How Hendrick Overcame Elliott’s Shocking Injury for Dominant NASCAR Performance at Phoenix

• Two days before the season’s third race Hendrick driver Chase Elliott was involved in a snowboarding accident that left him with a broken left leg.

• The sport’s five-time Most Popular Driver underwent a three-hour surgery in Colorado before returning to North Carolina a day after the accident.

• Elliott’s absence means Hendrick must request a waiver from NASCAR that will allow him to miss several races and still be playoff eligible.

Only peaks and valleys exist in racing and Hendrick Motorsports exemplified the sport’s constant roller-coaster ride during the NASCAR Cup Series weekend at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

In a three-day period, Hendrick Motorsports went from losing one of its drivers to a leg injury to producing the most dominating performance on a 1.5-mile track since NASCAR introduced its current Cup car last year.

Let’s hit rewind.

Two days before the season’s third race Hendrick driver Chase Elliott was involved in a snowboarding accident that left him with a broken left leg. The sport’s five-time Most Popular Driver underwent a three-hour surgery in Colorado before returning to North Carolina a day after the accident. Elliott’s absence means Hendrick must request a waiver from NASCAR that will allow him to miss several races and still be playoff eligible.

Then on Sunday, with Elliott and Rick Hendrick watching the Pennzoil 400 from the team owner’s North Carolina home, the organization dominated the race, claiming the first three positions for the third time in its history. The other times were at Dover in May 2021 and Daytona in 1997.

It also marked the first time since the current Cup car was introduced last year that one organization had dominated an event at a 1.5-mile track in the manner Hendrick did Sunday. Hendrick drivers led all but 30 laps in the 271-lap race that ended in overtime. William Byron led five times for 176 laps en route to his fifth career victory, while teammate Kyle Larson held the top spot on two occasions for 63 laps. Alex Bowman led once for two laps.

“The start of the year is really, really tough on our crew guys, on the road and the shop guys,” crew chief Rudy Fugle said. “These West Coast races … we got cars late again this year, and they’re tired. They need a morale boost, and one, two, three will boost the morale in the shop.”

Byron believes the organization’s domination of the second event in the series three-race Western swing demonstrated its “ability to come together in tough situations.” He was so confident after practice that he texted Hendrick to reassure him that they were focused on a victory.

“I just felt confident and just felt like we had a shot to win,” Byron said.

Fugle and Byron cited two reasons for their dominating performance: Increased knowledge of the car and off-season problem solving.

“We’re finally figuring out more and more what this car needs to make it race,” Fugle said. “It’s just going to keep evolving.”

Byron agreed.

“I think there was so much unknowns last year that it created guys bottoming out, wrecking, guys making big mistakes you don’t normally see at this level with how good everyone is,” Byron said. “Now, the drivers are back to understanding what they have.”

Fugle noted the fact there were only four caution periods also played a role because “you don’t have multiple pit stops to have mistakes or somebody try something different.”

The off-season problem solving meant Byron spending a great deal of time in the simulator with Fugle’s voice in his ear.

“It was nice to have his (Fugle) voice on the radio at the sim,” Byron said. “Just kind of work through that feedback.

“We felt like last year was really topsy-turvy for us. We … just didn’t really understand this car quite as good as we needed to. We needed to change some of our vocabulary when we talked about this race car. He and I have worked together in the past and we’ve worked on cars that have a different tire and different grip levels, so we just had to change some of the words that we used and kind of talk about the car.”

Even though NASCAR Xfinity Series regular Josh Berry, who substituted for the injured Elliott, didn’t participate in the Hendrick onslaught, the organization’s President and General Manager Jeff Andrews said he was “really happy” with Berry’s 29th-place performance. It was only Berry’s third Cup start and his first in the current car.

“(We had) some issues with his throttle there during the race that we’ve got to get fixed and remedied,” Andrews said.

Andrews expected a decision Monday on Elliott’s substitute for Phoenix.