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There's no 'I' in team AJ Allmendinger discusses the teamwork aspect of modern-day racingHello everyone! Thanks for joining me again on my blog. This time I thought I'd write about an issue that probably all of the teams are spending time thinking about. I know the #22 Shell-Pennzoil Dodge team and I have been thinking a lot about it. 
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Never before has Sprint Cup racing been such a total team sport. ... you have to be ready from the time you unload at the race track. The work by the pit crews on pit road has never been more important than now.”
-- AJ ALLMENDINGER
The way the season has sort of unfolded has given us a lot more long green-flag runs. For example, at the Texas Motor Speedway race in April we went green for 230 laps straight before first the first caution. At Darlington last week, we ran 175 laps before first yellow came out. The Richmond and Kansas races also had long green-flag runs. Never before has Sprint Cup racing been such a total team sport. Everyone has to be on top of their game, and you have to be ready from the time you unload at the race track. The work by the pit crews on pit road has never been more important than now. These long green runs have really made the car setup that much more critical because you don't have those caution periods to make adjustments and improve you race car. This is more important from the drop of the first green flag all the way through the race. If you are off at the beginning of the race -- and it doesn't even have to be a lot off -- you go down a lap to the leader really quickly. And then the long green runs also make it more challenging to make back up that lap, as well as improve your car. Take Darlington for example: Jimmie Johnson lapped the field all the way up to the 14th position before a yellow came out. This has created a race within the race. It's always been an interesting aspect to watch how the lucky dog position unfolds. At Darlington, we were in a position to get the lucky dog on three different occasions and never had the caution come out when we needed it. At one time during the race, there were seven cars racing to get up into the lucky dog spot. We never got the lucky dog and had to take the wave-around, running on 20-lap tires, in order to get back on the lead lap before we had the run-in at the end. This has also made the pit crew more important as well. They are going to need to train harder and better (and they already DO train hard!) because they have to do more green-flag pit stops. My guys have been awesome on pit road, especially during the last few races. We've gained spots on just about every stop. When we didn't gain spots, we at least held our own. Put all of these factors together, and it changes not only some of the decisions you may make about car setup to start a race, but it really makes us change our plan for the overall weekend. How you divide up your practice session time and that plan are things we are all re-evaluating. I think it's pretty interesting some of these shifts in dynamics and some of the challenges it has laid out for us. So, that is what I've been thinking about lately -- how I can contribute the best in my role as driver. Like I said, I don't think there's ever been a time where Cup Series racing has been more of a total team sport. Now, back in with those Penske engineers and Todd... Behind the Wheel with AJ Allmendinger runs once a month on NASCAR.COM as he shares his experiences throughout the season, both at and away from the track. The opinions expressed are solely those of Allmendinger.
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Here Come the Aussies...The Commodore V-8
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Edelbrock Releases 2012 Russell Performance Plumbing Catalog   TORRANCE, CA (May 17, 2012) - Russell Performance, a division of Edelbrock LLC, which offers a complete line of Advanced Fluid
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Inside a helmet, everything can seem different Often there are two sides to the drivers: the competitor and the real personCONCORD, N.C. -- Preparing for a group interview session at the race track with Tony Stewart can be like girding for battle. You wear your thickest skin, arm yourself with your most original questions, brace for the possibility of verbal shrapnel. And when the glare from his unseen eyes penetrates even through those dark wraparound sunglasses, you'd better be ready to duck and move.
Some guys are better at masking that and saying the politically correct answer that doesn't get them in trouble, and others give you the answer that you all love that gets us in trouble.”
