Hendrick remains calming voice in gut-churning sport

This week brings us a pretty interesting dichotomy, as the Sprint Cup Series heads into its second off weekend of the season, while the Nationwide Series goes south of the border, to Mexico City.

It's a made-up tale of a hungry man: NASCAR team owner and businessman Rick Hendrick.

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Whatever you could you say about the trials and tribulations of each of his NASCAR seasons, you can say this. His stomach certainly seems to be calm, despite his hunger for NASCAR victories.

Hendrick is a guy, who in the face of whatever turmoil an absolutely tumultuous business and sporting life can throw him, always seems to be a pillar of calming strength -- which we know, comes from faith and family.

Now, I know someone once did a movie on people getting shrunk in size and navigating their way through a human's innards; but if it was up to me, I'd steal the idea and shrink me down a nice little sub and do some cruising through the guts of Hendrick.

The neat thing is, at least externally, Hendrick holds that sense of great calm. On the other hand, you'd like to cruise through his guts and see how they're really dealing with team leader Jeff Gordon's up and down fortunes this season.

Gordon's currently out of the 12-man Chase for the Sprint Cup field, though not by much. But conversely, a year ago he was leading the standings at this point in the season and it was he who had won at Phoenix.

In 2008, it took Hendrick's four Sprint Cup teams eight races to win in a league in which they won half of last year's 36 events. Jimmie Johnson, Hendrick's two-time defending champion, has been "off" this season -- but that's only in the estimation of what he's accomplished the last two years.

Johnson is fourth in the standings after his victory last weekend in Phoenix and while nothing is ever a given, seems ready to march to his seventh consecutive top-10 points finish in Cup racing.

Gut checks aside, the aftermath of Johnson's win shows how Hendrick the owner so strongly influences everything about his race teams.

"It feels good, and I think it's a sign of things to come, but we know there's still work to do," Hendrick said earlier this week. "I'm just proud of the way the entire organization has stepped up and made a collective commitment. When you feel like you're a little behind, it's real easy to get down on yourself, but no one had that attitude.

"Everyone approached it in the right way and pushed forward. We've been working hard; testing and doing all the things we need to be doing. One win doesn't change that. The big focus is making the Chase and competing for the championship.

"We want to be in position to make a push in those last 10 races." (Continued)