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This weekend’s NASCAR Cup Sequence race at Martinsville Speedway marks 40 years for the reason that mighty Hendrick Motorsports celebrated its first win on the Virginia brief monitor. Again then, they had been All-Star Racing, and the rocky begin to the group foreshadowed a potential fast demise… Then got here the miracle at Martinsville. Mike Hembree penned this charming story for the most recent (Apr/Might 2024) challenge of Classic Motorsport.
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Among the many many beneficiaries of Geoffrey Bodine’s first NASCAR Cup Sequence win in April 1984 was a small comfort retailer in Greensboro, North Carolina. The shop didn’t have an look scheduled for Bodine, and sponsorship was not concerned. No, this was all about rest room paper…
It’s an odd form of story – clearly – however it’s one which in the end led to the survival and development of what grew to become the very best group in NASCAR historical past, Hendrick Motorsports.
The beginning of the group, says proprietor Rick Hendrick, “was not rational, was not sensible.” However nobody can deny it was fruitful.
In 1983, Hendrick owned a number of automotive dealerships, the primary constructing blocks of what would turn out to be an automotive empire. An vehicle and high-speed junkie, he’d grown up engaged on hotrods, and that keenness would leak into drag-boat racing, And so, within the early Nineteen Eighties, Hendrick began a drag-boat racing group. That effort resulted in tragedy in 1982 when Jimmy Wright, a good friend and pilot of one of many group’s drag boats, died in a crash in competitors. Quickly after, Hendrick shuttered the operation.
A 12 months later, Hendrick mentioned a possibility to leap into Cup racing with nation music celebrity Kenny Rogers and C.Okay. Spurlock, a Nashville businessman and music promoter and proprietor of Gambler Chassis, a builder of dash vehicles.
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These talks reached a degree that resulted within the curiosity of Richard Petty, NASCAR’s all-time victory king. Petty was on the lookout for a brand new experience and nearly signed on with Hendrick and firm earlier than becoming a member of California businessman Mike Curb. Petty drove on to attain his 199th and 2 hundredth Cup wins. Rogers and Spurlock quickly disappeared from the racing panorama, however Hendrick held on to his dream of competing within the massive time.
Regardless of early success in promoting vehicles, Hendrick was not flush with cash, however discovered sufficient to kickstart a group with veteran mechanic Harry Hyde and Bodine, a profitable Modified driver and a terror on brief tracks within the Northeast.
But as they arrived in Daytona Seashore, Fla., in February 1984 to start this new journey, Hendrick watched his checking account dwindle. Main league auto racing demanded the funding of cubic {dollars}.
Bodine completed a shocking eighth within the season-opening Daytona 500 and adopted that with ninth at Richmond and sixth at Rockingham, placing some money into All-Star Racing, the group title Hendrick had chosen again when it appeared “stars” could be on board…
Nonetheless, no sponsor had signed on to gas the operation. He was renting transmissions and gears and a store, had solely two racecars, and remained within the sport largely due to the keenness of Hyde, who was working for $500 per week, and Bodine, who, at 34, wished a severe likelihood to show himself at NASCAR’s high degree. Finishes over the subsequent 4 weeks weren’t promising, and the group hit a low at Darlington Raceway in April when Bodine was concerned in a crash that left him thirty fifth. The group limped house with broken fenders and crushed goals.
For Hendrick, this might have been the day the racing died. However Hyde – the prototype for Harry Hogge, the grizzled crew chief performed by Robert Duvall within the film “Days of Thunder” – urged Hendrick to ship his group to 1 extra race. He knew the game’s ins and outs and revered Bodine’s monitor document at Martinsville, subsequent cease on the schedule.
“He’s good there,” Hyde advised Hendrick. “We’ve received automotive and engine. Let’s go.” Hendrick agreed, holding his breath. There was no Plan B.
The Sovran Financial institution 500 proved to be the race that saved Hendrick. Counting on years of expertise at one in all NASCAR’s shortest tracks, Bodine certified the All-Star Racing Chevrolet Monte Carlo in sixth place on the Virginia half-miler and was within the lead pack or inside putting distance nearly all afternoon, first hitting the entrance simply earlier than half-distance.
However brakes are all the time a key to sturdy runs at Martinsville’s paperclip of a monitor, and Bodine, making his 69th Cup begin, pampered his till the ultimate 100 laps of 500.
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With 49 to go, Bodine, working second, went across the outdoors of Bobby Allison, who’d led 266 laps, and hit the entrance for good. He gained by six seconds over Ron Bouchard, with Darrell Waltrip third and Allison fourth.
On a traditional Sunday, Bodine would have pushed to victory lane for a joyous celebration along with his group proprietor. However Hendrick was an hour away in Greensboro, North Carolina, the place he and his spouse, Linda, had attended a worship service. They received the information when Hendrick stopped at a pay cellphone to name his mom, Mary, to investigate about Bodine’s run.
“Rick referred to as his mom, and she or he advised him the automotive blew up,” Linda says. “Then she mentioned, ‘I’m joking. You gained!’ We couldn’t consider it. We had been ecstatic. It was a day that was larger than life. There have been numerous feelings. Grateful. Grateful. Simply couldn’t consider it.”
