CONCORD, N.C. - When it comes to winning a NASCAR Cup Series championship, nothing comes easy.
While the playoff format and schedule may come under fire from time to time, there's no doubt that the 10-race march to a title goes through venues of varying sizes, shapes and styles. In other words, to emerge from the pack of 16 playoff competitors, one must be a master of all disciplines.
And yet, every driver, every team has strengths, weaknesses and areas of focus. For Hendrick Motorsports, that attention has largely been placed on tracks of a mile or less in length and with little-to-no banking in the corners.
Just like this Sunday's host track: New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
For Kyle Larson, William Byron and Chase Elliott, all of whom advanced through the Round of 16 this past weekend at Bristol Motor Speedway, gains on that type of track are vital. Not only will Sunday's race set the tone for the three-race round in which eight drivers emerge, but the postseason is peppered with them. A race at Martinsville Speedway still looms in the Round of 8 and, of course, the Championship Race will be held at Phoenix Raceway one more time before moving to Homestead-Miami Speedway next year.
Fortunately, the Hendrick Motorsports camp believes its making serious inroads.
"I think we've gotten our package better on that style of track, for sure," Larson told HendrickMotorsports.com prior to the start of the playoffs. "I wouldn't say that we're as dominant or as good as we want to be, but I do believe that we're better than we were.
"Hopefully, keep fine tuning it and we'll get even better."
There's plenty of recent evidence to support Larson's belief.
Byron led 141 laps in winning at Iowa Speedway, a 0.875-mile relatively flat oval in early August. Two weeks later, Hendrick Motorsports teammate Alex Bowman likely had the best car down the stretch at Richmond Raceway, a 0.75-mile, D-shaped oval. Bowman ran out of laps while tracking down eventual-winner Austin Dillon, finishing second. Larson rallied from a 30th-starting spot to come home sixth.
Then, just two weeks ago at WWT Raceway, a 1.25-mile, egg-shaped oval with very flat corners, all three remaining Hendrick Motorsports playoff contenders finished in the top 12 highlighted by Elliott, who turned in a career-track-best, third-place showing. Larson led 52 laps in the early going and had one of the day's best cars until a caution during a green-flag pit cycle mixed the field up.
"We've been building a notebook for those tracks, and I feel like those tracks are making more sense than they used to, and that's a really good sign for us," Byron said. "The notebook is starting to click a little bit more, which is really nice to see.
"I feel like we're starting to correlate some stuff and hopefully that is the next step in having more pace on those tracks. I think every one of them is a learning experience. We've just got to take it like that and just keep applying those lessons."
There's some more good news for the Hendrick Motorsports trio ahead of this Sunday as well.
First, both Larson and Elliott have rock solid career numbers at the Magic Mile. In the last three years, no active driver with more than one start has a better average finish than Larson's mark of seventh. Elliott is fourth on that list at 10.7. Over the course of their careers, Larson is third among active drivers with more than one start at 11.2 with Elliott eighth at 14.7. Larson has six top fives and eight top 10s in 14 career starts at New Hampshire.
All three are also on the right side of the cutline after the points reset for the Round of 12. Byron and Larson are tied for second in the standings, 24 points to the good. Elliott is currently seventh with a five-point buffer.
And no matter what happens at New Hampshire on Sunday or at any track moving forward, all three drivers - now with a combined 26 full-time seasons of experience prior to this year and 22 playoff appearances - have an abundance of experience to draw from.
In fact, all three agreed, the hurdles overcome by each of their respective teams only bolster their chances of seeing the 2025 playoff chase through to the end.
"I think there's a lot of resilience in the team," Elliott said, echoing sentiments from Byron and Larson. "I think there's a lot of strength and a lot of depth and I think there's a lot of experience too. I think there's a lot of good things that we have going but the experience within our team I think is probably as good as anyone's. So, I think that is a great thing to have and fall back on and to know the different situations that we've been in and understand how to fix it or what it's like to be in those spots."