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Hendrick fails to end winless streak, but improvement continues

Hendrick Motorsports’ 19-race winless streak in the Sprint Cup Series continues, but Sunday’s results at Michigan were a bright spot to an organization accustomed to being on top.

Pace car

Pace car

Action Sports Photography

Hendrick Motorsports’ 19-race winless streak in the Sprint Cup Series continues, but Sunday’s results at Michigan were a bright spot to an organization accustomed to being on top.

Together, rookie Chase Elliott and six-time Cup champion Jimmie Johnson combined to lead 68 of the 200 laps on Sunday. Elliott’s 31 laps led were the third-most of his young career.

Johnson’s laps led (37) were the second-most in the race and in stark contrast to his recent performance. In his previous eight races, he had led a total of one lap. The last time he led more than 37 laps in a race was April at Richmond (44).

Johnson remains the only HMS driver to win a race this season (he’s won twice).

“It was just a very good day for all of Hendrick Motorsports. Unfortunately, one of our cars didn’t win today,” Johnson said after his sixth-place finish Sunday. “We are working hard and it’s nice to see the speed showing.

“There has been a lot of hard work for months and months and months going into this. We didn’t see the consistency in speed that we wanted, but this weekend we’ve had it from day one until now.

“It’s going in the right direction.”

All four drivers – Johnson, Elliott, Kasey Kahne and Alex Bowman (substituting for Dale Earnhardt Jr.) – got off to a strong start Sunday.

Bowman was forced to the garage early with a loose spark plug wire but ran top-five speeds once he returned to the track. Kahne ran in the Top-10 most of the race before shuffling back to 14th at the finish.

Elliott and Johnson were the class of the organization and even they had their own issues. Johnson’s team had a fueling issue on pit road on one stop and he pit early a second time with what he felt was a right-rear tire going down.

Although disappointed with losing the lead on a late restart, Elliott also noted HMS’ improvement.

“We were strong I felt like as a company today, which was encouraging,” he said.

Johnson said the organization will get a better idea of where it stands at next weekend’s race at Darlington (S.C.) Raceway.

“We feel like we are doing the right things to get speed in our cars and fortunately we still have a few months before we have to race for a championship at Homestead,” he said.

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