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Season Preview: Hendrick Motorsports

by Tim Zaegel on February 17th, 2008

At this point, I’m not really sure what can be said about Rick Hendrick and Hendrick Motorsports that hasn’t already been stated a million times by now. It’s safe to say that Rick hasn’t built race teams or simply just an organization, he’s crafted and molded together a dynasty in oh, roughly twenty years time. To put it mildly, they’re NASCAR’s version of the New York Yankees … and, like I said – that’s putting it mildly.

In addition to the countless records that HMS has to their credit, they’ve also won 7 Sprint Cup Championships (4 with Gordon, 2 with Johnson, and 1 with Terry LaBonte) and also sit second on the all-time list for winningest teams in NASCAR with 167 Cup victories. Having won 6 Daytona 500’s would probably make any other car owner blush, but Hendrick Motorsports may be the only organization with a resume’ thick enough to make that accomplishment run second-fiddle to a list of others.

Moving away from the historic data for a moment – because quite frankly, we could go on with that for days as it pertains to this particular team – the recent success of HMS has been simply earth shattering. In 2006, Rick’s four teams combined for a 9 wins and three of the teams made the Chase field – Jimmie Johnson, who won the Championship, Jeff Gordon (finished 6th), and Kyle Busch (finished 10th). Brian Vickers was the only of the drivers not to make the playoff field, though he did finish the year off in a very respectable 15th … yet, those numbers paled in comparison to 2007. Last year, HMS compiled a total of 18 victories – half of all the points races run on the schedule – and, again placed three cars in the Chase field, this time finishing 1st, 2nd, and 5th with Casey Mears – who replaced Vickers in the no. 25 car – coming home in 15th. As if that all weren’t enough, another tidbit you may find interesting is the fact that in both of those seasons all four of the race teams won at least one race.

In 2008 the organization loses Kyle Busch but replaces him with the most popular driver in all of motorsports, Dale Earnhardt Jr. Between the four drivers that now compile the Sprint Cup roster at Hendrick Motorsports, they have a combined 132 wins in 1200 career starts, giving them a history of winning approximately 11% of their starts. It’s a star-studded lineup, and you’re going to have to search high and low to find any race fan that doesn’t believe that they’ll produce a star-studded season in 2008.

Cup Series Roster:

5: Casey Mears – With the departure of Kyle Busch from the HMS lineup, this year Mears makes the move from the no. 25 to the no. 5. In his first year with Hendrick Motorsports, Mears dropped one spot in the rankings from ’04 despite improving both in top-five and top-ten finishes, not to mention picking up his first-ever Cup Series victory (Spring race at Lowe’s). Despite having a career-high points finish of only 14th (2006), Casey continues to show extreme potential, and it goes without saying that if he could find a certain level of consistency, he’d undoubtedly be a very strong Chase candidate. Consistency isn’t a very hard commodity to find within the Hendrick organization, but with Junior replacing Kyle Busch this season, Casey will not only remain the fourth team in line in terms of priority, but it’s a very distant fourth. While some believe that the fourth car at HMS is better than the second car virtually anywhere else, I’m not often of the same opinion. Despite the fact that he deserves it, I believe that the attention HMS will give towards getting Junior off to a hot start, trying to get Jimmie back to a third consecutive championship, and the effort they’ll give to making Gordon a strong contender again this year will prove to be too much. Casey falls just shy of making the Chase class yet again this year.

24: Jeff Gordon – The man, the myth, the legend. Arguably the greatest driver this sport has seen in the last 15 years, and undoubtedly one of t he best of all-time, Gordon fell just short in his quest for his “Drive for Five” last year and heads into ’08 with only one thing on his mind … winning his fifth Cup Series Championship. After missing the Chase altogether in 2005, many fans had given up on Gordon and believed that he had passed his prime and was merely a shell of his former self. Well, he proved the critics wrong by bouncing back with a 6th place finish in 2006 with 2 wins, 14 top-five’s, and 18 top-tens, and then absolutely stunned the masses last year by finishing runner-up to Johnson in a season that brought him six victories, 21 top-five’s, and a record-setting 30 top-ten finishes. He also led the points standings by a wide margin for the majority of the year, and if not for a late-season rampage by Johnson, Gordon would have very-well accomplished his goal. This year I expect much of the same from JG, and I still expect him to fall shy of his goal yet again … barely. He finishes runner-up to the Championship yet again, this time losing it to Kenseth.

48: Jimmie Johnson – 15 victories, 33 top-five’s, 48 top-ten’s, and 2 Cup Championships. Those are Jimmie Johnson’s statistics for the last two seasons, and those two years alone already put Johnson into NASCAR’s elite driver class of all-time. This year he will attempt to become only the second driver in the sport’s history to win three consecutive championships, but I truly believe that quest will be denied. Will Johnson dominate parts of the season? Without a doubt. I just don’t see three-in-a-row for Johnson, though, just like I didn’t see a perfect season for the New England Patriots. I know most won’t agree with it, but Johnson finishes fourth this year.

88: Dale Earnhardt Jr – Junior has gotten off to a marvelous start with his new team already, and it’s started quite a buzz with the fans and media alike. He won the Budweiser Shootout and then the Gatorade Duel, and now he walks into the Daytona 500 as the heavy favorite to win … and, he is very likely to do that. It’s got many people believing that he can finally win his first Cup Championship this season, but I think that may be asking a little too much of the guy. I mean, he hasn’t won a points race in about two years, and now we want him to win a championship just because he has a new team? Junior’s performance will improve dramatically in 2008, no doubt about it … and, he will make the Chase for the Sprint Cup platform … he’s going to win races. But, win a championship he will not. There’s a lot of tracks that Dale will run well at, but the combination of the media frenzy surrounding everything that he’s done leading up to this season combined with trying to figure out the HMS setups and the COT, he’s going to have some difficulties that popup along the way. He will finish 2008 in the second half of the Chase field.

Driver Roster: A+
Off-Season: A
2008 Outlook: A+

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