MARTINSVILLE, Va. — Rick Hendrick probably knew the answer. That didn’t keep the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series team owner from asking the question.
Standing inside the No. 48 hauler, shoulder to shoulder with team members, Hendrick glanced at driver Jimmie Johnson.
“I’d like to have another clock,” he said matter-of-factly. “Jimmie, how many clocks do you have?”
“Not enough,” came Johnson’s rapid reply.
“That’s the right answer,” chimed in crew chief Chad Knaus.
Officially, Johnson has eight career victories at Martinsville Speedway, where the race winner receives a grandfather clock for his or her efforts.
Driver introductions were less than an hour away, and Sunday’s STP 500 would not start for another 90 minutes or so.
Hendrick, 66, was making the first of several stops on a sunny but cool Sunday morning at Martinsville — which is the site of both some of his greatest highs in racing and his most devastating heartbreak in life. His Hendrick Motorsports organization fields four teams in NASCAR’s premier series. The No. 48 of Johnson, the No. 5 of Kasey Kahne, the No. 24 of Sunoco Rookie of the Year candidate Chase Elliott, and the No. 88 of Dale Earnhardt Jr., the series’ most popular driver.
On race days, Hendrick visits them all. After chatting with Johnson’s group Sunday, Hendrick ducked into the No. 88 hauler, then the 5 and finally the 24. That the HMS transporters are parked next to one another helps expedite the process.
Later, he speaks again briefly with the drivers and others out on the starting grid before the beginning of the race.
“I start at the back of the grid and work my way to the front speaking to the drivers,” Hendrick said of his own personal weekly grid walk. “It makes it hard sometimes when you’ve got one in the back, one in the front, one’s going to the bathroom, things like that. It’s tight between the time they get out of the truck (after driver introductions) and they start the race.”
That’s the case at Martinsville, with Johnson starting uncharacteristically deep (24th) in the 40-car field, and Kahne pitting at the front thanks to a No. 2 qualifying effort.
Slowing the process to a crawl are the fans and fellow competitors with whom Hendrick stops to chat as he makes his way from the frontstretch to the Turn 2 side of the series’ smallest venue.
The founder of a hugely successful NASCAR operation and automotive sales group, Hendrick remains an incredibly humble person. Fans that stop the team owner seeking an autograph get an autograph; those who ask for a photo get their picture taken with the team owner. The only request, coming again and again from those who help ferry their boss from one location to the next is a simple: “Give him room to walk, please.”
After stopping to offer Johnson and Earnhardt, who rolled off 21st, encouragement, Hendrick stops to speak with owner/driver Tony Stewart on pit road. Stewart remains sidelined after a back injury in a non-racing incident before the start of the season. His Stewart-Haas Racing organization purchases engines and much technical information from HMS, though that will change next season when SHR moves to Ford.
SHR driver Kevin Harvick speaks briefly with Hendrick as well, then crew chief Rodney Childers. A few yards farther and it’s Felix Sabates, minority owner of Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates, who steps around the cars on the grid to greet Hendrick.
The team owner is still two teams shy of completing his task by the time the national anthem has ended and the planes in the flyover have flown over, colored smoke trailing from each.
Elliott and Kahne are already behind the wheel, but Hendrick manages to lean in and speak to each before the window nets go up on their respective cars and the command is given to start engines.
Hendrick will often visit each of the four teams’ pit boxes, joining the crew chiefs, car chiefs and engineers for varying periods of time throughout the race. When the green flag finally falls, he’s poised atop the No. 24 box of Elliott, standing in the background and watching the action unfold.
Team owner Rick Hendrick, center, speaks to all of his drivers before a race — Dale Earnhardt Jr. (left) is one of four.
WORDS OF ENCOURAGEMENT
“I just tell them good luck,” Hendrick says of the pre-race conversations with his drivers. He offers words of encouragement to those who might be struggling, as well those who aren’t.
Staying out of trouble, making good adjustments and driving smart can pay off, he tells each one. Do that “and then you’re going to be there,” he says. “We’ve won a lot of races that way.”
Johnson, who has driven exclusively for Hendrick at the Sprint Cup level, calls his boss “a great motivator.”
“He can say a lot in a few words,” the six-time champion said. “Here it would be, ‘You know I won my first race here.’ And just smile at you.
“Yes sir. Message delivered. Let’s go win another.”
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Of course, conversations can sometimes take a delightfully unexpected turn.
“I can think back to my rookie year at Charlotte for qualifying,” Johnson said. “There was some cool car I wanted to buy. He knew that I had ordered it through his dealership; I was going to lease it, and he stuck his head in (the window) just as I was getting ready to roll off for qualifying, and said ‘You know how much I love to win the pole at home,’ and I said ‘I’m sure you do.’