-- TONY STEWART
Then there are days like Tuesday, when Stewart was at the Boys and Girls Club of Cabarrus County to help hand out provisions to needy families whose vehicles wrapped all the way around the parking lot. On hand to announce the charity associated with the Prelude to the Dream, his June 6 dirt late model race at Eldora Speedway in Ohio -- which this year will benefit Feed the Children -- Stewart was thoughtful and engaging and funny, as he so often is when he's not around a race car. He even said "bless you" after a reporter sneezed. Later, he rescued three kittens that were stuck in a tree. OK, maybe it was only two kittens. Still, as is the case with many drivers, the individual in the golf shirt seems quite different from the one who's wearing a firesuit on the weekends. Darrell Waltrip thinks he knows why. "It's the helmet," he said. They put that thing on, the Hall of Famer said, and they become a different person. Intensity levels spike. Adrenaline courses. Pressure builds. Focus narrows to the car and the race track, and getting the most out of one on the other. Distractions, like a mandatory media session at the back of the transporter, can become unwelcome. The world shrinks to only whatever is seen beyond the windshield. And disappointment can manifest itself in fury -- as was the case Saturday night at Darlington Raceway, when Kurt Busch responded to a late spin by peeling through an adjacent pit box and making contact with Ryan Newman's car on pit road following the event, actions that earned him a $50,000 fine from NASCAR. "Some of these guys, all these guys, are the nicest guys. You take the Busch boys, away from the track ... they're nice guys. They're engaging, they're fun. But when they get to that race track and they put that helmet on -- what did the guy say the other night? They turn into the Hulk," said Waltrip, who will be part of the team broadcasting the Prelude to the Dream on HBO pay-per-view. "There's so much pressure, and you just give it your all. You put everything you've got into a race. It's just like Kurt did Saturday night. He drove a great race, and spun out. It absolutely will make you go insane, because you've driven your butt off. He drove on Friday night, came back and drove on Saturday night. You've driven your butt off, you've done a pretty good job, and then something happens late in the race. And it will, it will make you go crazy. And not just Kurt, I'm saying anybody. I've been there, I know. You want to hit something. You want to hit somebody. And you don't mean to hurt anybody or take it out on any particular person, it's just that adrenaline, that emotion, and that disappointment. It's hard to control." That much was on display after the Darlington race, in not only Busch's actions but a crew dustup on pit road that followed the event. The result was more fines, including $5,000 to Newman's gas man, Andy Reuger, who stormed toward the No. 51 car early in the fracas. A member of Busch's team, Craig Strickler, was fined the same amount. Waltrip isn't surprised crew members got involved. "Drivers never fight. They just woof," the three-time Cup Series champion said. "... Crew members fight. And I can think back to the '89 all-star race, if you want to see crews fighting. And if you think back to some Richmond races where crews were involved. Crew [members] are guys who have a lot at stake, too. They work on the cars, they build the cars, they have an emotional connection just like the driver does. And when they see something happen to their car, they take it personally. And when you take it personally, you react that way." Waltrip knows from experience. He said he's had a few crew chiefs in his day who didn't mind mixing it up. "[Jeff] Hammond and them like to fight," he said, referring to his current broadcast partner at Fox Sports. "Barry Dodson and his bunch, they like to fight. Ol' Todd Parrott and his bunch, he's just like his dad, Buddy. Buddy Parrott and David Ifft, they used to look for fights. And if they couldn't find one, they'd just fight amongst themselves." Drivers don't usually take it that far, as the slap-fest between Jeff Burton and Jeff Gordon two years ago at Texas will attest. Although his at-track media sessions can occasionally be testy and his tolerance for things beyond the race car can sometimes be limited, Stewart has mellowed considerably from the younger, more temperamental driver who once seemed to be in trouble every other week. He's a car owner now, with sponsor obligations to live up to, and a lot more at stake. Even so, reputations stick. All it takes is one harsh comment to bring it all rushing back, something he knows as well as anyone else.
"It's hard to shake that label, I guess,"
Stewart said. "You can work hard to do the right things and say the
right things, but you do onething and everybody says you're going right
back to it. I don't think that anyone's done truly anything that's been
-- you look at what happens in football games and basketball games and
watch these guys, what happens with us gets blown out of proportion, I
think. I guess it's a compliment to us as drivers that the little things
get made out to be such a big deal."
Even so, the differences can be striking. Stewart is very much a salt-of-the-earth Midwesterner who lives in the house in Columbus, Ind., that he grew up in, who has adopted all kinds of exotic animals and donated them to zoos, who can be such a softie around furry critters that visiting animal shelters can he hard for him. He's been known to derail his schedule to stay longer with kids at charitable events. After last season's banquet, the reigning Sprint Cup champion threw a party and invited almost everyone in the industry. He clearly bleeds over the Prelude, paying thousands out of his own pocket to reimburse late model car owners for any vehicles damaged in an event that will feature a number of top NASCAR drivers once again this year. In conjunction with the announcement of Feed the Children as the Prelude's designated charity, he spent part of Tuesday loading boxes of provisions into the backs of cars. In a few days at Charlotte Motor Speedway, though, a similar gathering could take on a very different tone. Inside that competitive bubble, so much can change. It's the helmet, at work once again. "Right now what we're doing here, you want to help," Stewart said. "When we get to the race track, you want to win a race. You're competitive, your adrenaline is going. You're not always thinking of the right thing to say. You guys [in the media] know as well as anybody, you want to get that raw emotion when we get out of the car. But raw emotion doesn't always equate to the smartest thing to say or the politically correct thing to say. But it is the honest emotion at the time. Some guys are better at masking that and saying the politically correct answer that doesn't get them in trouble, and others give you the answer that you all love that gets us in trouble." Waltrip, long known for his outspoken ways, has been there, too. The helmet comes off, the firesuit gets unzipped, and the world begins to spin at a slower rate. "I tell people all the time -- the guy that you pull for, the guy you like, is the guy you hear on that radio," he said. "That's the guy you like. And most of them get out of the car and put their helmet up, and that's a different guy that gets out of the car."
