Things could not have gone worse for the Hendrick Motorsports team at Michigan. Three out of their four cars ended up retiring from the race, much to the disappointment of team boss Rick Hendrick. From the larger picture, two of the cars have still not made it into the playoffs yet. It was only Kyle Larson who was the sole Hendrick survivor of the race.
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Thankfully, the 2021 Cup Series champion saved the team’s face after finishing in the top 5 following the conclusion of the rain-delayed race on Monday. Later on, Larson had the chance to speak with the media and share his thoughts on what went wrong with his teammates.
Kyle Larson explains the bad day at Michigan for Hendrick Motorsports
Larson said, “I hate to see Alex get tore up because he had a really fast car today and same with my other teammates. Chase (Elliott) having the right rear blowout so tough days for those guys. Puts them in a tough spot, but our day overall was good…”
He added, “But I felt like we were you know top three, top five guy which we finished fifth. But we kind of had to get the strategy work out to get the fifth. So I think that I think when the #14 hit me me we must got some sort of damage.”
“Because I was definitely a couple of tenths slower after that and it was harder for me to like make runs and passes but you my team did a good job playing the field strategy.”
What happened to the other three Hendrick Motorsports drivers?
While Larson was able to finish in 5th place despite having some trouble with damages to the car, his teammates were not lucky enough to finish the race in one piece. The first casualty in the HMS camp was the one guy everyone was hoping to win – Chase Elliott. A right rear tire failure led his car to slide up and hit the outside wall hard.
Just a couple of laps later, the man fighting to get back on top of the regular season leaderboards, William Byron, slammed his car into the wall. After returning to the pits, he told the media that it was a driver error on his part.
Lastly, Alex Bowman’s day went down the drain after being involved in a massive wreck, where his car slid to the right and hit a stricken Micheal McDowell. The Front Row Motorsports driver had been squeezed into the wall by a few drivers, thereafter he began losing speed.
After a while, Bowman suddenly veered into him and spun himself around, thereby retiring from the race. It was not sure if he had made contact with anyone or if it was just the aero wash.
