Where is ... G. Bodine? (cont'd)

Bodine won the first race of his career at Martinsville in 1984, in just his eighth race with Hendrick and Hyde. It was the first victory for the team then known as All-Star Racing and now, of course, as Hendrick Motorsports. Both Bodine and Hendrick were on their way.

"I feel a part of all Rick's successes and Hendrick Motorsports' successes," Bodine said. "I helped get him started, that's for sure. I was his first driver. Harry Hyde and myself, I guess we put him on the map. He was just a car dealer that got involved in NASCAR, and Harry and I went out and won our eighth race together. That got it all started for Hendrick Motorsports."

Geoffrey Bodine, circa 1999

Enduring Performance

Geoffrey Bodine won the 1996 Bud at The Glen for his lone Cup victory in his native New York and the last of his career.

• Complete story, click here

At first, in the years with Stewart, Bodine was essentially an oddity, a driver who'd grown up somewhere other than the South. Then, when he started winning -- he would win Martinsville and two other races that first year with Hendrick -- there appeared to be a distinct change in the reception he got both from fans and inside the garage.

There were chants of "Yankee, go home!" during driver introductions. It probably didn't exactly help matters that Bodine wasn't one to back down from a challenge.

"From the competitors, [acceptance] was kinda mixed," Bodine said. "As long as you're not competitive and don't beat drivers, they love you. But as soon as you start racing with them and winning some races, they change their attitudes about you. You go through that in your career. Early on, everybody really liked me being around. Then, when we started winning races, it was like, 'Man, I wish he wasn't here.'"

Stories of Bodine's clashes with Dale Earnhardt have become legendary. The two men were seen as diametrically opposite as they could've possibly been, Earnhardt the good ol' country boy who made good as opposed to ... well ... as opposed to a damn Yankee. If that sounds harsh, it was a different time and a different place in NASCAR.

Bodine says that all of his on-track encounters were "special," but the one he most remembers was a weekend at Charlotte in which they locked bumpers during both the Busch and Cup events. The smash-'em-ups cost both drivers summonses from none other than Bill France Jr., a not-so-polite invitation to Daytona for a confab that eventually became a scene in Days of Thunder.

"We ended up getting our butts chewed out by Bill France," Bodine said. "He told us he didn't want to see either one of us do that any more. He said he ran the show and we were gonna do it his way. That was pretty humbling for both of us.

"The rest of that year, there were no confrontations. Dale quit running into people. That was his M.O., the bump and run. He started it. He didn't do that the rest of the year. He didn't do it to me, because we were told not to. He didn't mess with me, and I didn't mess with him."

There was in Earnhardt a prankster's side. According to Bodine, he was the first driver to stay in a motorcoach at the track, and Earnhardt teased him unmercifully about it before, of course, getting his own coach. And then there was the time ...

"All the confrontations we had never slowed him up as far as his joking," Bodine continued. "He'd come up behind you and pinch you. He was a pretty strong guy, and he'd grab me around the neck and choke me. He was always trying to aggravate me, and he did a pretty good job of it. I'm not a big guy, so he could handle me pretty good."

Another time, in the late '80s, Bodine and Earnhardt were running a Late Model event in Louisville, Ky. What took place would turn out to be "probably the funniest thing he ever did to me, and actually the meanest, the one that made me the maddest off the track."

What happened?

"We were out on a balcony, and he got some handcuffs off a guard," began Bodine. You know what's coming next, right?

"He came over to me and slapped the handcuffs on me and locked me to the railing," Bodine continued. "That started a war that night. ... I'm a little claustrophobic, so I didn't like being handcuffed and not being able to get away. It was pretty embarrassing, because everybody was there watching. Everyone thought it was pretty funny except me.

"It seemed like forever, but it was probably only 10 minutes. I told him, 'You get the keys and you get me out of these things right now.' He delayed it and stalled, but I said, 'I'm tellin' ya ... you'd better get me out of here. He finally unlocked the cuffs." (Continued)