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Big Car Show This Weekend...Benefitting CAMP COURAGEOUS! Cruisin'Cruisin’ |
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SAVE THE DATE FOR THE 2012 AULT PARK CONCOURS D’ ELEGANCE; DISCOUNTED TICKETS NOW AVAILABLE ONLINE CINCINNATI,
OH –May
16, 2012— The Ault Park Concours d’Elegance, an annual classic car show in its 35th year, will be held on Sunday, June 10, 2012, 10am – 4pm, at Cincinnati’s historic Ault Park. The featured marque, A Century of American Power, represents an exceptional display of classic high-powered American automobiles, as a tribute to the performance leaders through the decades. Special displays of historic dragsters, vintage wooden boats and a celebration of Morris Garage, MG, will also be featured. The Ault Park Concours includes thirteen other classes of classic, vintage and exotic automobiles and motorcycles. Leading up to Sunday’s Concours, weekend events include: Cruisin’ for a Cure Dinner & Live Auction – Friday, June 8 – 7pm at the Club East Lounge, Paul Brown Stadium. Countryside Tour –Saturday, June 9 – 12 noon Garage Party – Saturday, June 9 – 5pm at Porsche of the Village. Individual event tickets & discount packages are now available at http://www.ohioconcours.com/ through May 31, at 5pm. Cruisin’ for a Cure Dinner & Live Auction tickets are $125 per person. Countryside Tour tickets are $35 per car. Garage Party tickets are $85 per person. Sunday-only pre-show individual tickets are $20 or 4 for $60 through May 9 at 5pm; day of show individual tickets are $25 each, student ticket $15 (with student ID). Children 12 and under are free. For more information about the weekend events, go to Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/aultparkconcours. Also follow us on twitter @ohioconcours. Proceeds of all events benefit Juvenile Arthritis. Additionally, less than 130 raffle tickets at $ 100 each remain to win an exclusive opportunity to view Jay Leno’s Garage in Los Angeles. The Ultimate L.A. Car Experience package includes the following for four people: a private behind-the-scenes tour of Jay Leno’s Big Dog Garage; exclusive admission to The Nethercutt Museum and Collection which houses over 250 domestic and European rare automobiles and access to the museum’s restoration shop that has produced multiple Pebble Beach Concours winning automobiles; a behind the scenes tour of The Petersen Automotive Museum, featuring over 150 rare and classic cars, trucks and motorcycles; and a private tour of the new Mullin Automotive Museum, which celebrates the art deco movement and specializes in spectacular French automobiles. Included with the winning ticket is a $ 3,000 travel allowance for airfare and hotel accommodations arranged through AAA Cincinnati. Raffle tickets for the Ultimate L.A. Car Experience package are on sale now at http://www.ohioconcours.com/ or can be purchased by calling 513-321-1951. The winning ticket will be drawn at the Ault Park Concours awards ceremony, Sunday, June 10, 2012; winner need not be present to win.
About The Ault Park Concours d’ EleganceThe Ault Park Concours d’Elegance is one of the most anticipated classic car show events in the United States. The Cincinnati Concours d’Elegance Foundation, a 501(c)3 organization manages the event with all proceeds benefiting The Arthritis Foundation, with a special focus on Juvenile Arthritis (JA). To find out more about The Ault Park Concours d’ Elegance, or to order tickets call 513-321-1951 or visit http://www.ohioconcours.com. For more information about The Arthritis Foundation, go to http://www.arthritis.org/.
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Hendrick's big night another trying one for Gordon No. 24 bitten by bad luck again at Darlington, blowing out tire twice in poor finish
By David Caraviello, NASCAR.COM
May 13, 2012 2:08 AM, EDT DARLINGTON, S.C. -- It was a rare moment of relative quiet at Darlington Raceway, with the track under caution and the field coasting at pace-car speed along the backstretch. Amid the long shadows cast by the infield lights, the No. 24 car backed out of its garage stall and rumbled toward the race track. As the vehicle rolled back onto the racing surface, an ovation welled up from the crowd, the cheers plainly audible even above the chatter of the facility's public-address system. It was not the kind of cheering Jeff Gordon is accustomed to hearing at Darlington, a place where he has more victories than any driver still gripping a steering wheel. He won here five years ago despite an overheating engine, a geyser of steam spouting from under his hood as he coasted into Victory Lane. He won here in 2002 to claim a record-tying fifth Southern 500 crown. He won here in 1997, putting a mean block on Jeff Burton to claim a $1 million bonus offered by the series sponsor. He won three in a row here from 1995-96, something only one other driver -- Dale Earnhardt -- has ever done. 