All-Star Racing’s outstanding one-car group gained in solely its eighth begin in Cup. Nowadays, Hendrick employs some 500 folks and runs 4 vehicles.
There they had been, on the aspect of the highway with nobody to share the enjoyment of the second. Then Hendrick had an thought. Bodine lived close to Greensboro. Whereas he and the group had been celebrating in Martinsville, the Hendricks stopped at a comfort retailer, purchased many of the retailer’s provide of bathroom paper and drove to Bodine’s house, the place they expertly rolled the garden and home. It was an expense they now may afford. Hendrick’s gamble – and it actually was a big gamble on that Sunday at Martinsville – had paid off handsomely.
Forty years later, Hendrick Motorsports’ Cup Sequence victory complete has handed 300, he owns 14 Cup championships, and his racing operation is revered internationally.
Hendrick mentioned he jumped into Cup Sequence racing with about $200,000 to spend. As Bodine and Hyde raced by a tough spring that first season, the {dollars} fell away like leaves within the wind. Staying within the hunt was irrational, admitted Hendrick, a person not accustomed to dangerous strikes.
“There wasn’t something rational about it,” he says with 40 years of hindsight. “A part of it was that I used to be so pumped up about being in NASCAR and possibly being concerned with Rogers and Spurlock and with Richard Petty as a driver. When all that fell aside, we nonetheless had the vehicles. I used to be nonetheless desirous to do it and hoping we may discover a sponsor.
“It was pure love of vehicles. I didn’t have the cash to do it. You wouldn’t consider how low-cost we did that, renting transmissions, renting the store, renting the gear.
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“Then it didn’t go properly. I advised Harry that I used to be in jeopardy of placing my [automobile] firm in a bind. I couldn’t threat what I had constructed. But it surely was exhausting since you don’t need to fail. At that time in my life, I hadn’t had a disappointment the place I needed to say I failed.”
In order that they raced on, unloading at Martinsville with a shiny pink and white No. 5 Chevrolet, the abilities of Bodine and the race smarts of Hyde, who had traveled these tough roads earlier than. Northwestern Safety Life insurance coverage offered a lifeline with sponsorship for the race and, after the win, kicked in $450,000 to hold the group ahead.
“I used to be throwing deep, however it all labored out,” Hendrick mentioned. “I by no means thought I’d win a race. I went to Daytona and appeared round and noticed Junior Johnson and Richard Petty and people guys and puzzled why I used to be even there.”
Bodine would go on to win two extra Cup races that season – at Nashville and on the Riverside highway course – and completed the season a completely respectable ninth in factors. The group had run all 30 races, and now the Hendrick operation had stability.
Bodine and Hyde had successfully opened the Hendrick doorways for the likes of Jeff Gordon, Chad Knaus, Jimmie Johnson, Ray Evernham, Terry Labonte, Darrell Waltrip, Kyle Larson, Tim Richmond, Chase Elliott and all of the success that might comply with.
In 1995, Gordon gave Hendrick his first Cup Sequence championship. As soon as ravenous for help, Hendrick ultimately attracted a number of the largest sponsors within the historical past of NASCAR and constructed a racing campus close to Charlotte Motor Speedway that now employs greater than 500 folks.
“We thought Martinsville could be our final race,” Linda Hendrick confirms. “We had been having to give you the cash to race out of our pockets. The race earlier than that we had been at a stopping level. We mentioned, ‘OK, another race.’ That [win] saved us going. Sponsors wished to come back on board and be part of it.
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“That first race at Daytona, Rick and Harry had been doing it for enjoyable. There was no grand design to have a racing group. They simply wished to place a automotive on the monitor at Daytona and run it. Then one race led to a different.
“It has been numerous work and sacrifice.”
Lengthy retired, Bodine enjoys reminding Hendrick that he “saved” the group with the win at Martinsville. Throughout a February press convention saying plans for the fortieth anniversary celebration this season, Bodine repeated the road that he was nonetheless ready for his “massive verify” for the function he performed. Gordon, now the group’s vice chairman, was prepared, pulling $40 from his pocket. “One for every year since then,” he mentioned, smiling. Bodine accepted, shoving the money in his pocket earlier than Gordon may change his thoughts.
On that Sunday night time in Martinsville, hours after the victory celebration had ended, Bodine and several other members of the family toasted the day with a dinner at Clarence’s Steak Home, a Martinsville space establishment. Along with bolstering Hendrick’s fledgling group, Bodine’s win was his first in Cup, too.
“To save lots of Hendrick Motorsports was a bonus,” says Bodine who ultimately retired with 18 wins. “We knew it was essential for that purpose. However, hey, it was additionally the primary Cup win for a punk child from Chemung, New York. And it couldn’t occur at a greater place since I had run so properly at Martinsville in Modifieds.”
Bodine was additionally answerable for Hendrick Motorsports’ first Daytona 500 victory in 1986. And a few 38 years later, Hendrick scored a 1-2 within the 2024 season-opener due to William Byron and Alex Bowman, thereby tying Petty Enterprises on 9 victories in NASCAR’s marquee race.
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