Hendrick Motorsports nears its seventh Cup crown

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — With a garbage bag to protect him in case it started raining, Rick Hendrick once rode 350 miles in the back of a pickup truck from his Virginia farm to a race in Trenton, N.J.

“I was a kid with a rag in my pocket who did what I was told,” he said. “We slept six to a hotel room and I was just happy to be there. Back then, you raced because you loved it.

“People act like we’re some big car dealer who just happened to go racing. But I don’t think anybody was any poorer in racing than we were.”

As Hendrick Motorsports closes in on its seventh Cup championship — four-time champion Jeff Gordon and defending champion Jimmie Johnson are locked in a tight battle with two races to go — the owner who built the powerful organization can’t help but remember his early days in NASCAR.

There were challenges in building a team from the ground up, and the little known fact that Hendrick nearly shut it all down less than two months into his first season.

Hendrick provided a tour this week of the tiny shop where All-Star Racing was formed in 1984. He bought the 5,000-square foot building, with its wood-paneled walls and just enough room for his eight original employees, from legendary crew chief Harry Hyde.

Hyde lived in a single-wide trailer under a tree right outside the shop, earning $500 a week to direct a five-man crew. Engine builder Randy Dorton worked out of a back corner, relying on two employees to build the motors.

Hendrick had grown up around racing, building cars with his father and the locals of Palmer Springs, Va. His mother didn’t want him racing them, though, so he instead migrated to boat racing, where he won three national titles and set a world record at 222.2 mph.

But cars were his first love, and in 1976 he bought a struggling Chevrolet dealership in Bennetsville, S.C. General Motors had promised that if he could turn it around, they’d reward him with another dealership, and when Hendrick delivered he took charge of City Chevrolet in Charlotte.

It moved him into the hub of NASCAR, and when presented an opportunity to field a team for Richard Petty with STP as the sponsor, Hendrick couldn’t race into the sport fast enough.

“I’d come up and visit with Harry in that trailer, and it’s almost like he was hypnotizing you with the stories he told,” Hendrick remembered. “And he always said ‘If I just had one more chance, I could do it with the right driver.”’

So the two moved ahead, planning to go to the 1984 Daytona 500 with Petty behind the wheel.

Only the deal fell apart and Petty never signed with All-Star Racing. Hendrick had no driver, no sponsor and not much time to put together a new deal.

He first offered the ride to Tim Richmond, who said he needed time to think about it. Hendrick was waiting for a decision when Geoff Bodine stopped by the dealership and said he wanted the job.

The car still didn’t have a sponsor, and Hendrick had to fund it himself.

The team made it to Daytona, finished eighth and added top-10 finishes in the next two events. But money was running tight, and Hendrick didn’t think he’d make it past the fifth race of the year. He told Hyde he thought they’d have to close the team down.

Hendrick pushed on, allowing Northwestern Security Life to put its logos on the car for free the next week in Martinsville. Then Bodine went out and won the race, and as company executives celebrated in Victory Lane, the insurer signed on for the rest of the season — saving the team that has won 217 NASCAR races and 10 championships in three different series.