts? 23rd, 21st, 40th, 26th, 38th and 34th respectively. He’s better here in the summer and won this past July in Atlanta. He was also seventh in Talladega.

But they don’t need him to be good. They need Elliott and Bowman to be and right now, I don’t feel great about either making it in.