CHEVROLET’S performance in Supercars circles isn’t the only area of General Motors’ racing program to be under the microscope, with its NASCAR Cup Series results also facing scrutiny after a tough start to the year.
Taking a fresh ZL1 body design into the new season, the Bow Tie has only one victory to its credit in the first nine races contested at stock car racing’s top tier, when Chase Elliot won at the non-aero-sensitive Martinsville Speedway.
Meanwhile, Toyota have dominated with seven victories to date.
As it stands, Hendrick Motorsports has been quiet by their lofty standards, with its drivers Kyle Larson, Chase Elliott, and William Byron placed fifth through seventh in points, with Spire Motorsports’ Carson Hocevar and Daniel Suárez the only other Chevy drivers currently in line for a Chase berth – they are placed 12th and 16th.
Other key GM alliance teams have struggled.
From Trackhouse Racing, Shane van Gisbergen sits 18th, Ross Chastain is 20th, and Connor Zilisch is 33rd, while from Richard Childress Racing (RCR), Austin Dillon is 25th and Kyle Busch is 27th, with the two-time Cup champion’s struggles well noted throughout the industry.
Notably, Trackhouse utilises ECR Engines, which originate from the RCR campus.
Corey LaJoie, who this year is running full-time in the NASCAR Truck Series for Kaulig Racing’s Ram outfit, talking on the NASCAR-produced Stacking Pennies podcast, shed light on the struggles being felt in the Chevrolet camp at the Cup level.
The veteran of 276 Cup Series starts has pointed to the early days of the NextGen platform, introduced for 2022, as an area where both Trackhouse and RCR gained a significant competitive advantage before being caught by the other teams.
“When the NextGen car came in, the GM Tech Centre wasn’t built yet,” said LaJoie.
“Trackhouse’s shop, which was Ganassi’s shop, had been built previously for three or four Cup teams; they were running two Cup teams.
“They had room to offer GM to work for their technical centre out of Trackhouse for the first year and a half of this car before they had this (new) building.
“So, these underwing scanners, all the GM engineers were out of Trackhouse before they went onto Hendrick’s property.
“Ross came out of the gate, running like a damn bandit, right?
“Won all these races, ran second in the championship.
“Since then, GM has left the building, quite literally, down the street to Hendrick.
“They get to use all the stuff, but now it’s out of their shop, they can’t walk down the hallway and ask, ‘Hey, what are you running for rear bump stop today?’
“They have to go put it in front of a bureaucratic structure that is GM, everybody got into shares everywhere.
“So, they have lost their advantage, they have obviously got lost on their tyre simulation, clearly down on downforce, clearly down on horsepower, because they are not qualifying well.
“So, this snowball starts rolling, you hate it for a guy like Connor Zilisch, in his rookie season, and the learning curve is just straight up and down, and he’s second to last or third to last in points.
“We know Ross Chastain can get it done, we know SVG can clearly get it done, but if the horse you’re sitting on isn’t good, you’re not going to be able to keep up.
“So Trackhouse, man, they are really behind, they are in the same boat as RCR, just grasping at straws, trying to find something that hits.
“But Trackhouse had such a competitive advantage with the GM alliance to start the NextGen car, it’s not surprising that they’ve lost some of that step, because now everyone has the same information that they do.
“Same with RCR, when they came out of the gate, they were the ones that built the first NextGen car.
“(Former RCR driver) Tyler Reddick was testing it at Darlington, testing it at Gateway.
“What happened is that he won three of four races with the first year in the eight car, Kyle Busch jumps in it, wins a couple of races, and now everyone else understands the car, they’ve surpassed them and what they’ve learned, and what they do.
“So Trackhouse and RCR started with a leg up; now they are multiple legs behind it, and it doesn’t look like they’re catching up anytime soon.”
This weekend, the NASCAR Cup Series returns to the Talladega Superspeedway.
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