CONCORD, N.C. - For the most part, the Next-Gen car has been kind to Hendrick Motorsports.
The seventh-generation NASCAR Cup Series ride, implemented prior to the 2022 season, has now been in use for three full seasons and though several rule changes, tire tweaks and updates have kept the field on their toes, a fair sample size of data now exists.
Nobody in the sport has been better in terms of wins than Hendrick Motorsports teammates Kyle Larson and William Byron when it comes to the current car. Larson's 13 victories rank first with Byron just behind with 11. The two have combined to lead 5,581 laps with Larson ranking first in the category (3,461) and Byron fourth (2,120).
Larson also leads in top-five finishes (43) and average starting position (ninth). But as successful as he's been in the Gen-7, he admits adapting to it has, and will continue to be, a process.
"I would say in 2022, the first year (with) the Next-Gen car, we were kind of off a little bit then and won one race early in the year, but then it took a long time to win another," Larson said in a recent interview with HendrickMotorsports.com. "But I feel like we learned a lot in that first season and 2023 we were really strong, really fast ... crashed a lot, but ran up front a lot too. So, I feel like in 2024, we cleaned a lot of the mistakes up, a lot less speeding at road. Although I still crash a lot, it was less. We were able to kind of put more the length of a race together than the early portions of a race like we did in 2023 and then, crash."
"So, you always want to clean up, all those areas still. So, next year I would love to crash even less and lead more laps, win more races, win more stages. But I understand that's really tough to do. I felt like we did a great job in the Next-Gen era for this year probably, I haven't looked at stats of other top guys from the years past, but six wins, led a ton of laps, won a ton of stages - I don't know if anybody else had a season like that yet in the Next-Gen era. So, you just want to keep building on that and keep executing."
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Byron believes that even in the fourth year of the Gen-7, things will continue to evolve and not only on the race track.
One of the goals with the car was to create more competitive speeds throughout the field and ultimately, more parity when it comes to race winners. That's certainly panned out, at least to a certain extent, with 27 drivers having visited victory lane over the last three years.
But as the teams have drawn closer in speed, passing has become more difficult, putting premiums on finding advantages elsewhere - primarily in qualifying and on pit road.
"It's interesting because it likes to be driven a certain way and just understanding how it likes to be driven, how to take care of the tires, and then all the little aspects that I feel like are continuing to be opened up or learned like pit road and how fast the pit stops are getting now," Byron said. "The pit stop game is going to be a game of inches over the next couple years because we're getting down to seven-, eight-second pit stops."
Having more of the race determined on pit road isn't necessarily a bad thing for the Hendrick Motorsports camp. Last year, all four teams ranked in the top six in terms of average, four-tire pit stop. That was led by Byron's No. 24 team at 10.79 seconds, good enough for second in the Cup Series. The No. 48 team was third (10.81), the No. 9 team fourth (10.84) and the No. 5 team was sixth (10.91).
| Next-Gen era (2022-present) | Kyle Larson | Chase Elliott | William Byron | Alex Bowman |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starts: | 107 | 101 | 108 | 100 |
| Wins: | 13 | 6 | 11 | 2 |
| Top fives: | 43 | 30 | 33 | 16 |
| Top 10s: | 55 | 54 | 53 | 39 |
| Laps led: | 3,461 | 1,483 | 2,120 | 293 |
| Average start: | 9.0 | 12.9 | 11.0 | 15.0 |
| Average finish: | 13.9 | 12.4 | 13.2 | 16.1 |
But to Byron's point, NASCAR Cup Series teams may be just starting to scratch the surface of what is possible during pit stops with single-lug wheels. Consider that in the first 10 events of 2024, only twice was the fastest pit stop of the race under 9.5 seconds. Meanwhile, over the final 11 races, the fastest stop was under the 9.5-second barrier nine times including two instances of sub-nine-second services.
"Qualifying is going become even more important because pit selection's going to be really, a big factor in how you make time on pit road," Byron explained. "So, I think everything about the car is starting to get more refined, but I look at pit road as a big factor in the next couple years just because we used to have 12-to-14-second pit stops and now we're going to have seven- to eight-second pit stops."
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For both Elliott and Bowman, adjusting to the Next-Gen car was arguably a bit hampered by absences over the past three years. Bowman missed five races in the car's first year, 2022, and three more the following season in 2023. Elliott, meanwhile, was out for seven-consecutive events in 2023.
Both teams, however, were bringing some of their best race cars of the Next-Gen era to the track during the playoff stretch in 2024. Certainly, that momentum has both drivers and squads in good position to start 2025.
"I think my understanding of it is certainly higher than it's been probably been since it was introduced," Elliott said. Does that mean it's perfect? No. Does that mean I know everything about it? No, it definitely doesn't. But I think that as you just keep progressing through these years with this thing and trying to figure out what it likes.
"There was a point in time (in 2024) where I'm like, 'Man, we are so much better than we were.' Even at the beginning of '22 when won a handful of races and had a great stretch, I'm like, 'Man, if we were this good then, you would be just destroying everyone on a weekly basis.' And I think it just goes to show you that everyone is taking those steps as well, and it's about bettering yourself and just continuing to try to push that limit a little bit.
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"But I certainly think we're in a good place with it now. I look forward to going to most all of the styles of tracks just because I think we have a better understanding of what I want and what I need out of the car to go fast at those places. So, hopefully that's accurate, and if it's not, we'll keep trucking."
To Elliott's point, he has six wins in the Next-Gen era but five of those came in 2022. His win at Texas Motor Speedway in April of 2024 ended a personal 42-race winless streak and he was a threat several times in the playoffs, most notably at Homestead-Miami Speedway and Martinsville Speedway, where he led a combined 210 laps.
Bowman ended an even longer skid in 2024, earning his way to victory lane at the Chicago Street Course to end an 80-race drought. He finished ninth in the final standings, his best showing since 2020.
Maybe his late season surge points toward bigger things ahead. Bowman certainly hopes so. But like everyone else, Bowman is still learning the nuances of the Gen-7, even four years in.
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And in many facets.
"Yeah, still adjusting to how much it hurts to crash," Bowman grinned. "But, yeah, I think it's definitely been a learning experience and a learning curve and continues to change, right? We've had a couple different iterations of rules packages. We'll see where that goes in the future. Like we've tweaked things to try to get the racing better at a lot of different styles of race tracks, so, it's just way different than anything we ever had before, but it's pretty normal at this point."