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Hendrick drivers expected challenge
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Hendrick driver Jeff Gordon had engine trouble at Daytona and finished the season-opening race in 39th place.
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Hendrick drivers expected challenge
BY JIM McCONNELL
Date published: 2/29/2008
BY JIM McCONNELL
Rick Hendrick and his drivers tried to quell the hype more than a month before the start of the 2008 NASCAR season.
One by one, defending champion Jimmie Johnson and teammates Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Casey Mears repeated the company mantra: We're not taking anything for granted. We're all tied for last place. No matter how much talent one team assembles, there is too much depth in the sport for anyone to dominate forever.
So while many people are surprised that Hendrick Motorsports heads into Sunday's Sprint Cup race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway still looking for its first victory of '08, don't count the company's most famous employees among them.
"We've said all along we've recognized a lot of teams have been right there," said Johnson, who's looking for his fourth consecutive Cup win on Las Vegas' 1 1/2-mile oval. "We did win a lot of events, lead a lot of laps last year at Hendrick. But there were a lot of teams right there on our heels."
Well, not really.
In addition to Johnson's back-to-back series championships, Hendrick drivers have won 27 races and posted 101 top-five finishes over the past two seasons. By replacing talented-but-mercurial Kyle Busch with NASCAR's biggest star (Earnhardt), Hendrick's operation was supposed to become only more dominant this season.
But while Earnhardt's new No. 88 team was impressive during Daytona's preliminary events, more has gone wrong than right for HMS through the first two points races.
A mechanical failure knocked Gordon out of the Daytona 500 and left him with a 39th-place finish. Late crashes derailed strong runs by Mears (35th) and Johnson (27th).
Last weekend in California, water seeping through the seams of the 2-mile track caused Mears to lose control of his Chevrolet after just 20 laps. Mears wound up 42nd; Earnhardt, an innocent bystander who got caught up in the crash, was 40th.
Johnson and Gordon went on to finish second and third, respectively, but both acknowledged they had nothing to challenge race winner Carl Edwards.
Less than a year ago, Hendrick was light-years ahead of most other teams in its development and engineering of NASCAR's next-generation Car of Tomorrow. HMS drivers won nine of 16 COT races and used the advantage to get three of its four drivers in the Chase.
Now the new car is being used on a full-time basis, and if the first two races are any indication, rival organizations such as Edwards' Roush Fenway Racing have significantly closed the gap.
"I hope that this is a sign that we're up to their standards, to their level. I believe we are," Edwards said. "Everyone knows, all the drivers know, for sure, it's what you're sitting in a lot of the times that makes that tiny little bit of difference.
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WHEN: Sunday, 3:30 p.m.
WHERE: Las Vegas Motor Speedway
TV: Fox (channels 5, 35)
RADIO: WFLS-FM 93.3
DEFENDING CHAMP: Jimmie Johnson
QUALIFYING: Today, 6:30 p.m. (Speed channel) |
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Date published: 2/29/2008
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