Hendrick Motorsports testing at Homestead-Miami Speedway

HOMESTEAD, Fla. – It will all come down to Homestead-Miami Speedway.

This year, a great run at the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup’s final track is even more crucial, as four drivers will enter the finale even in the points standings with a shot at the Sprint Cup Championship.

With that in mind, Hendrick Motorsports has spent two days in Homestead, Florida, testing its cars at a track that Jeff Gordon called “very challenging.”

“It’s just all about speed and having a car that handles well,” said Gordon, who is currently atop the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup standings. “We've had some good cars here also the last couple of years and want to simulate that and hope that we're in the battle for the championship when we come back here, and if we are, we have a car that can win this race."

Gordon said the key to the race is finding the right balance in the car. And that’s what he, crew chief Alan Gustafson and the No. 24 team were looking to tinker with during the two-day testing session.

For Earnhardt and teammates Kasey Kahne and Jimmie Johnson, the goal for the testing was still to run well at Homestead on Nov. 16, but there was another strategy in mind as well.

"We're in a bit of a different situation than Jeff is where we're not racing for the championship, so we sort of split the test in half,” Earnhardt explained. “We'll work on our 2015 package (Tuesday) and then work on the 2014 package (Tuesday) evening late and all day (Wednesday). We feel like we had a good car here last year, just want to come back and try to learn a few more things and hopefully come out of here pretty satisfied and happy and looking forward to the race."

For the portion of the testing focused on this year’s race, Earnhardt said the No. 88 team will concentrate on figuring out how to be stronger on “those first five or six laps that are real critical after a restart.”

With pressure mounting for all the drivers in the Chase – the ones in contention for a championship and the ones striving to finish as high as fifth in the final points standings – performing well in the final race is paramount.

The Hendrick Motorsports drivers hope the extra experience that testing at Homestead will provide can help mitigate that pressure when the final race of the 2014 season arrives.

“Each round offers something unique and different because the tracks are different. Then you reset, and when you reset like that, that intensity just starts all over again,” Gordon said. “It just seems like the pressure is higher and the urgency to perform also seems to be greater, which is to me what's making it very, very exciting."