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Hendrick drivers expected challenge

February 29, 2008 12:16 am

Rick Hendrick and his drivers tried to quell the hype more than a month before the start of the 2008 NASCAR season.

One by one, defending champion Jimmie Johnson and teammates Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Casey Mears repeated the company mantra: We're not taking anything for granted. We're all tied for last place. No matter how much talent one team assembles, there is too much depth in the sport for anyone to dominate forever.

So while many people are surprised that Hendrick Motorsports heads into Sunday's Sprint Cup race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway still looking for its first victory of '08, don't count the company's most famous employees among them.

"We've said all along we've recognized a lot of teams have been right there," said Johnson, who's looking for his fourth consecutive Cup win on Las Vegas' 1 1/2-mile oval. "We did win a lot of events, lead a lot of laps last year at Hendrick. But there were a lot of teams right there on our heels."

Well, not really.

In addition to Johnson's back-to-back series championships, Hendrick drivers have won 27 races and posted 101 top-five finishes over the past two seasons. By replacing talented-but-mercurial Kyle Busch with NASCAR's biggest star (Earnhardt), Hendrick's operation was supposed to become only more dominant this season.

But while Earnhardt's new No. 88 team was impressive during Daytona's preliminary events, more has gone wrong than right for HMS through the first two points races.

A mechanical failure knocked Gordon out of the Daytona 500 and left him with a 39th-place finish. Late crashes derailed strong runs by Mears (35th) and Johnson (27th).

Last weekend in California, water seeping through the seams of the 2-mile track caused Mears to lose control of his Chevrolet after just 20 laps. Mears wound up 42nd; Earnhardt, an innocent bystander who got caught up in the crash, was 40th.

Johnson and Gordon went on to finish second and third, respectively, but both acknowledged they had nothing to challenge race winner Carl Edwards.

Less than a year ago, Hendrick was light-years ahead of most other teams in its development and engineering of NASCAR's next-generation Car of Tomorrow. HMS drivers won nine of 16 COT races and used the advantage to get three of its four drivers in the Chase.

Now the new car is being used on a full-time basis, and if the first two races are any indication, rival organizations such as Edwards' Roush Fenway Racing have significantly closed the gap.

"I hope that this is a sign that we're up to their standards, to their level. I believe we are," Edwards said. "Everyone knows, all the drivers know, for sure, it's what you're sitting in a lot of the times that makes that tiny little bit of difference.

"I'm proud to be driving this car. I'm proud of what [team owner] Jack [Roush] and [crew chief] Bob [Osborne] and all the engineers did last year when we saw how far behind we were. That reaction and the action that came after that is what got us here today."

While castoff Busch leads the Sprint Cup points standings after two races, his former teammates find themselves in the unfamiliar position of having to play catchup. Johnson leads the Hendrick quartet in eighth place; Gordon is 14th, Earnhardt 23rd and Mears 42nd.

"The last thing we want to do is get off to a slow start. If you get behind early, it's really tough to make up time and make up points as we get rolling here," Johnson said.

"Everyone is worried about the top 35. Then you get into the Chase, worrying about being in the top 12. Those concerns are there. But we build a lot of confidence knowing that the season's based on other races. There's short tracks, there's intermediate tracks, a lot of other events that take place. So we try not to panic too much."

Jim McConnell: 540/374-5444
Email: jmcconnell@freelancestar.com