William Byron gave Hendrick Motorsports their 300th Cup win last Sunday in Texas. Chase Elliott won this race at the Talladega Superspeedway last year. Can HMS go 2 straight in the Fall Talladega race and 2 straight in the Round of 12 for win No. 301?

At one point Hendrick Motorsports was the top team on restrictor plate tracks. At Talladega, they had 6 wins in an 8 race span. They’ve won just 4 of the 30 Talladega races since with Elliott’s spring race in 2019 and Fall race last year being their only trips to victory lane here since this Fall race in 2015.

Their Talladega winning ways began in 1988 when Ken Schrader captured the checkered flag followed closely by teammate Geoff Bodine. The 1-2 finish was the first time in track history a team had swept the top-two positions. Since then, Hendrick Motorsports has won 13 more races at the Alabama track with vice chairman Jeff Gordon leading the way with six victories. Elliott and Jimmie Johnson each have won twice for the group while Dale Earnhardt Jr., Terry Labonte and Brian Vickers sit tied with Schrader’s one victory at Talladega.

For Daytona, Hendrick Motorsports is tied with the Wood Brothers for most wins there in the NASCAR Cup Series. Each have 15. Both have also won those 15 races with 7 different drivers. However, HMS’ once dominance prowess has since cooled at the World Center of Racing too. They won 11 races between 1995 and 2015. In fact, 7 of those 11 occurred from July 2004 and July 2015. They’ve won the Coke Zero Sugar 400 race 6 times.

Since 2016 there, they have just 1 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.

Can they turn this tide around this weekend in Talladega as the defending race winners?

Kyle Larson may need to hope so. He’s holding the 8th and final spot in the standings to the Round of 8 right now and just 2 points to the good in the process.

On superspeedway’s, he’s only 1-for-40 for top 5 finishes. In fact, his last five finishes at Talladega are 39th, 40th, 40th, 37th, fourth, 18th and 33rd respectively.

Then, it’s to Charlotte to close the round. For the ROVAL, yes he won in 2021, but he was outside the top 30 last year and has finished 14th, eighth, fourth, eighth and 26th on road races this season too.

Elliott hasn’t won a race since this event a year ago. He has two trips to victory lane in his last eight Talladega starts now. Elliott’s pair of Talladega finishes last year were seventh and first respectively to give him five top eight finishes in his last nine Talladega tries overall. He was 12th this spring and fourth in last month’s Coke Zero Sugar 400.  Over the last 16 races on drafting tracks, he has two wins (at Talladega and Atlanta in 2022), is tied for the most top-10 finishes (10) and stage wins (five), while notching the most top-fives (six) and average finish (11.25). The No. 9 team is two points below the elimination line in the owner championship. 

Byron has five top 12 finishes in his last seven starts at Talladega including a runner-up finish in the spring of 2021. On superspeedway’s this season, he’s finished 34th, 32nd, seventh, first and eighth. He has the eighth most points (136) accumulated on them too.

Wildly enough still, Larson is +2 on Elliott of the final spot in the owners standings too. With Byron already in the Round of 8, if they can both have good final two races of this round, then HMS could have 3 of the 8 cars left in the owners race which pays a hell of a lot more money than the drivers.

Many people forget that Elliott is still in that race and right now, he’s doing his part.

“It’s kind of surprised me in a way because obviously there is a lot of talk about the driver side and there is not really a lot of talk about the owner’s front,” Elliott said. “Once the deal got started, I don’t feel any different than I have felt in years past. It still keeps us very motivated and keeps me motivated to want to go and do a good job.

“Now that we are here, it feels like another playoff year really in our approach and my approach.

“When you get to this race on the calendar each year and the playoff implications that are there, it is always the one that everyone is trying to get through. It is such a wild card with what can happen. You can gain a lot of points or you can lose a lot of points really fast. If you are really lucky, you can get a win and get yourself through.”

While not having the full fleet in the postseason is not what you draw up at the start of the season, team owner Rick Hendrick is focused on making sure that Elliott and Bowman finish the year strong and use the closing races of 2023 as a springboard for the next season in 2024. 

“You just have to put your arm around them and say look, ‘this happened. Now let’s get ready for next year. Let’s see if we can get better every single week as the year goes on. These races that are left. Let’s see if we can get in the top 10, get in the top five and win a race,'” Hendrick said on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio’s “The Morning Drive” program earlier this week.

“When Chase (Elliott) is out of the car and when Alex (Bowman) is out of the car, look at the time they lose with the others racing. Yeah, we got the information but the car has to be tuned to the driver. They get back in the car and they got to catch up. In this sport, you don’t catch up easily. People don’t wait for you. Even if you are on the same team and you have all the information, there is a difference in the feel of each driver and they each want something else. I see both of those guys coming on now. It just took time.”

Bowman has a top-five finish and three top-10s in the last seven races. He just missed nabbing top-10 finishes at Bristol Motor Speedway and Texas Motor Speedway. Those results have seen Bowman return to his early season form with first-year crew chief Harris, where he had six top-10s and was leading the points standings after seven races. 

“We are in it for the long haul, not the short run. Let’s just focus on ourselves,” Hendrick said of what he has told the drivers. 

“I hate to see either one of those guys miss the playoffs because Alex was leading the points early in the year and had more top 10s than anybody. Chase was running good too. Things happen, life happens and you deal with it. 

“… Tremendous pressure on those guys to see the other guys have won 10 races counting the All-Star Race. It’s just human nature for them to feel pressure. I’ve tried to tell them you are putting the pressure on yourself. I know the fans want to see Chase win and Alex win. It’s coming. It will happen.”