“
This is not even about tonight, in my opinion. This is an accumulation of everything that's been going on with these performances and finishes this year. It's almost comical. ... [I am] baffled by it.”
-- JEFF GORDON
As much as anywhere else, old and cantankerous Darlington can claim to be where the Jeff Gordon legacy was cemented -- a difficult and unforgiving place where this one-time wunderkind earned his position among the best to ever pilot a stock car. Gordon has heard plenty of cheers at Darlington over the course of his illustrious career. But not the kind born out of sympathy. Yet that's what rained down on him Saturday night, as he drove out of the garage area 28 laps down after a long but ultimately futile search to find out what cut down a pair of left-rear tires on the black and red Chevrolet. All the struggles Gordon has experienced during this disastrous season were cast in stark relief, not only in a place that's historically been one of his best tracks, but on an evening where teammate Jimmie Johnson recorded the long-awaited 200th victory for their Hendrick Motorsports organization. There was Johnson, spraying champagne while Hendrick officials passed out those 200th victory caps that have been stuck in a box for seven months. And there was his one-time mentor, Gordon, standing in a darkened garage area with a car that finished second-to-last among those that didn't start and park. "I said this a couple of weeks ago -- bad luck is when you run over something that no one else can find and you cut a tire. We did that twice tonight," said Gordon, who fell to an unthinkable 24th in Sprint Cup points, and is mired in the worst season of his career. "I don't know. I am baffled. ... All the good things that happened to us all these years to win races are biting us right now. But we know it can't last forever." Can it? The litany at this point seems never-ending, and is full of the unusual and the bizarre. Engine failure at Daytona, a tire cut down by teammate Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s exhaust pipe at Bristol, pit-road penalties at Fontana, getting wrecked on a restart late in a Martinsville race he had a real chance to win. Then, it just seemed like a slow start. Now, after a cylinder going down at Kansas and a flat tire at Richmond and a crash at Talladega and the drama of Saturday night at Darlington, it seems like a curse. "Jeff -- I wouldn't fly home with him," car owner Rick Hendrick quipped in the race winner's media conference. "It's been unbelievable. I told him that out there. I said, 'I've got seats on the helicopter, but you can't come with me.'" That Gordon has had fast cars almost all season, and things still keep happening, only makes it worse. There he was, riding in the top 10 for much of the night at Darlington, racing the race track and keeping himself in the mix. Gradually, the car rounded into form. "I think we're pretty decent right here," he told crew chief Alan Gustafson over the radio after a green-flag pit stop. Then, a handful of laps later, what had been a promising event rapidly deteriorated at the driver's utterance of four alarming words: Flat tire, left rear. And, suddenly, it was another night of crisis management. Gordon pitted, lost a lap, got back out on the race track -- and had the same thing happen again. "Another flat tire," he radioed. "The thing wants to spin out." Back to pit road, this time for 13 laps of evaluation, to try and find if anything under the car was cutting the tire down. Eventually they were forced to the garage, where crewmen swarmed over the vehicle and cleaned everything out, but discovered no obvious culprit. "We couldn't find anything, Jeff," Gustafson told his driver. "Crazy," was Gordon's response. *Video: Jeff Gordon's bad luck continues After the race, Gustafson was still flummoxed. They had found nothing wrong with the car. It ran well before the tire problems. Then they sent it back out, and it ran well again -- only 28 laps down. Of course it did. No wonder Gustafson looks like a crew chief who's beaten himself up one too many times. "We're trying to stay up, but it's tough," he said. "I know, personally, I feel like I'm doing a lot of things wrong. You feel like you can't even run a race. I don't know. ... I don't know why or how. "I feel bad for our sponsors and everybody that supports us and all of Jeff's fans. It's tough to deal with. All these guys work really hard, and we deserve a lot better than this. What's tough, when you get into these situations, is you second-guess everything you do. And I'm trying not to do that, but it's tough when you can't even finish a race." It all had the makings of the lowest point of a very low season, given all Gordon has accomplished at Darlington and what the night ultimately meant to Hendrick. And yet, the driver emerged from his No. 24 car with a smile on his face. This run of disastrous fortune is eating him up, no question. But it's all become so ridiculously over the top, it almost seems funny in a sad kind of way. A tire cut down a teammate's exhaust pipe? Getting wrecked when he had the best car in the event? Cutting the same tire sliced twice in one night, only laps apart? What's next, a spent lug nut bouncing off pit road and puncturing his radiator? Who knows. "This is not even about tonight, in my opinion," Gordon said. "This is an accumulation of