{"id":125720,"date":"2025-09-07T03:50:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-07T03:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/125720\/"},"modified":"2025-09-07T03:50:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-07T03:50:09","slug":"hendrick-motorsports-seeks-nascar-playoff-turnaround-at-wwt-raceway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/125720\/","title":{"rendered":"Hendrick Motorsports seeks NASCAR playoff turnaround at WWT Raceway"},"content":{"rendered":"

MADISON, Ill. \u2014 After a difficult playoff opener last weekend, Hendrick Motorsports seeks to turn around its fortune at a track that has not been among its best.<\/p>\n

Hendrick Motorsports has not had a car finish better than 10th in two of the three Cup races at World Wide Technology Raceway heading into Sunday\u2019s race (pre-race coverage begins at 2:30 p.m. ET on USA Network).<\/p>\n

Some of Hendrick\u2019s teams could use a top-10 result after last week\u2019s woes at Darlington Raceway. No Hendrick car finished better than 17th in the Southern 500.<\/p>\n

The result is that Alex Bowman enters Sunday\u2019s race 19 points below the cutline and Chase Elliott is only nine points above it.<\/p>\n

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\"NASCAR:<\/p>\n

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Denny Hamlin will be joined on the front row by Kyle Larson in Sunday\u2019s Cup playoff race at World Wide Technology Raceway.<\/p>\n

Bowman\u2019s race included a 40-second pit stop when an air hose got disconnected and the team failed to recognize the issue immediately.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think after a weekend like that, everybody\u2019s mental state was rough,\u201d Bowman said Saturday. \u201cYou\u2019re all like \u2018What the hell just happened?\u2019 I think they\u2019re all capable of rebounding and having great stops this weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"NASCAR<\/p>\n

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Austin Cindric seeks to repeat his 2024 win at the 1.25-mile track.<\/p>\n

They\u2019ll need it after Bowman\u2019s car got loose in qualifying and he\u2019ll start 25th \u2014 last among the 16 playoff drivers at a place where track position is paramount. Bowman has not finished better than 13th in three starts at this track.<\/p>\n

Elliott will start 19th \u2014 next-to-last among the playoff drivers. His focus at this track?<\/p>\n

\u201cJust looking for a happy balance,\u201d said Elliott, whose best finish is 13th in two starts at World Wide Technology Raceway. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to trust whatever your butt is telling you when you get in the seat. I think at the end of the day it\u2019s just about finding a happy spot with the car where you feel like you can go and push and extract some lap time and fall into a rhythm and be able to repeat it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"NASCAR:<\/p>\n

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The NASCAR circuit will race at the 1.25-mile oval for the first time in the playoffs.<\/p>\n

William Byron, the regular season champion, fell to sixth in the playoff standings after he placed 21st at Darlington. Still, he\u2019s 25 points above the cutline. His best finish at World Wide Technology Raceway is eighth in 2023.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re trying to attack every detail and aspect of this weekend that we can,\u201d Byron said. \u201cJust business as usual and try to dot every I, cross every T, maybe a little more than normal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kyle Larson, who is 38 points above the cutline, also has had his challenges at this track.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just haven\u2019t been very fast here,\u201d Larson said before qualifying second. \u201cWe\u2019ve gotten better each time. We haven\u2019t had much speed and then you\u2019re trying to push things to squeeze more speed out of it and then you\u2019re closer to the edge of grip and making mistakes and sliding around. <\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like that\u2019s kind of what I\u2019ve struggled with in the past, just not being able to kind of run the preferred line and you\u2019re always searching.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MADISON, Ill. \u2014 After a difficult playoff opener last weekend, Hendrick Motorsports seeks to turn around its fortune…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":125721,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-125720","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nascar","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125720\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}