It seemed like another routine masterclass racing year for Hendrick Motorsports. Yet, by April, Hendrick Motorsports had only just secured its first win at Martinsville, which came far later than expected. The storyline remained consistent: even after strong qualifying runs, race-day pace fell off sharply. Even the ardent Chase Elliott fan would agree that Denny Hamlin had the best car at Martinsville, but Lady Luck smiled on him to snag that win. So what’s exactly holding up the HMS car from going all out on the track? And the answer to this riddle is simple: the new Chevrolet body.

And what is Hendrick Motorsports doing to fix things behind the scenes? Well, as it turns out, they are trying to find the right balance, which is like a race against time.

“The car is gonna be great. It’s gonna take a little bit of time still. I don’t think that we’re quite there yet,” said Chad Knaus, the Vice President of Competition HMS. “The rules changing at the same time that the car changes, making it difficult, with the higher horsepower and the changing of the aerodynamic packages at some of these bigger short tracks, the Darlington’s, the Dover’s, places like that.”

After a lot of talks, NASCAR finally introduced more horsepower to the race cars on shorter tracks. The diffuser, which has long been critiqued, has also been tweaked. A smaller aluminum rear panel with fewer, shorter vertical strakes to reduce rear downforce and improve car maneuverability. So you can only understand that HMS engineers are dealing with two different issues at a time.

“When you have the testing restrictions that we do. We don’t get to go to the racetrack and test a whole lot, definitely as an organization,” said Knaus. “We don’t get to use a whole lot of wind tunnels all the time, because of the restrictions and the hours that NASCAR puts out there.”

Towards the end, a traditional conclusion would just close on a positive note. Yet the statement was true to Knaus, who couldn’t let go without a sprinkle of anxiety for fans.

“We’re gaining on it, we’ve been solid, we haven’t been as good as what we need to be, it’s gonna take a pinch for us to get there,” he admits before returning to the same unfinished saga, “we just gotta get it figured out just a little bit.”

What stands out about Knaus’ emphasis on restrictions, instability, and engineering causes is his repetition of the same signalling that the issue may not be confined within Hendrick Motorsports alone, but could point toward a broader concern within the Chevrolet camp itself.

A manufacturer-level lag: Chevrolet’s slow start raises bigger questions

It must be noted here that some patterns are beginning to emerge regarding Chevrolet’s new Camaro ZL1 body. With Knaus already stressing aerodynamic issues, there could be a manufacturer-level problem that is being ignored. Out of the first six Cup races, Chevrolet did not win any, while Toyota won five of those six. Even the majority of laps were led by a Toyota, and it was not until Martinsville that both Hendrick and Chevrolet received their first wins.

Another support for this thesis would be other Chevy organisations also lacking front-running conversion. The same can be evidenced in the tableau of Richard Childress Racing. Martinsville marked the first time in RCR history that the team failed to score a top-10 finish in the first seven races of a Cup season. Both Kyle Busch and Austin Dillon were at 24th and 27th on points, respectively, both with zero top 10s.

While it’s too early in the season to comment on whether this issue is a track-wide manufacturer’s one, it is to be noted that Chevy, as a manufacturer, lagged badly in early-season win conversion as well as front-end dominance. And maybe it is this exact broader pattern that Hendrick’s issue can fit into.