everything that's been going on with these performances and finishes this year. It's almost comical. Tonight -- my goodness. To run over something, possibly the same thing, and cut two left-rear tires back to back, you're baffled by it. It's not a fun thing, I can tell you that. We've had great things go our way throughout the years. Now they're not going our way. We just keep working hard, hope it turns around." It's all they can do, really. But first, they had to walk to Victory Lane for the celebration of Hendrick's 200th victory, an event that included all the organization's at-track personnel gathering for a group photo. Although every Hendrick driver wanted to be the one to deliver the landmark victory, Gordon said he wouldn't have had enough car to challenge for the win even if his night hadn't gone awry. But as much as Hendrick employees revere their boss, it was still difficult for members of a floundering race team to try and celebrate in the aftermath of another disheartening night. "I'm very glad it happened. But it's hard to put aside the struggles we're having," Gustafson said. "That's at the forefront of my mind regardless of anything that happens." The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer. Related:Drivers find it hard to keep cool when running hot Gordon still hunting for Chase Unconventional approach nets Gordon 'Dega pole |
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From humble beginnings, Hendrick built empire DARLINGTON, S.C. -- The town of Bennettsville, S.C., is a place known for its soil. It was so fertile, legend once held, that it was sold not by the acre, but by the pound. Victorian and Greek revival homes still stand as testament to the era when the place got rich off king cotton, and gins gave rise to millionaires. That time has long passed now, but soybean, corn and cotton are still cultivated in and around the town roughly 30 miles from Darlington Raceway, and Bennettsville still makes much of its living from the earth. So perhaps there was no better place for an empire to take root. The former manager of an import division at a dealership in Raleigh, N.C., Rick Hendrick was all of 27 when he moved to Bennettsville to take over his first store, a failing General Motors franchise housed in a tiny facility that would occasionally get buzzed by crop dusters working an adjacent cotton field. In less than two years he went from selling just six cars a month to over 100, and from one of GM's smallest outlets he was promoted to one of its largest -- City Chevrolet in Charlotte, which also supplied parts to manufacturer-affiliated NASCAR teams. Hendrick MotorsportsDriver Victories
Success is often a product of opportunity and circumstance, and there is no question Hendrick took advantage of both. Although his father had fostered his son's interest in race cars and Hendrick owned a dragster that he later sold to raise cash to buy the Bennettsville dealership, he didn't start out with the goal of becoming a NASCAR team owner, much less the most successful one of the sport's modern era. No, it all happened because Hendrick found himself in the right place at the right time, made the right connections like car owner Raymond Beadle and sports-marketing guru Max Muhleman, and was willing to put up the cash to back an outfit called All-Star Racing that debuted in 1984. And behold, the results. What started with 18 employees at a dealership so small it didn't even have a showroom has ballooned into an automotive kingdom, the centerpiece of which is literally a shining motorsports complex on a hill. All-Star Racing became Hendrick Motorsports, which claimed 10 championships (and counting) in NASCAR's premier division, and Saturday night claimed its 200th race victory courtesy of Jimmie Johnson. Inside one building on the Hendrick campus is an entire wall made of etched glass cubes, each of them inscribed with the track, winning car number, and date of every individual victory, all of them featuring that slanted H logo which in today's NASCAR has become as recognizable as the sanctioning body's color bar. So it seemed appropriate Saturday night that the landmark would come at Darlington, a track so close to the town where it all began. Hendrick thought the milestone would occur at Martinsville Speedway, where three of his cars were in the running in the final laps at a place that holds great personal significance to the car owner, because of the 2004 airplane crash that occurred near there and claimed the lives of 10 people, including his son and brother. But a wreck got in the way, and instead the victory arrived at Darlington, and the proximity to Hendrick's starting point was almost poetic. "When I think about Darlington and how special this place is ... in 1976 I had a little Chevy dealership over here in Bennettsville," Hendrick said early Sunday morning. "My wife and I, about a third of the way through the race, drove into the track, pulled up behind the stands, didn't buy a ticket, parked the car and walked up into the stands and watched the race. I don't know how we did that. And to think, it's been a lot of years since then." And 200 victories are a lot of wins. It's an impressive summation of the man's life work, and yet another example of how Hendrick sets the standard in NASCAR ownership. Although there have been times when other organizations have been better -- