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Hendrick Motorsports has been under the microscope in the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season, and even more so this week after registering a historically bad race for the Cup Series’ all-time winningest organization.
A greater share of the angst seems to be misplaced, according to Kevin Harvick. As Rick Hendrick is most definitely demanding answers from his own org, Chevrolet needs to be answering as well.
Listening to Hendrick Motorsports president and general manager Jeff Andrews, Harvick broke down the issues facing Chevy teams in 2026. And it started with the introduction of the new 2026 Camaro ZL1 body.
It’s a design problem
“Listening to Jeff Andrews talking about, ‘Hey, when we designed this car, it had more downforce, less drag, which is what we were shooting for,’” said Harvick on his Happy Hour Pod. And then you put it on the racetrack, and you get real-life results.
“Ultimately, that tells you there’s a problem with your tools and what you’re doing with your tools to apply it in the real world and what’s actually happening.
“Hearing him talk about, we need to go to the wind tunnel, because a lot of that stuff is designed in on CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) and then you go to the wind tunnel and it looks good on paper. Then you get on the racetrack, and the drivers and the teams are like, ‘Hey, we can’t get the balance, right?’
“It’s always, whatever the characteristics are of the car, we can’t fix. And so in the end, it’s a design problem.”
New Chevy body, changed rules
The new body of Chevrolet this season features a larger hood power dome, redesigned front grille, and more pronounced rocker panels. These changes that looked ‘great on paper,’ as Harvick put it, were made to optimize downforce and straight-line speed.
It also didn’t help that the NASCAR 2026 rules package has changed on multiple tracks.
“Ultimately, the design of the car doesn’t meet real-life standards of what they need to make this car go around. And the rules got changed. This is the simple diffuser and the low downforce package.
“So the tracks like Vegas and some of these places that have last year’s package, they’ve been better. But when you get into this package and everything that they designed for last year’s diffuser, and everything that went with it from an aero-type situation, now it’s different.
“Everything that they designed that car for was for last year’s diffuser that made a bunch more downforce. And now you don’t have that.
“Everything that you designed to put in the car to make it have more downforce in the front of the car, obviously to make it turn better, just doesn’t work with the balance that you need for the new package.”
With Chase Elliott and Kyle Larson sitting in fifth and sixth in the Chase points standings, the good news is the 2025 package will be in effect in five of the 10 Chase races. The bad news is that so far this season, Toyota has been stronger on tracks using last year’s package.