“He goes ‘You won’t have to worry about paying for that car if you win the pole.’ “
Johnson indeed wound up winning the pole for the 2002 Coca-Cola 600. It was his first pole at a non-restrictor plate track. It wasn’t until he was headed home, he said, that he remembered the owner’s comments.
“I was like ‘Damn! I got a car out of this!’ ” Johnson said. “So I call him and go ‘Hey what about that car?’ and he goes ‘No problem. A deal’s a deal.’ “
There have been similar deals, some that paid off and some that didn’t. But the primary message on Sunday for each team was straightforward and simple. “I’m here to support you,” Hendrick said. “Give them that moral support and acknowledge how hard they work.
“It’s easy to be positive when you’re winning every week, but when you’re not, to come back with the right attitude to work together, figure it out and not point blame. We’re a team. Drivers are going to make mistakes, crew chiefs are going to make a bad call, and pit stops are going to be bad. Nobody’s perfect. Just keeping them all motivated. That’s it.”
THE TRIP THAT NEARLY WASN’T
Winning at Martinsville is special for Hendrick. At only .526 miles, it is the smallest venue on the Sprint Cup Series circuit. From an emotional standpoint, it might well be the biggest for him.
As a kid, Hendrick traveled with his father, Joe, from their home in South Hill, Virginia, to watch the races. The younger Hendrick got Richard Petty’s autograph “in Turn 4 down there,” he said. “I don’t remember how old I was.
“I used to pull for Rex White here in the convertible (division).”
Martinsville eventually became the launching pad for Hendrick Motorsports, known as All-Star Racing in 1984 when a former Modified driver from Chemung, New York, named Geoff Bodine put the team in Victory Lane for the very first time.
“Had we not won this race in 1984, I wouldn’t be here today,” the car owner said. “That’s how close it was. We had made the decision to close the shop until we got a sponsor. You know, usually when you do that, you never come back.
“But Harry (Hyde, crew chief) talked me into coming up here and Bodine won the race. The rest is history. We owe the track a lot.”
There have been 22 more wins at Martinsville for the organization since Bodine’s victory.
Most were celebrated. Jimmie Johnson’s win in the Subway 500 on October 24, 2004 was not.
It was Johnson’s first short-track victory.
It was the day Hendrick, feeling under the weather, chose to stay home.
And it was the day a company plane carrying 10 passengers, including son, Ricky, and brother, John Hendrick, president of the company, crashed while attempting to land at Blue Ridge Airport in nearby Stuart, Virginia. There were no survivors.
Saturday, the day before this year’s STP 500, was Ricky Hendrick’s birthday. He would have been 36.
“It was kind of one of those days where — I really thought about this morning just not coming,” said Hendrick, adding that returning to the spring race each year is difficult but that “it’s really hard to come back in the fall.
“Once I’m here with the guys, that’s what those guys would have wanted me to do,” he said. “When you come back and fly in you think about that.”
He returned for the spring race in 2005, and the reception from fans, officials and other competitors “just blew me away,” Hendrick said.
Skipping the fall race, he learned that “sometimes it’s harder not to be here than to be here.
“As tough as it is, at home it’s worse. You’re watching it or maybe you don’t want to watch it. It’s hard to explain,” he said. “But I think I’ve learned that it’s going to be tough because it was so much of a loss that day. But being here is easier than being at home thinking about it.”
‘LET’S GO TO TEXAS’
A constant, cool breeze eventually pushed Hendrick inside one of his team’s haulers for the completion of Sunday’s race. It had been a trying day, and while a glimmer of hope remained in the closing laps, it turned out to be a rare un-Hendrick-like day in the series’ first of two annual stops at Martinsville.
Johnson finished ninth, Earnhardt Jr. 14th, Elliott 20th and Kahne 22nd.
“When you have days like this, I do more trying to console them than anything else,” Hendrick said, removing the radio headset that had kept him in contact with each of his four teams throughout the day.
“I always just try to tell them, ‘Let’s go to Texas.’ “
The teams will gather Tuesday to go over what worked and what didn’t, filing it away for later in the year when the series returns. But the focus will be on the upcoming race this weekend at Texas Motor Speedway.
“We’ve been good on the mile-and-a-half stuff,” he said. “They’ll just have to decipher where they think they were off here.”
The man whose teams have won 11 premier series titles and 242 races — including nearly two dozen here — headed back outside into the fading light and growing shadows.
“This is,” he admitted, “a humbling sport.”
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