Martinsville where it began 25 years ago for Hendrick

MARTINSVILLE, Va. -- When you think about Martinsville Speedway you ultimately think of the Hendrick Motorsports domination shared among its drivers Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson.

So it's hard to believe 25 years ago, team owner Rick Hendrick was ready to call it quits before a race weekend at the short track in Southern Virginia.

"A couple weeks before, we were going to have to shut the team down because we had no sponsor," Hendrick said. "You know, I told Harry [Hyde], we absolutely were going to quit two races before that."

Rick Hendrick and Jeff Gordon celebrate another clock win in 2003.

Multimedia

• Garage Pass: 25 years
• Sound Off: Jimmie and Jeff
• The Martinsville clock

Fortunately, hope prevailed over reason. The following race weekend in Martinsville, Geoffrey Bodine went on to win the 1984 spring race in the No. 5 giving Hendrick his first Cup Series win.

The win was enough to garner enough additional sponsorship money to race the remainder of the year.

Prior to the win, the team only had an associate sponsor on the car, All-Star Racing and City Chevrolet, Hendrick's dealership in Charlotte, N.C. He was running the team from his own pocket and needed a race win to gain a sponsor.

"So if we had not won that race 25 years ago, Hendrick Motorsports probably would not be here today," Hendrick said. "It means a lot because it was Martinsville, and it's close to home ... so it's got a lot of memories and in some ways, it feels like it was yesterday, and then you look back at all of the drivers and the people that have been involved, and it feels like it was a long time ago."

This weekend marks the 25th anniversary of that first win for Hendrick Motorsports and since the team's inception, Hendrick drivers have won eight Cup championships and the organization has a total of 175 series wins.

What started as a five-employee, 5,000-square-foot rented work space has evolved into a 500-employee organization on a sprawling 100-acre campus.

But as a dealership owner, Hendrick recalled few people paying attention to him when he entered the sport.

"Harry wanted an opportunity. He told me if he could build a car, he could win a race and I was naïve enough to believe him," Hendrick said. "I got to Daytona and looked out there with Junior Johnson and the Wood Brothers and all of those guys, and I thought, man, what am I doing here?"

Soon enough, Hendrick would prove his talents as a team owner.

"But nobody felt like they wouldn't make it through the year, and after we won the first race and went on to win a couple of more ... we [Bodine] won three that year and some poles and finished pretty decent in the points. All of a sudden, that's when people started looking at us, about the second or third year," he said.

Hendrick said his fortune came from the individuals surrounding him.

"I was just very fortunate ... starting out with five people and renting rear ends and transmissions from Harry Hyde and putting Chrysler stuff in a Chevrolet. You know, Harry working for $500 a week, and having the talent that Bodine had that wanted the opportunity so bad, you just could not do that today. You could not find a guy with Harry Hyde's talent sitting on the sidelines," Hendrick said. "You wouldn't find a guy like Geoff Bodine sitting there eager to drive a car, and you could probably not find a guy as dumb as I am to try to do it with no money."

But who he did find was Jeff Gordon, Sunday's pole-sitter who has won seven times at Martinsville, the most of any active driver.

"We've been looking forward to this one for a long time," Gordon said of Sunday's race. "It's always been a great track for us and I feel that as strong as the team is this year and as well as things are going that we're probably even more anxious to get here and probably even more excited than usual," Gordon said.

Winning at the anniversary track and breaking Gordon's 46-winless streak would be a hallmark moment for the Hendrick organization.

That and they could always use some more grandfather clocks.

"There's no other trophy like it," Gordon said. "They're the hardest trophy to get back to the shop, for sure, and to duplicate. They're spread all over the place ... between Rick Hendrick, myself, Ray Evernham, Steve Letarte, Robbie Loomis, and Brian Whitesell, they're all over the place."