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A NASCAR BLOG BY Art Weinstein

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Pats are NFL’s Hendrick Motorsports

Jan 5

Today, the National Football League begins its version of NASCAR’s Chase For The Sprint Cup. Like many other sports leagues, the NFL, oddly enough, calls their postseason action “playoffs.”

Playing the role of juggernaut Hendrick Motorsports in the NFL playoffs are the New England Patriots, who posted the first undefeated regular season since 1972. Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson and the rest of the Hendrick crew didn’t win every race, but their season was in some ways even more historic. With 18 wins in 36 races, four drivers collecting a race victory and a 1-2 finish in points, Hendrick Motorsports had the best season in NASCAR since Richard Petty and his family-run operation’s heyday in the late 1960s.

As other NFL teams look for a way to stop the Patriots’ march toward a perfect season, NASCAR teams will be looking to do the same with Hendrick Motorsports, as preseason testing nears in Daytona Beach. Good luck with that.

There was a time, as recently as a few years ago, when NASCAR would change rules, in midseason if necessary, to reduce a team’s competitive advantage. There’d often be more than one rule change to help level the competition. Yet NASCAR’s new common template car, which will be used for the first time in all 36 races this year, was designed in part to prevent one manufacturer, or team, from finding a big advantage.

How to stop the Hendrick armada, then? Eventually, the rest of the field will catch up. Will it happen this year? Probably not, but who knows. It was just two years ago, after team owner Jack Roush put all five of his cars in the previous Chase, that people were asking these same questions about his team.

Hendrick Motorsports has reached this pinnacle of the sport thanks to several factors: It has gifted drivers, innovative crew chiefs, hard work, and all the funding to help put it all together. Given all that, plus the addition this year of the sport’s most popular driver in Dale Earnhardt Jr., here’s a scary thought – Hendrick could be even better this year.