Alex Bowman and Chase Elliott both gave Hendrick Motorsports solid finishes in Monday’s STP 500 at Martinsville Speedway.
It marked the first time this season HMS was able to put two drivers inside the top-10 thanks to Bowman in seventh and Elliott ninth.
“Yeah, I mean… it’s frustrating to say we are looking for a seventh, but much better than we have been the last couple of weeks and just happy for all my guys,” Bowman said after climbing out of his Camaro ZL1. “They have worked really hard all off season and all year. We haven’t had the results we wanted, so to come here and finish stronger is definitely a step in the right direction. We’ve got a long way to go, but we are headed the right way.”
The change from the SS to Camaro model has proven to be somewhat of a struggle for the Chevy stable this year. Bowman and Elliott along with AJ Allmendinger did give the manufacturer three finishes in the top 10, a sign of perhaps better things to come.
“I don’t know if it was one thing,” Bowman said when asked if his team had found something that was missing this weekend in Martinsville. “I felt like I had some good observations after second practice on somethings I wanted to change and they seemed to pay off big during the race. Or at least be the right direction during the race.
“Greg (Ives, crew chief) just made really good adjustments. Every stop we got better, we had solid pit stops all day, the pit crew worked really hard, just good decisions on top of the box and a good racecar.”
Elliott was pleased with his effort but certainly not satisfied.
“I thought our last run was way better than what we had had before that,” he said. “But, we were just way too far off there for the majority of the day to expect that you are going to catch up by the end. We have some work to do.”
