A lot has changed at Hendrick Motorsports in just one year. At this point last season, they were dominating the Cup Series standings, with William Byron leading the standings heading into the playoffs. Kyle Larson and Chase Elliott were right behind him, both trading spots in the top three. The general feeling in the garage was that an HMS driver would emerge victorious at the end of the postseason. This year, however, has been a struggle by comparison, largely because of the issues with its Chevrolet cars.
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Chevrolet cars have managed just six wins this year, and the only Hendrick Motorsports driver to make it to Victory Lane has been Chase Elliott, who won at Martinsville and Texas. Analysts on NASCAR’s official Inside the Race podcast discussed that HMS fall-off earlier this week, with veteran crew chief Todd Gordon saying,
“They’re not bad. They’re just not Hendrick good.”
Elliott, Larson, and Byron are all set to make the playoffs. For any other team, having three of its drivers in the top 16 would be a huge deal. But at Hendrick Motorsports, there is a more pessimistic feeling about what comes afterward compared to last year.
Former Cup Series driver Kyle Petty, on the same segment, stated that HMS drivers find themselves running in “no man’s land” more often than not. They’re heavily relying on strategy decisions. If they go wrong, their whole weekend unravels.
Gordon backed him up. “If you run 7th to 14th, you’re not trying to hit the home run ball, because you’re still in a position you can kind of race your way forward. If you’re 20th, strategy call’s easy. The risk is nothing. The reward’s big,” he said.
The reason why HMS finds itself in this slump is the new Chevrolet body. For 2026, Chevrolet introduced a noticeably different car, with a bigger hood dome, revised front grille, larger front splitter, and more pronounced rocker panels along the sides.
It looked like a step forward. The problem was that it wiped out years of setup data in one go. Hendrick general manager Jeff Andrews confirmed that the old setups simply do not transfer to this car. Teams had to start from scratch.
The timing could not have been worse. Chevrolet locked in the new body design before NASCAR decided to introduce a lower-downforce, 750-horsepower package for short tracks. The two did not fit together well. On mile-and-a-half tracks, Hendrick was decent early in the year. On short tracks, they were nowhere near the front.
Every Chevrolet team has felt this. Trackhouse Racing has survived largely on road course results. Richard Childress Racing changed crew chiefs on Kyle Busch’s No. 8 car mid-season under pressure. Haas Factory Team and Rick Ware Racing both switched from Ford to Chevrolet this year and had to figure out a new manufacturer while Chevrolet itself was still working things out.
Richmond showed some progress. All four Hendrick cars came home in the top ten. Elliott fifth, Larson sixth, Byron ninth, and Bowman tenth. But as former Cup Series driver Jamie McMurray said on the broadcast, the margin between looking good and being genuinely fast is razor thin right now. “It’s such a small margin from being exceptional to just being average.” The speed is building. Winning speed is not there yet.
And while Hendrick is still trying to find that winning speed, the organization is already looking beyond the struggles of 2026. They signed up one of the biggest talents on the garage to replace the only driver in their line-up who won’t make it to the Chase in 2026.
Hendrick Motorsports Already Planning for the Future
On August 17, the team announced the signing of 20-year-old Connor Zilisch. He will take over the No. 48 Ally Chevrolet starting in 2028, replacing Bowman, who is currently 29th in the standings and set to retire after the 2027 season.
Ally Financial is already committed as the primary sponsor for Zilisch on the No. 48, so there is no financial gap to worry about.
Right now, Zilisch is a rookie at Trackhouse Racing, and it has been a tough year. He sits 34th in points with eight DNFs in 24 races. But Hendrick is not looking at what he has done this season. They are looking at what he accomplished before reaching the Cup Series.
Zilisch won the 2020 FIA Karting Academy Trophy, then won his class at both the Rolex 24 at Daytona and the 12 Hours of Sebring on his first attempts at each. He followed that up by winning 10 races in the 2025 O’Reilly Auto Parts Series, then known as the Xfinity Series. Rick Hendrick has already compared his ceiling to that of a young Jeff Gordon, a driver who went on to win four championships. That is not a comparison this organization makes lightly.
The signing also ends something that has never happened before in this team’s history. Since 2021, Larson, Elliott, Byron, and Bowman have remained the same four drivers, making it the longest unchanged lineup in the team’s 41-year existence. Zilisch will finally break that run in 2028.
With Larson locked in through 2031, Byron through 2029, and Elliott through 2027, every other seat is already spoken for. That quietly closes the door on Corey Day, the dirt-track prospect who had been viewed as the natural successor to Bowman for years. His development deal runs through 2027, but there is no Hendrick seat waiting for him. His path to the Cup Series will have to come elsewhere.
For Hendrick, the 2026 season remains a work in progress. But signing Zilisch two years before he even arrives shows just how far ahead the organization is already thinking..