NASCAR: Chase Elliott’s victory ties all-time record for Hendrick
By Asher Fair
With Chase Elliott’s win in Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Circuit of the Americas, Hendrick Motorsports tied Petty Enterprises’ all-time wins record.
In last Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Dover International Speedway, Alex Bowman led a 1-2-3-4 Hendrick Motorsports sweep to bring Rick Hendrick’s team to within one win of the all-time record.
One week later, in a rain-shortened inaugural Cup Series race at Circuit of the Americas, Chase Elliott delivered the team a record-tying 268th victory ahead of teammate Kyle Larson in second place.
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Entering the 2021 season, Hendrick Motorsports had won 263 races following a seven-win season that saw Elliott win five races and the championship.
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William Byron struck first in 2021, winning the third race of the season at Homestead-Miami Speedway, before Kyle Larson secured his first win for the team in the fourth race of the season at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Bowman then won at Richmond Raceway before his Dover International Speedway triumph.
Elliott’s victory was the 12th of his career, all with Hendrick Motorsports, and his first of the season as the reigning champion. It was also Chevrolet’s 800th victory at the sport’s top level.
During their time competing in the Cup Series from 1949 to 2008, Petty Enterprises fielded 2,817 entries and collected 268 wins, 888 top five finishes and 1,258 top 10 finishes.
Hendrick’s team have now fielded 4,329 entries and collected 268 wins, 1,122 top five finishes and 1,934 top 10 finishes since they began competing in 1984.
Elliott led only the final five laps of the rain-shortened 54-lap EchoPark Texas Grand Prix around the 20-turn, 3.427-mile (5.515-kilometer) road course in Austin, Texas after taking second place from Joe Gibbs Racing’s Kyle Busch and then the lead from Bowman, who still needed to make another pit stop.
With this race initially scheduled to run for 68 laps, there were concerns that Elliott would not be able to make it to the end on fuel without laps run under caution as he built up his lead over Larson. Those concerns went out the window when the caution flag for standing water turned into a red flag that ultimately brought out the checkered flag.
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This wins record could be broken as early as next Sunday’s Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway, which is set to be broadcast live on Fox beginning at 6:00 p.m. ET. Elliott won one of the two races at the Charlotte Motor Speedway oval last season and likely would have won both had Byron not spun out to bring out a caution flag in the closing laps of the Coca-Cola 600.