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Hendrick Motorsports: Data sharing with Stewart-Haas stopped before season

Stewart-Haas Racing has led nearly 2,000 more laps than Hendrick Motorsports since the start of 2014. (Getty)
Stewart-Haas Racing has led nearly 2,000 more laps than Hendrick Motorsports since the start of 2014. (Getty)

KANSAS CITY, Kan. — Stewart-Haas Racing has been competing in 2016 without any data sharing from Hendrick Motorsports.

Stewart-Haas and Hendrick have had a technical alliance since Stewart-Haas Racing was Haas CNC Racing. The alliance is officially ending at the conclusion of the season when SHR moves from Chevrolet to Ford. Though the relationship between the two changed significantly at the start of 2016 when SHR said it was making the manufacturer switch.

“The relationship from a data standpoint was a two-way relationship,” Hendrick Motorsports general manager Doug Duchardt told a small group of reporters Friday afternoon. “They received our information, we received their information. That is the way it had worked from the time I have been at Hendrick Motorsports … We received information from Stewart-Haas when we worked with them. Obviously, when they made their announcement to Ford that changed things.”

Earlier Friday, Jimmie Johnson said Stewart-Haas had access to Hendrick Motorsports’ data but that HMS didn’t have access to data from SHR, prompting Duchardt’s comments on the relationship between the two four-car teams.

SHR, which fields cars for Kurt Busch, Kevin Harvick, Danica Patrick and Tony Stewart, announced in February that it was moving to Ford in 2017 and would build its own chassis. Duchardt said the teams stopped sharing information between each other before the 2016 Daytona 500, but that Hendrick still builds engines and chassis for Stewart-Haas.

“From a technical relationship standpoint the information got cut off, but we build their engines, we build their chassis’ to their specifications,” Duchardt said. “They get certain chassis components from us that we have supplied over the years rear-end housing, lower control arms, truck arms things like that. They continue to receive those to their specifications from our shop.”

While Hendrick is has already lost the data from Stewart-Haas and is losing the revenue from the relationship after the end of the season, it still has a technical alliance with Chip Ganassi Racing. And Johnson said he felt HMS would look “really hard” before potentially filling the void left by Stewart-Haas.

SHR has 16 wins and 7,143 laps led since Harvick joined the team in 2014. Hendrick has 25 wins and 5,207 laps led in that same timeframe.

“If [team owner Rick Hendrick] can raise the money to not have that relationship, I think for us, selfishly it is better not to. We would always like to have some people running our engines and trying to do durability stuff on new motors that are coming out. I would imagine having a couple of cars out there we will always have that, but a team at that high of caliber again, I believe we would look really hard before we made that decision again.”

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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!