KANSAS CITY, Kan. – Just win.
That’s the game plan for all three Hendrick Motorsports drivers currently below the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs Round of 12 cutline heading into Sunday’s elimination race at Kansas Speedway (2:30 p.m. ET, NBC/NBC Sports App, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
Alex Bowman is in the best shape among his teammates, sitting 13th in points, 18 points below Joey Logano. Chase Elliott is next in line with a 22-point deficit, while William Byron is 12th facing a 27-point gap with Clint Bowyer just ahead of him.
While Bowman, Elliott and Byron are still mathematically able to race their way into the next round on points, that task is enormous, and the likelihood is minimal. It’s almost a guarantee they would need drivers like the Team Penske bunch of Logano and Brad Keselowski to falter.
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On top of that, all three teams admittedly didn’t have exactly what they were looking for in Friday’s pair of practice sessions at the 1.5-mile track. Byron was the fastest in opening practice in the 20th slot, while final practice saw Bowman earn Hendrick’s best time with the 15th-fastest pace.
So, are they concerned?
“Yeah,” Bowman said after qualifying 16th on Saturday. “We were a 30th-place race car yesterday in practice, so I’m pretty worried for sure.”
Bowman noted crew chief Greg Ives and the No. 88 team made adjustments, but it’s unknown just how much those changes will help until after the green flag drops on Sunday.
“We have what we have now,” Bowman said, who finished second at Kansas in the spring. “… We gotta be aggressive the whole time. I don’t know if we even made any big changes or not, I’m just really hoping we did with how our car practiced. We’re going to be aggressive. We have to get stage points if we have any hope of closing the points gap.”
The game plan is the same for defending Kansas winner Elliott, but he’s cognizant of that fact that going over the edge in favor of aggression can easily take you out of the postseason, as well.
“I feel like you can be aggressive, but you don’t want to overreach,” Elliott said. “I feel like my time in racing, especially since I’ve been in Cup, I feel like I’ve gotten myself in more trouble when I try to do too much than when I just try to do my job. I’m just going to try to do my job this weekend.”
In Byron’s case, Talladega treated him well until it abruptly didn’t, as he crashed with 25 laps to go after winning the first stage. But the No. 24 team can only focus forward on the surefire way to advance to the next round – obtaining Byron’s first career Cup Series victory.
“You have to put that behind you and think about what we have to do to win,” Byron said. “Ultimately, if we want to advance past this weekend, we’re probably going to have to do that. Then, if we want to make it through the next round, we’re going to have to do that, too. So, that’s kind of what it takes.”
While the speed might be lacking in their Chevrolet-powered machines this weekend, what the Hendrick brigade does have in their favor is how Kansas has proven to be more of a wild-card race than initially anticipated. The same can happen this time around.
For now, glimmers of hope are what all the three of them cling onto as the daunting reality of a non-Hendrick Round of 8 looms in the distance.
But winning would fix everything on elimination Sunday.
“Tomorrow is a new day, and anything can happen,” Bowman said. “Hopefully we have a race car capable of winning because I think that’s what it’s going to take.”