RICK HENDRICK (Car owner Hendrick Motorsports Monte Carlos)
NOTE: Hendrick, the 51-year-old founder and CEO of Hendrick Motorsports,
talks about his three-car operation, plans for a fourth Winston Cup team in
2002 and his 20-year-old son Ricky Hendrick.
"Tony Furr (crew chief No. 25 Michael Holigan.com Monte Carlo with driver
Jerry Nadeau) is good. He's got a good team, they're hungry and they're
working together. He's using all the resources, Jerry Nadeau can drive a race
car. You talk to somebody and you watch 'em and you can just see it in his
eyes. I met him when he was doing roofing. He wasn't even driving a car. Ken
Howes was real high on him and Ray Evernham was high on him. As Tony says, he
wants a gaser. He got him a gaser. He's been smart. He's been fast, but he's
been smart. It's our fault we've had some mechanical problems with him, but
he's a neat guy and he's a racer. I enjoy being around them.
"I can't tell the difference between Jerry and Jeff Gordon on the
telephone. I can talk to both of them and I can't tell them apart. They wear
about the same size clothes, but Jerry has to ride on the airplane with me.
He hasn't got his own airplane yet, but it won't be long.
"That team has been snakebitten for a long time. When Ken Schrader was
driving the car we'd have a half a lap lead over here with 50 laps to go and
the drive shaft came out of the car. We were down in Darlington leading the
race and it broke the back out of the block, stuff that never happens. You
begin to think you're just jinxed. We had engine failure a couple of times
this year here and Atlanta. He was flying at Watkins Glen and we lost a
transmission. It's fun when you've got a guy and every track you go to you're
looking forward to it. As Tony says, he ain't got any bad tracks. He's fun to
be around, and I think he's going to be awful tough here in every race. I
look for him to win a lot of races. He's qualifying every lap. I looked at
the monitor up there at Watkins Glen, and he was a second faster than anybody
else. You didn't see anybody drive from the back to the front like that. When
he lost third gear, he ran a lap about even with the leaders with third gear
out of the car. He's a good little road racer, and he's got all the
confidence in the world that he can do it. He's a real competitive little
guy. I didn't know how competitive he was, but he's fiery, and I like that.
"Jerry and Jeff like the same feel. They like exactly what the other
likes. When you've got two guys whose driving styles are pretty close and
they like each other and communicate... Nadeau says he's not going to help
Jeff Sunday. He said he did his duty last night.
"Jeff has always been pretty confident, and I don't think he thinks he's
got anything to prove. Jerry respects Jeff a lot. I think Jerry was impressed
in the beginning that Jeff would come over and ask him what he was doing and
how it was working, but they seem to get along real good. If they start
having to race each other for a win, you'll probably see me have another kind
of problem, but we'll deal with that when the time comes.
"Robbie (24 crew chief Loomis) and Jeff are really coming. It started
back before Indy. You could just see it getting there. Then we had those
wrecks. We were running third at Michigan and wrecked. August was not a good
month. You could just see it. It's the same with Jerry. Someone spins him
with eight laps to go at Loudon, but as long as you can see the guys up front
challenging, you're OK. When you're back there struggling and you can't get
to the front, you can't be a factor and you've got to wait for somebody else
to have a problem to finish up there or whatever, that's not fun.
"I can almost handle the problems when we're running strong because we
can go to work and fix that. I feel so good. We've had some down time. I've
never been as low as I was at Vegas. I've never carried that many cars
anywhere and looked like that. We were terrible in the Busch race. We were
terrible in the Cup race. We came home and I got all the crew chiefs with me
on the plane and told them we had to do something. I knew we were better than
that, and we just had to start working together. I look back at some of the
real tough times when you're struggling. You think that's just going to build
character. We've been 15 races between Jeff and Terry and Jeff win 13 on his
own or seven or 10 or whatever and four championships in a row. You feel like
it's supposed to happen. Then somebody saws your legs off at just about the
kneecaps and you're thinking what's going to happen next. I'm having to
apologize for how bad we are. People start saying you're mediocre at best or
you're in a slump. You know you're better than that, but that chemistry deal
is so critical. You can have all the stuff there, but if the chemistry ain't
clicking, you're not going to do it. I was here yesterday and I looked in
Jeff Gordon's eyes and I knew there was going to be a lap laid down here last
night. He was on a mission. He was feeling good about it, but when those two
cars unloaded, they were good and they were fast. We're real excited about
the future.
"At a time in Jeff's life when he was real young and Ray (Evernham) had
the experience and Ray was a good coach and they had a bond and it was real
good. Would it always remain that good? I don't know. Will there ever be a
relationship like that again between Jeff and a crew chief? I don't think so.
Jeff has matured. He's different now. He wants to play a different role. Jeff
and Robbie get along real good. Tony and Jerry get along real good, but Tony
and Jerry have had to go out behind the truck a couple of times. Tony is a
junkyard dog. I call him Smiley because every time you look at him he just
busts out grinning. He's a neat guy. He's a racer. He's a down home, get down
to it, race whatever it takes kind of guy. He's a racer. That's all he cares
about. When he's got one weekend off a year, he wants to take Ricky to Las
Vegas to race Winston West or whatever. I'm very thankful we've got Tony.
He's a good man.
