From tragedy to triumph, Hendrick marches on

Rick Hendrick plans to be at Martinsville Speedway on Sunday to watch his four Sprint Cup teams race.

No one will blame him, though, if he wakes up that day and decides to stay home.

Saturday marks the five-year anniversary of the darkest day in Hendrick Motorsports history. A plane carrying family, friends and employees crashed into a mountain en route to the Oct. 24, 2004, race at Martinsville, Va., killing all 10 aboard.

There was no victory-lane celebration following Jimmie Johnson's win at Martinsville Speedway on Oct. 24, 2004.
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Lost was Hendrick’s only son Ricky and his brother, John, the president of Hendrick Motorsports. John Hendrick’s twin daughters were also on board, as was engine builder Randy Dorton, HMS general manager Jeff Turner and a sponsor representative from DuPont.

Martinsville Speedway, the special place where, in 1984, Hendrick grabbed his team-saving first victory as a car owner in his debut season, was now tarnished for Hendrick, forever.

“I still have days that I can go to Martinsville for the spring race and I’m fine,” Hendrick said last month. “The fall race, I fly in there and there are times I ask, ‘Why do you keep doing this?’ ”

He does it because quitting was never an option for Hendrick, who functioned in a fog for at least two weeks following the crash, yet still mustered the strength to address the entire HMS organization and vow to continue the relentless push to the top of NASCAR.

“For about two weeks there, I don’t remember things,” Hendrick said. “I remember going to [races] and my whole family went with me. If you talk to Kyle Petty [who lost his son Adam in a wreck at New Hampshire Motor Speedway], you never get over losing a child. You don’t get over losing that many folks at one time, and you feel like they wouldn’t have been there if it weren’t for you. They were with you; they were your responsibility.”

The anguish after the accident is chronicled in the documentary “Together: The Hendrick Motorsports Story,” which will be released on DVD next week. Hendrick has twice screened the movie for industry audiences, including last month’s viewing in Charlotte, N.C., for 1,300 invited guests.

The film started as an archival project meant to document Hendrick’s 25 years in NASCAR. It touches on everything from his humble beginnings to his rise as the patriarch of NASCAR’s most powerful organization. It also includes, with emphasis, the 2004 plane crash. One portion even discusses the company-wide address Hendrick made to his organization days after the tragedy.

“Mr. Hendrick, when he came back here, I don’t really know how he found the strength to come back here,” crew chief Alan Gustafson said in the movie. “In our meeting room, the whole company, he was strong enough to stand up there and motivate us.

“He just said that this is where he wants to be, these are the people he cares about and this is what keeps him going.”

In the film, Hendrick says he wasn’t sure he was emotionally strong enough to deliver the speech that day, but he managed to deliver a message at a time his team needed guidance, when almost everyone was wondering, “What now?”

Hendrick eased the pain of everyone, and his words have stayed with his employees over the past five years.

“He had this message of solidarity and strength and perseverance and hope. It was very special,” said general manager Marshall Carlson, who is married to Hendrick’s daughter.

Since the plane crash in 2004, Rick Hendrick and Jimmie Johnson have won 34 races and three championships together.
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It’s not a stretch to presume a stronger Hendrick Motorsports emerged from the plane crash, even though the loss of such key personnel required a restructuring of management and several significant changes.

But in the five years since the accident, Hendrick has been unstoppable.

Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon rallied in the weeks after the accident, with Johnson winning the very next race at Atlanta and again two weeks later at Darlington. He and Gordon made a final furious push to win Hendrick the first Chase title that season, but ultimately they fell painfully short of 2004 champion Kurt Busch.

The final standings showed Johnson a mere eight points behind Busch, with Gordon just 16 back.

It’s one of the few times Hendrick has fallen short.

Johnson started his tear of three consecutive titles in 2006, and 2007 marked the season when Hendrick drivers won 18 of 36 races. Then 2008 brought Dale Earnhardt Jr., NASCAR’s most popular driver, into the mighty Hendrick lineup.

Now HMS heads back to Martinsville in its usual spot – atop the Sprint Cup points standings.

Hendrick drivers hold down the top three spots in the points – Johnson is first, followed by Mark Martin and Gordon – and it’s not a question of if Hendrick will win this year’s championship, but instead a matter of which driver will give Rick Hendrick his ninth Cup title.

A Hendrick driver will probably win on Sunday, too. Johnson has won five of the last six races at Martinsville, and Gordon is a seven-time winner there. Another victory would make Martinsville – a place that stirs such powerful emotions for the team owner – the winningest-track in Hendrick history.

Rick Hendrick, who’s been to victory lane at Martinsville 18 times, has Sunday’s race on his schedule, and showing up there would again show the steely resolve that’s helped him these past five years.

But if he changes his mind and decides to stay home instead, everyone will understand.