None of the Hendrick Motorsports cars make it out to qualify for the Auto Club 400

Starting every car toward the back in California wasn’t how Hendrick Motorsports wanted to try to shake off its early season doldrums.

It isn’t uncommon to see a couple of cars fail to make it through technical inspection and fail to even make a qualifying lap at Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series races these days. It’s much less common to see every car in a multi-car team not get out on the track, but that’s exactly what happened today to Hendrick Motorsports in Auto Club 400 qualifying at Fontana.

To be fair, Jimmie Johnson, Chase Elliott, Alex Bowman and William Byron were far from alone. More than a dozen cars failed to make it through inspection, including cars from Joe Gibbs Racing and Stewart-Haas Racing. But only Hendrick had the dubious honor of fielding four cars and failing to get any of them a shot at the pole.

Fox Sports talked to Hendrick Motorsports vice president of competition Jeff Andrews after Round 1 of qualifying, and he suggested that the issues making it through technical inspection were similar on all four cars. He pointed to the rear deck lid as the sticking point without elaborating in greater detail.

Because of the lack of qualifying times, Johnson, Elliott and their teammates will line up for the Auto Club 400 on Sunday based on where they stand in owners points relative to everyone else who is in the same boat. Those spots will be pretty bad, as Bowman is the highest of the bunch and will start 28th, while Johnson will have to start 33rd.

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It’s a depressing turn of events for Johnson, especially, who would no doubt love to start turning things around in his home state. He still might be able to do it, as might the rest of the Hendrick bunch, but they’re going to have to pass a lot of cars to have any chance at the Auto Club 400 checkered flag.