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NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
DILLNER: Hendrick Charity Ball
The power that Hendrick Motorsports exudes at some of the upcoming venues is incredible...
Bob Dillner  |  Posted October 01, 2009   Charlotte, NC
Bob Dillner is a reporter for NASCAR Victory Lane, NASCAR Live! and The SPEED Report on SPEED. (Photo: SPEED)
You all are cordially invited to the Hendrick Charity Ball to be held on a weekly basis for the next eight weeks.

Nope, this is not another fundraiser, at least not in that sense of the word. The Hendrick Charity Ball refers to the nickname folks in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series garage have given the butt-whipping Hendrick Motorsports is putting on the rest of the field, certainly expected to continue in the coming weeks.

Following the Dover race on Sunday, I walked up to one of the Chase team pit crews who had faltered a bit that day and asked them what went wrong. They replied, “Nothing really but we just don’t have a Hendrick Motorsports car. We can’t beat them.”

This team’s resignation to finishing anywhere but first (or even second) pretty much represents the current consensus in the garage area. The crew member even joked that this weekend’s race at Kansas Speedway will be another Hendrick charity event because other teams simply cannot compete with their equipment. That got me thinking about the tracks on the horizon and how relevant and realistic his statement really was.

The power that Hendrick exudes at some of the upcoming venues is incredible. Jimmie Johnson is the defending winner at this weekend’s race at Kansas and Jeff Gordon has always run well there. Points leader Mark Martin is a former winner.

Auto Club Speedway is an engine track and Hendrick probably has the strongest motor program in the garage, but his engines not only are powerful but durable as well. Johnson also has fared well at Fontana. Then we’ve got Lowe’s Motor Speedway – the “House that Jimmie Built.” At Martinsville, you can pretty much take Gordon or Johnson to the bank for the win.

Hendrick is always strong at the circuit’s largest track and if there is one place in the Chase that other teams can hope for a window of opportunity, it would be Talladega because of its unpredictable restrictor-plate accidents. If Hendrick Motorsports is to endure any semblance of difficulty with any Chase track, it would be at Talladega but not of their own doing.

Need I go on?

At this point, Hendrick teams are just dotting the “I”s and crossing the “T”s compared to the rest of the competition. Based on past performance, Roush Fenway Racing should have stomped the field at Dover but instead they might have vanquished their chances at a championship with Carl Edwards and Greg Biffle with Sunday’s run.


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