Ricky Stenhouse, Hyak Motorsports 'over-finishing' with more left on the table

Ricky Stenhouse Jr. kind of rejects the notion that he’s ‘having a pretty solid season’ because the results so far have him believing they can be even better.

Stenhouse, crew chief Mike Kelley and the No. 47 Hyak Motorsports are currently 14th in the championship standings through 12 races -- a 12 position improvement from this point last year. They’re also holding down a provisional playoff spot heading into the Coca-Cola 600.

Traditionally, this is the first benchmark race where everyone takes stock into the status of their program. When asked over the weekend if they were overachieving, Stenhouse pushed back with a different interpretation.

“We’re over-finishing if that makes sense,” Stenhouse told The Sporting News. “I guess, you know, we have had speed at times but I just feel like we’ve executed really well this year. We’ve had good cars at various points of the season but even on the days where we’ve struggled, we still find ways to get a good finish.

Stenhouse referenced Kanas, where he felt like they had a strong long run car but a pit road penalty for his crew going over the wall too soon left them two laps down and at risk of finishing outside of the top-30. Instead, they finished 19th and continued to make the most of what they have right now.

“We’re doing a good job grinding out tough days, which does have a lot of value, right?”

Ultimately, Stenhouse is kind of lukewarm about his season because he still feels like they have the potential to be even better if the performance increases to match the execution.

He makes it sound like they’ve left a little bit on the figurative table.

“Yeah, I definitely think we’re still leaving stuff on the table,” Stenhouse said. “Like, at Bristol, we were really fast in practice and qualified second and just missed the balance and that was a bummer. I feel like that is my best track to make something happen.

“So that’s one of my biggest disappointments, finishing 24th or whatever it was, so there is a lot of room for improvement on our end. But at the same time, I am comfortable and super happy with where we are because we’ve stacked up a lot of points and still have some speed to tap into.

The man most responsible for that speed, Kelley, echoed much of what his friend and longtime driver said when asked about it over the weekend. He conceded that they’ve finished better on their worst days but also finished worse on some of the better days.

From that standpoint, the total body of work is probably a wash.

“The biggest thing, I think, point plank on our program is we have to be better on Saturdays,” Kelley said of a 27.3 average starting position. “You’ll hear that from everyone in this garage too because that’s what determines if you’re scoring stage points or not.

“We've scored more stage points this year than we have in any year to this point but there are other guys that are already into the hundreds and that’s what makes the biggest difference come September.”

Both Stenhouse and Kelley said this weekend at Charlotte Motor Speedway will play a significant factor towards their playoff ambitions due to the extra stage associated with the longest race of the year. This means one more chance to score anywhere from 10-1 championship points and three chances to score a playoff point too.

A bad race, or an early DNF, would be catastrophic should other teams around the bubble execute and maximize their point totals. They both pointed towards AJ Allmendinger who fell from 14th to 25th due to two consecutive races that they weren’t around by the end.

“I think we’ve learned some things about where we struggled on short runs at Kansas,” Stenhouse said. “I think we’re going to rectify that and the timing is good because there’s a lot of points on the line at Charlotte.

“It’s a good time to get our cars better and keep executing the way we are. I am happy about where we are in points because if we can just get a little bit more speed, and get our average finish up to about 15th, there is a lot of potential still on the table.”

They’re currently sitting at 17.3.

Credit to Stenhouse for executing at a level that runs opposite to his longstanding reputation, too. It’s no secret that the two-time Xfinity Series champion has historically been hard on his equipment, dating back to his formative years at Roush Fenway Racing.

But ever since winning the 2023 Daytona 500, a victory that also automatically clenched a playoff berth that season, Stenhouse has transformed his overall body of work into one of the more consistently efficient contenders.

Kelley, who has worked with Stenhouse since their joint tenure at Roush, says he is very proud but also offered a caveat behind some of those roughest campaigns.

“We also had a stretch in Xfinity to where we led the series in non-DNFs and races finished,” Kelley said. “It’s when he came over to the Cup Series and tried to carry a car, that’s when he would run into trouble.

“We would give him a 20th place car and he would try to finish 10th with it. I still feel very strongly that a lot of the wrecks he’s been involved with were not of his making but the facts are the facts, and in 2022, he only finished like 81 percent of the laps, the fewest for a full-time driver ever.

“So when I agreed to come over and do this in 2023, I circled that and told him we needed to fix this.”

Kelley said Stenhouse winning the Daytona 500 ‘took a lot of pressure off his shoulders’ and allowed him to race at a level where they would have made the playoff on points, even if they hadn’t won The Great American Race. That’s something that just doesn’t get talked about enough.

“But I was even more proud of him last year because we wrecked at Daytona and I told my wife that I was worried this was going to upset the apple cart,” Kelley said. “I was worried that he would feel that pressure again, and put himself in some bad situations, and some of the DNFs we had last year were not our fault; they just weren’t.

“Like, if we can just keep finishing these races with the pace we have, we’ll be even better. Here we are, 14th in points, and we don’t have a 14th place average race car. We don’t try to kid ‘em but we finish 17th here on out, that is what it is too.

“Right now, we’re (close to the) top-10 in average finishing position and that’s a testament to what Ricky is doing behind the wheel. Our road guys are doing a great job. Nothing is falling off the car and we’ve finished all but two laps this year.”

Kelley also says his single-car operation has all the resources he needs from team owners Gordon Smith, Brad Daugherty, Mark Hughes and Ernie Cope.

From the outside looking in, it’s easy to paint Hyak Motorsports as overachievers in that their consistency comes a year removed from losing Tad and Jodi Geschickter from the ownership group and their Kroger partnership too.

“Right now, if Chevrolet told me they were going to release to us every bit of information they have, I don’t think that would make us any better,” Kelley said. “Like, if we had to carry that weight, we have 30 people and they (pointing towards Hendrick Motorsports) have 300, we would just go slower trying to process that data.

“So we get to pick and choose to a degree what information we want, and do it in a way that doesn’t overload the people we have with information we don’t need right now. I think that’s how we keep taking little steps.”

Kelley says he has more engineers with him at Hyak than he did in some seasons at Roush. The team has its CNC machine, their own Optical Scanning Station and every realistic resource Kelley has asked from company leadership.

And yes, he believes in their driver, like he has for over a decade too.

“So yeah, we’re not where we would need to be to win a championship yet,” Kelley said. “But I feel like if we get into the playoffs and take what we learned in 2023, having experienced that, we will be better prepared for it this year.

 “We just got to get there, and hopefully find a little more speed over the next six to eight weeks, and continue to make gains. We’ve got Mexico circled on the calendar and we know what we’re always capable of at Atlanta and Daytona. Iowa is good for Ricky and we’ve got a lot of races that we are capable of capitalizing on.”

Stenhouse says he’s never been more comfortable in his role and place in the sport and that the performance is starting to show that too.

“I’ve been doing this for a ling time now and I’m just really comfortable with this group of guys,” Stenhouse said. “Gordon has provided us everything we need, with Ernie and these guys just trusting me to do what I do behind the wheel.

“I’m not trying to do more than what the car is capable of and we’re getting finishes we probably didn’t deserve. Grinding like this isn’t always fun but it’s what we need as a race team. I’m more comfortable driving that way now than I was in the past and hopefully we can all keep up and keep making gains as a team.”