CONCORD, N.C. – At ISM Raceway, Hendrick Motorsports has paced the field over the years.
The organization leads all NASCAR Cup Series teams at the Arizona venue with 10 wins, 11 pole positions, 47 top-five finishes and 82 top-10s. It also leads the way in laps led (2,635) and runner-up finishes (nine).
See below for more key numbers, stats and figures on Hendrick Motorsports’ history at ISM Raceway.
- At least one Hendrick Motorsports driver has finished inside the top 10 in each of the last 13 races at ISM Raceway and in all but one of the last 34 races at the track. At least one of the organization's drivers has led laps in each of the last six races at the venue.
- The organization's 10 wins at ISM Raceway are spread among six drivers, with Jimmie Johnson accounting for four. Jeff Gordon won twice, with Mark Martin, Kyle Busch and Terry Labonte accounting for one apiece. Dale Earnhardt Jr. recorded the organization’s most recent victory at the track in November 2015. The all-time record for the most different drivers to win for a team at a single track is seven, which Hendrick Motorsports has accomplished twice – at Charlotte and Pocono. Wood Brothers Racing has also accomplished the feat at Daytona.
- From the spring 2007 race to the fall 2009 race, the organization won six consecutive events at ISM Raceway with drivers Gordon, Johnson (four) and Martin. It ranked third among NASCAR Cup Series teams for most consecutive wins at a track all-time.
- Hendrick Motorsports leads all teams in West Coast victories – including California, Nevada and Arizona – with a total of 34, 11 more than the next closest team, Roush Fenway Racing. Johnson and former teammate Gordon – both of whom hail from California – are first and third among all drivers for most wins on West Coast tracks with 15 and 11, respectively.
- Elliott is set to make his sixth Cup Series start at ISM Raceway this weekend in the final race of the Round of 8. In the playoff race last year, Elliott led the field three separate times for a total of 34 laps and scored a second-place finish – his seventh runner-up result to that point. In his previous five starts at ISM, the Dawsonville, Georgia, native averages a starting and finishing position of 6.8 – the second-best average finish at ISM of all time. Elliott has earned top-10 finishes in all but one event, top-three results in his last two trips there, and led a total 140 laps at the venue. His average finish of 6.8 is his fourth-best at any track on the schedule.
- William Byron will have a great chance to clinch NASCAR Cup Series rookie of the year honors this weekend. The 20-year-old driver leads by 116 points in the standings over Bubba Wallace and will clinch the title if he finishes the race with a 61-point lead. Byron is on a roll of earning NASCAR rookie of the year titles to this point, going back-to-back-to-back in the Xfinity Series in 2017, the Camping World Truck Series in 2016 and the K&N Pro Series East in 2015. He would join Erik Jones as the second driver to win rookie of the year honors in the Cup, Xfinity and Truck Series in three consecutive seasons, and would join Jeff Gordon (1993), Kyle Busch (2005) and Chase Elliott (2016) as the fourth Hendrick Motorsports driver to win the title.
- Byron has a strong history of performing well at ISM Raceway. In the March Cup race, he started 11th and led 15 laps en route to a 12th-place finish. Byron started on the front row in both of his NASCAR Xfinity Series starts at the track in 2017, winning there in November and finishing fourth in the spring. Byron is the youngest winner ever at ISM Raceway in Xfinity at 19 years, 11 months and 13 days. In 2016, he led 112 laps in the Truck Series race before an engine failure.
- A win this weekend isn’t out of the question for the Cup rookie, and it has been done before by two drivers in their respective rookie seasons – Tony Stewart and Kyle Busch – who both won in the fall race at the one-mile track. The No. 24 Chevrolet also has a good history at ISM Raceway, visiting Victory Lane twice in the spring race with Gordon behind the wheel (2007 and 2011).
- Johnson has four wins at ISM Raceway. He has accounted for 990 laps led around the track with 15 top-five finishes and 20 top-10s over 30 starts. Johnson’s average finish is 10.13, which is the seventh-best at the track all-time. His last win at the Avondale, Arizona, track came on Nov. 15, 2009, when he led 238 of 312 laps. The very next week he won his fourth NASCAR Cup Series championship at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
- Alex Bowman has six previous Cup Series starts at ISM Raceway, with his best finish of sixth coming back in 2016. That same year, the No. 88 team won the pole position (Bowman’s first career pole) for the 324-lap event, and Bowman led a total of 194 laps in the race. While running in the second position, Bowman was involved in an incident on the first overtime attempt at the conclusion of the race. He ultimately finished sixth, representing the fourth-best finish of his career.
- Earlier this year, the No. 88 team qualified fourth and finished 13th at the one-mile facility. Bowman has six starts at ISM Raceway in the NASCAR Xfinity Series, with his best finish of eighth coming in 2017.