Kyle Larson has now gone 39 straight races without a win, dating back to Kansas in May 2025. That’s baseicall, an entire Cup season, and now gone over a full calendar year without a race win. It’s become his longest drought since joining Hendrick Motorsports in 2021.
For the defending Cup champion, who spent the last few years setting the standard at Hendrick Motorsports, it has started to raise bigger questions about where the organization really stands right now.
HMS still has speed. Chase Elliott has already delivered two wins for the team this season. They still put cars near the front regularly. But compared to the dominant version of Hendrick fans got used to seeing, something feels slightly offand former Cup champion Kevin Harvick thinks he knows where the problem starts.
According to Harvick, this is not about horsepower or driver talent. He believes Hendrick keeps getting caught in a difficult balancing act with the Next Gen car, especially when races become long runs and traffic starts affecting airflow.
“If you get that aero balance off and you can’t get the front end to work, then it’s just such a hard balance to figure out in order to get the car to where it needs to go from a handling standpoint to be balanced aero-wise with the front end still where it needs to be mechanically. And they have not consistently figured it out,” Harvick said on the Happy Hour podcast.
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Harvick Points to Hendrick’s Mid-Season Struggles
Kevin Harvick’s bigger point, though, is that Hendrick seems to lose its edge as the season goes deeper.
The organization usually comes out flying early in the year. Fast cars. Pole speed. Wins. But once summer hits and other teams start finding small setup gains week after week, HMS looks less untouchable.
That’s something even Kyle Larson has acknowledged in recent years. During the 2025 season, Larson admitted the summer swing had “been a struggle” for the No.5 team.
That is where Harvick sees the difference between Elliott and the rest of the lineup. Even on bad weekends, Elliott usually finds a way to grind out sixth, seventh, or eighth-place finishes. Larson and William Byron, meanwhile, tend to swing much more dramatically when the balance disappears. If the car is not perfect, the results can suddenly fall apart.
And right now, rival Chevrolet teams are taking advantage of that opening.
Trackhouse Racing has become a weekly threat with Shane van Gisbergen continuing to adapt quickly across different track types. Spire Motorsports has also made massive gains, with Carson Hocevar and Daniel Suárez consistently running near the front and delivering surprise wins.
Part of the frustration may also trace back to Chevrolet’s updated Camaro ZL1 body introduced for 2026.
The package included changes designed to improve front-end downforce and efficiency, including a redesigned grille and more aggressive rocker panels. But Harvick warned earlier in the season that the changes could create a tougher balance window than Chevrolet expected.
Months later, that concern looks real. And if Harvick is right, Hendrick’s biggest issue may simply be that the rest of the garage has gotten better at solving NASCAR’s balance puzzle before they can catch back up.
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