Chase Elliott’s win at Texas last week meant that Hendrick Motorsports has won five of the first nine races of the 2024 NASCAR Cup season. Combined with Joe Gibbs Racing, the two outfits have won all but one race this year, with Daniel Suarez’ Atlanta win the only exclusion from the list. Speaking to the media ahead of Talladega, the 2020 champion thinks HMS and JGR’s dominance is natural, considering the large resources at the teams’ disposal.
Advertisement
“I just think it’s silly that we think that we’re going to keep the big teams and that type of power away from winning in the long haul. I think that’s just motorsports. The big teams and the resources behind them are always going to find the advantage, and whatever it is, no matter how small the advantage is or isn’t, I think that it’s always going to be extracted and extracted first by those groups,” said the #9 driver, who had five wins and took home the regular season championship in the first Next Gen season in 2022.
Elliott expressed that though the Next Gen car has brought in parity to a large extent, the first teams that take advantage of certain increments are usually the big teams. This usually results in the form of dominance at the top of the field that is currently visible, but one that is not permanent in any form.
This point is further proved by the fact that throughout the last two season, JGR and HMS dominated the regular season, only for Team Penske and Ford to take home the titles each year.
Chase Elliott is wary of other team’s catching upto Hendrick dominance with time
NASCAR’s Most Popular Driver detailed the fact that the sport is cyclical in nature, and while one manufacturer can dominate for a period, things can change quickly.
“...it goes in ups-and-downs. I’ve been around it long enough to see that. Certain manufacturers will have advantages for a certain period of time, and then it will swing a different direction and vice versa. I think that’s just the way it works,” added Elliott, concluding that it was almost impossible for any manufacturer to stay on top all the time.
For this weekend’s race at Talladega, Michael McDowell and Austin Cindric complete an all-Ford front row, hoping to get the manufacturer its first win of the season.
