How Hendrick Motorsports is still following, and exceeding, owner's vision, 40 years later

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Rick Hendrick remembers a time when he was in awe of just being around NASCAR’s top drivers.

At one point, the 75-year-old longtime owner of Hendrick Motorsports was the youngest person on pit road, looking up to Richard Petty and the Wood Brothers. He remembers calling his mother after he finished school — a co-op program in Raleigh between NC State and Westinghouse Electric — and telling her he wanted to enter the car business.

“If you love something and pursue it, you’re happy every day, you get up, go to work and be successful, you’ll be happy,” Hendrick recalled his late mother, Mary, telling him. “And being happy is more important. I’ve seen a lot of miserable people who had a lot of money.

“The competition, to me, is growing the company. I love our teammates. I love being involved. I love to see guys like Chad (Knaus) and Jeff Andrews and those guys become leaders. It’s rewarding when you get to be my age and see all the people who have grown up in the company now.”

All four drivers at Hendrick Motorsports, which announced the groundbreaking of the Ten Tenths Motor Club on Thursday at Charlotte Motor Speedway, are sitting above the cutoff line entering Sunday afternoon’s Cup Series playoff elimination race at the Charlotte Roval, after which four drivers will see their championship hopes end before the Round of 8.

It’s been a longtime goal for Hendrick to not just put out four fast cars every week, but to have these competitive teams strengthen each other. While NASCAR is a sport where on-track success is won by individuals, Hendrick realized the importance of bringing in the right people to make one another better.

‘Dream come true for this little boy who used to work on race cars’

Knaus, longtime crew chief of Jimmie Johnson and a new NASCAR Hall of Fame member, grew up attending races at tracks across the Midwest.

His father, John, was racing on short tracks every week, and he quickly became enamored of the sport. It also made Chad realize something. Any sum his father received from winning — and really anything he earned from racing — was going right back into working on the cars.

The “hero status” that Chad felt watching a driver who bears his last name going up against competitors such as Rusty Wallace and Dick Trickle motivated his career.

During the fall of 1992, Knaus was working with driver Stanley Smith, a Chelsea, Ala., native who made 28 starts in the Cup Series. The part-time team of Smith, a dirt-track racer who died at 71 in 2020, was toward the bottom in points heading into a consequential race at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

There was a tense championship battle among Alan Kulwicki, Bill Elliott and Sterling Martin; Richard Petty ran his final race while Jeff Gordon made his debut. Stanley Smith Racing was at the back of the grid, per usual, but so was the transporter belonging to Gordon’s new No. 24 team.

It was the first time that Knaus had even been near a team of Hendrick’s caliber. Everyone wore brand-new uniforms, and the race cars seemed impeccable. Knaus knew that this eye-catching team, with all of its flash and flair, was where he wanted to be.

“If you sit back and realize, the day that I started here, I walked on campus for the first time as an employee,” Knaus said, “I was working in the body shop sweeping the floors, taping off windowsills so that our head body man could paint the cars. That was really all that I did.

“To be in a position with this leadership role, working with Jeff Andrews, Jeff Gordon and Rick Hendrick all the time, it’s really a dream come true for this little boy who used to work on race cars out of his grandma and grandpa’s garage.”

Hendrick’s early vision: Four teams working together as one

The team is as close as it has been to its early vision coming to reality.

Racing is a competitive environment. Even if some drivers share the title of being teammates because their cars were built by the same owner, it’s a sport that has been long known for its format in which only one of nearly 40 competitors can win each week.

Hendrick’s idea has been simple. In a one-on-one basketball game in the driveway against a sibling, all anyone would want to do is win — until, say, two kids from down the street come join; and those siblings may team up to take down their neighbors.

Hendrick encourages a competitive nature among the HMS teams. They’ll race against one another on Sundays, but for each of them to really operate the best they can, their best practices are shared in what they maintain is a particularly uplifting, family-style environment.

“To make it into the Round of 12 with all four cars is a tremendous feat,” Knaus said. “Going into the Roval this weekend, we’ve got an opportunity to transfer again — draw all four of them into the Round of 8 — which would just be a huge accomplishment.

“And I think we can do it.”