Stenhouse riding the single-car team rollercoaster in NASCAR’s Cup Series

Last Sunday afternoon’s Iowa Corn 350 at Iowa Speedway, Ricky Stenhouse guided the No. 47 HYAK Motorsports Chevrolet to a 33rd place finish. In the past, Iowa has been a solid and consistent circuit for the 37 year-old; Stenhouse placing no worse than fifth in his last five starts there. Hoping for a positive outcome in Sunday’s Cup race, Stenhouse and the singe car Hyak effort instead struggled all afternoon and ended up three laps down.

“We are a one car team and it can be tough,” said Stenhouse, who is currently 26th in the points. “It was tough at Iowa. We actually stayed overnight there. We finished fifth there last year, so when you come back and you’ve got expectations to run like you did last year and then that doesn’t happen, it’s frustrating.

“I talked to my crew chief Mike Kelley and the guys and they are waiting for the car to get back to the shop and see if they can do a deep dive into why we struggled. They’re at the shop this week and working hard and trying to figure those things out.”

After an excellent sixth place finish at Atlanta Motor Speedway back on June 28, Stenhouse and HYAK Motorsports seemingly lost form, placing well outside the top 20 in their last five Cup starts. Stenhouse insists that the team and everyone on it has kept their chins up in the air.

“It’s a David vs. Goliath battle out there for us,” he said. “One thing is that we can go to bed at night knowing that we are executing and we’re not making mistakes on the racetrack and we’re not making mistakes in the pits. We’ve just got to get our car faster. That’s trial and error right now. Actually, some of the better races we’ve had lately are the road courses. At Sonoma we were in the top 10 with 10 laps to go and got crashed. At Chicago we were in the top 10 with 10 to go and got crashed. I’m looking forward to going to Watkins Glen this weekend. Normally, I’d be more excited about going to a place like Iowa versus Watkins Glen, but right now I’m looking forward to the road courses a little bit more. It kind of comes and goes with what racetracks that you’re rolling at and right now, the circle tracks are where we are struggling at, unfortunately.

“If you look at the last, really, two years, I think the execution has been what has held us back a bit. Whether it be race calls, pit stops, mistakes by me on the race track… Things like that are what has killed our consistency over the last two years, I feel like.

“This year, I feel like we are still executing at a high level like we did at the beginning of the season. Granted, at the beginning of the season we got better finishes out of it, but as of late the thing that is kind of holding us back is just the speed in our car. We’re struggling with that. Man, I’d give our execution and game planning, I’d put it at an A or A+ for what we are doing week-in and week-out. If we can keep that consistent and bring the level of our car up, that’s when the finishes will start piling up on the good end.”