"If we intentionally did something and we were caught cheating, then it
would have bothered Jeff Gordon. He don't want to do that to win, and neither
do I. We felt like we were dead 100 percent in the right. Jeff thought we'd
get it reversed. When you look at the facts, you can't see where you did
anything. I don't know what I would have done different had it happened
again. I think the fact that we felt so positive about we were right and dead
right that it kind of rolled off Jeff. It bothers you. You can't wake up
Sunday morning after going through the high of winning a race and see
something that we had an unapproved manifold. That takes all the fun out of
it. We had meetings with our people and talked about what we were going to do.
"Momentum is a great thing. Jeff Gordon is a scrapper. He just kind of
bows up at adversity and takes it on his shoulder and takes it to the next
level. I'm real proud of the guys, especially Jeff, of saying 'we've got a
job to do, let's go show 'em.' I think that's what was so good about last
night. He's just got his act together. I don't know how to say it any other
way."
"Terry Labonte got hurt. We lost some momentum because Gary (crew chief
DeHart) came back this year and is building all new cars. He's tweaking them.
I think maybe they're 60 or 90 days behind the other two teams just because
they haven't had a chance to test. They've gone to two or three tests and it
rained them out. We've had freak things happen like when Terry would qualify
the motor would blow up. We don't usually do that. It's just been strange.
Terry had two concussions and a broken leg. Him getting back in the car and
feeling 100 percent meant a lot, and I think he's there now. We get in the
race and we're OK, but we're starting too far back, so we've got to work on
qualifying, but it's coming. He's going through some of the same stuff the
other two went through earlier in the year, but I'm confident we're going to
get it. We're working hard. That's all we can do, just keep on digging.
"Ricky has really done well. I've been scared to death to run him at a
mile and a half track. He's been after me all year to let him do it. I didn't
think I'd let him run the ARCA race, but he did that and finished fifth. He's
had four top 10s in the truck and a top five in the Busch Series at
Nashville. We didn't even have a team Christmas. Bringing it all under Dennis
Conner has helped us a lot. Ricky has matured a lot. I look back at the first
of this year, and I just can't believe some of the things he has
accomplished. That qualifying run today in the Busch Series was real good.
I'm the worst owner-father in this garage area. There's nobody as bad as I am.
"I can't be anything. I have to get back and let the rest of them do it.
It's like, 'OK, you've run enough, don't run anymore. That track's too fast,
we don't want to go there. If you've got a vibration, stop.' I'm just nervous
about it and I can't help it. I treat him like a son sometimes. I don't treat
him like a driver. You need to do this or you need to do that, and you
wouldn't treat a driver that way. He'd tell you to go to hell, but Ricky
can't tell me that. Ricky is 20, so I'm going to be traveling and racing for
a long time to come. I thought maybe I'd retire one day before long. He's
having a great time and the guys really like him. He's having fun with the
team. I thought it was pretty neat. Jeff and Jerry were over in the truck
talking to him before he went out to qualify today. Jeff comes out on pit
road. He gets more excited when he qualifies third than he did when he won
the pole. It's real neat. I want him to be careful. I told them these guys
would respect him if he showed them respect, and he hasn't leaned on anybody.
Nobody has complained about him in any series. If he's a lap down, he's not
going to race the leaders. We tried to teach him that you kind of get a
reputation when you start. If you make a mistake you'll never overcome it. It
could take you years and years. It feels good when drivers come over and say
he's using his head and ran a smart race. He didn't race me when he was a lap
down. He's a good boy, but I ain't doing too good with it.
"We'll have a fourth Cup team with Jimmie Johnson in 2002. I'm crazy, I
know it. We were building a new building for the 24. We were going to try to
run a young guy and an older guy together, kind of a one team, two-car
concept. We felt like that would be good for the young guy. I knew Jimmie
Johnson from years ago with Chevrolet. I put him in a Late Model car way back
and I rode in one of the off road trucks with his team way back. He and my
son have been friends. He flies home with us after Busch races. Jeff like him
a lot. The chemistry between him and Jeff was good. He's got a lot of talent.
I've know him for a long time. I think he's going to be a superstar. He's got
the whole package. He's smart, handles himself well with the media. He's a
racer. He's worked hard. He knows the cars. I'm looking forward to it.
Hopefully we can get some good races in with him next year and then we can
roll him out 2002 and be ready to go.
"I worry about running our guys in the ground because of their family
life. We try to work around that and give them time off. We're going to have
to recruit and find young guys who can keep up with the schedule and blend
them in and train them as we go. We'll have to use our truck teams and Busch
teams to grow folks. This schedule is almost impossible. I don't know how a
man could keep up with it year after year. I know it's hard on me just flying
in.
"I'm doing good. I feel better than I've felt in four years. I'm about
eight months off the treatments now. I've got to remember I'm three years
older, too. I'm trying to get back in shape. I'm feeling better every day,
and my checkups are great. I hope by the end of the year I'll be back to full
speed. You don't put your body to sleep for three years and on chemo and all
that stuff and just bounce right back as soon as you get off. It's been a
struggle. It really has because my mind will take me places my body won't go.
I get up and I've got all these things I want to do. I give out, and I've
just got to stop. I try to limit myself, but I'm not doing a good job of
that. Then I'll just have to sleep for a day. I pay for it. For every day I
over do it, it takes two days to pay for it. You think I'd be smarter than
that, but I'm trying.
"I hope they turn the odometer back and I've got a ways to go yet. I'll
tell you what. One thing I have learned, you get up every day and thank the
Good Lord you're here and you've got a chance to do it again."
