Rick Hendrick is the most successful team owner in NASCAR history. And it’s not close.
Approaching the search for more success in 2026, Hendrick’s Cup Series drivers have won 320 races. Petty Enterprises, formerly No. 1 but long ago left in the dust by Hendrick, won 268. Hendrick has 15 Cup championships — the last scored in 2025 by Kyle Larson — and 10 Daytona 500 victories, including the past two editions of the “Great American Race” with William Byron.
Lesser known about Hendrick’s four-decade journey through the NASCAR world is that he pulled on a helmet and a driver’s suit and drove in four NASCAR national series events — two Cup and one each in the O’Reilly Auto Parts and Craftsman Truck series. All four races were on road courses — Cup events at Riverside International Raceway in California in 1987 and 1988, an O’Reilly race at Road Atlanta in 1987 and a Truck race at Heartland Park in Topeka, Kansas, in 1995.
Hendrick’s talents are tuned toward running a motorsports organization and selling passenger cars through the Hendrick Automotive Group — tasks at which he is among the country’s best. Driving race cars? He didn’t send anticipatory shivers through the grandstands, but neither was he an also-ran.
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Hendrick’s best performance came in the June 12, 1988 Cup race at Riverside, coincidentally the final Cup event at that historic facility. Hendrick qualified 13th and finished 15th. Most notably, he finished in front of all three of the Hendrick Motorsports regulars. Ken Schrader was 20th, Darrell Waltrip 28th and Geoff Bodine 34th. That day, the boss was the boss.
Ricky Rudd, who two years later would join Hendrick Motorsports, finished third in that Riverside race.
“Rick had a lot of skills,” Rudd said. “I’m convinced that he could have been a top road racer. I don’t think he even tested before going out there for that race. No idea how he prepared for it, but he could wheel a car on a road course.
“One thing about racing on a road course is that you have to be fast enough to not get run over. Road courses can be difficult to survive for an inexperienced driver. They sometimes don’t know how it flows. He did an amazing job. You didn’t necessarily expect that. I always wondered why he didn’t pursue road racing, at least as a hobby. But he understood where his priorities were.”
Hendrick tinkered on cars before he raced one, in fact before he was licensed to drive one. As a 14-year-old growing up in Palmer Springs, Virginia, he rebuilt a 1931 Chevrolet behind his grandfather’s country store. Soon, he and childhood friend Larrie Matthews (later a longtime Hendrick Motorsports employee) were on the road to Person County Drag Strip, south across the North Carolina line. Hendrick climbed in the ’31 Chevy and won the first — and shortest — race of his life.
“He was 14 — still didn’t have a license,” Matthews remembered. “Even back then, he loved cars. Heck, all of us did.”
Hendrick continued to dabble in drag racing before moving on to owning and racing drag boats. Jimmy Wright, one of Hendrick’s boat racers, died in a crash, leading Hendrick to move away from the sport. He needed a place to store his boats and eventually rented space near Charlotte Motor Speedway from NASCAR mechanic/crew chief Harry Hyde. That relationship led Hendrick into NASCAR racing and on a motorized trek that reached heights no other stock-car team owner has seen.
Hendrick started his Cup team in 1984. Three years later, while Tim Richmond, one of his drivers, was battling health issues that eventually led to his death, Hendrick decided to try his hand behind the wheel. At that point, his Cup drivers had won a total of 14 races. The first Hendrick Cup championship — to be won by Jeff Gordon — was still almost a decade away.
Hendrick started sixth in an O’Reilly Auto Parts Series race Aug. 2, 1987 at Road Atlanta and finished 24th after parking because of clutch issues.
That experience led Hendrick to consider Cup Series road racing, and he started the first of two Cup events Nov. 8, 1987 at Riverside. He completed 75 (of 119) laps, finishing 33rd with a sour transmission.
June of the following season found him in the driver’s seat again at Riverside. He entered a Southwest Tour event June 11, 1988 before the Cup event the next day.
“I had that [Southwest Tour] race won with seven laps to go,” Hendrick said. “I had a good lead, and then they threw a caution. Then Ron Hornaday turned me in the corner. I dropped to about 20th and came back to eighth.”
Hornaday, grinning, has a modified version of that day. “I never spun him out,” said Hornaday, a four-time Truck series champion and, like Hendrick, a member of the NASCAR Hall of Fame. “Well, I might have. But he was good. He knew what he was doing.”
The next day, Hendrick outran all of his team drivers to finish 15th in the Cup race at Riverside.
CLASSICS: Watch full-race replays from Riverside
Years later in 2002, Hornaday found himself without a ride and called Hendrick. “He told me to come and see him, so I went over there to that big office,” Hornaday said. “He said, ‘What do you want to do?’ I said, ‘I want to get back into truck racing.’ He picked up the phone and called over and told his guys, ‘Hey, get Ricky’s (Hendrick’s son, Ricky, had raced in the Truck Series the previous season) truck ready. Bring it over and Ron’s going to drive it at Daytona.'”
Hornaday started second at Daytona in the Hendrick truck and finished 12th. If Hendrick remembered the spin at Riverside, he didn’t mark it against Hornaday.
Hendrick’s final ride as a driver came July 29, 1995 in a Truck race at Heartland Park. He started 16th and finished 23rd.
“I love road racing,” Hendrick said. “Those races were a very special time in my career. I had some experience running some SCCA (Sports Car Club of America) road races, and I think road racing is very challenging. Getting on the ovals is a steep learning curve, and I didn’t have any experience there. But I enjoyed the camaraderie with the team guys, and I think all the guys liked seeing me do it.
“I knew I wasn’t that good. I knew I could hire people a lot better than me, but I enjoyed it.”
In August 1991, Hendrick ran in an ARCA race at Heartland Park. Qualifying for that event found Hendrick challenging for the pole despite Darrell Waltrip, Dale Earnhardt and Schrader, then a member of Hendrick’s Cup stable, being in the qualifying session. Schrader won the pole (and the race), but Hendrick qualified a strong third. He finished 23rd in the race after parking with brake problems.
“He was quick enough that he had a shot at the pole,” Schrader said. “He didn’t get the lap he needed, and we did. He would have been a smart, good road racer. He knew what to do, but he had too much other stuff going on. It didn’t make sense.”
In his two Cup races, Hendrick won a total of $3,700.
Owning race cars and selling passenger cars would prove to be better approaches to wealth management for the man who later became a NASCAR icon.
