{"id":249592,"date":"2025-10-30T07:22:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-30T07:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/249592\/"},"modified":"2025-10-30T07:22:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-30T07:22:11","slug":"hendrick-motorsports-looks-to-end-nascar-cup-championship-drought-at-phoenix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/249592\/","title":{"rendered":"Hendrick Motorsports looks to end NASCAR Cup championship drought at Phoenix"},"content":{"rendered":"

As Team Penske celebrated its third consecutive championship last year, Hendrick Motorsports, the sport\u2019s most successful Cup team in terms of wins and titles, left Phoenix focused on a different outcome this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a top priority \u2026 go to Phoenix and have a shot at the championship,\u201d Jeff Gordon, vice chairman of Hendrick Motorsports, said this week.<\/p>\n

The three-year championship drought for Hendrick Motorsports is tied for the team\u2019s longest since 2006. Only once since Hendrick claimed its first Cup crown in 1995 has the organization gone four seasons between titles.<\/p>\n

Hendrick Motorsports will go for a record-extending 15th Cup title Sunday (3 p.m. ET on NBC and Peacock) with Kyle Larson and William Byron, the regular season champion, racing for a crown. They\u2019ll go against Joe Gibbs Racing\u2019s Denny Hamlin and Chase Briscoe for the championship.<\/p>\n

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A winless streak last season led to offseason moves that have pushed Joe Gibbs\u2019 organization forward.<\/p>\n

Sunday will mark the third consecutive year Byron has reached the title race. He earned a spot after his win last weekend at Martinsville.<\/p>\n

Last year, Byron, the lone Hendrick driver racing for a title at Phoenix, finished third in the race, behind Team Penske\u2019s Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney. In 2024, Byron and Larson represented Hendrick in the championship race. Larson was third to Blaney and Byron was fourth.<\/p>\n

Gordon sees signs of a different outcome for Hendrick this time.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you had asked me two months ago were we ready, I would say we\u2019re gaining on it, maybe not there,\u201d Gordon said of Hendrick\u2019s chances in a title race at Phoenix. \u201cIf you asked me today, I\u2019d say we\u2019re ready and excited about the opportunity that\u2019s only come from a tremendous amount of work and effort by our group and the season they put together.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Chase Briscoe will make his first appearance in the Cup Championship 4 on Sunday at Phoenix.<\/p>\n

In most years, a driver has had to win the season finale at Phoenix to claim the championship. If that is the case this year and Hendrick claims its 321st Cup win and a title, some credit can go to Team Penske.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery year we continue to have to up the bar because, credit to the guys at Penske, they\u2019ve set such a standard at Phoenix for how they compete and win,\u201d Cliff Daniels, crew chief for Larson, said. \u201cEvery year we thought we\u2019re bringing more to the table on the setup development side, on the car side and yet every year we continue to get beat. In a way that\u2019s been a great challenge to push us in areas we didn\u2019t expect.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The NASCAR Cup championship race will air Sunday on NBC and Peacock.<\/p>\n

Phoenix Raceway, a 1-mile oval, is among a group of tracks that had not been the strongest for Hendrick Motorsports. Those tracks included Richmond, New Hampshire and World Wide Technology Raceway.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been getting beat at those tracks recently,\u201d Gordon said. \u201cWe feel like that was a top priority. I would say throughout this year, we\u2019ve been gaining on that because of the amount of effort that\u2019s being put in by our engineering group, our crew chiefs, and the feedback from the drivers, the communication with everybody, our teammates at Chevy, as well as Chevy and their engineering group, as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Daniels said things changed this summer for Hendrick Motorsports at some of those tracks. He points to a test with Larson at World Wide Technology Raceway in late June when the team discovered some ways to make the car better that carried over to other tracks.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe went to (New Hampshire) certainly a lot more competitive than what we\u2019ve been,\u201d Daniels said. \u201cWe were very competitive at Gateway. The race strategy didn\u2019t quite work out for us. \u2026 We\u2019ve been as far out of preparing for Phoenix as what we\u2019ve been. I would argue six to eight weeks out where sometimes it\u2019s been three to four weeks out of Phoenix of really getting our mind wrapped around it. So we have a lot of optimism.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As Team Penske celebrated its third consecutive championship last year, Hendrick Motorsports, the sport\u2019s most successful Cup team…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":249593,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-249592","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\/249592","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=249592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249592\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}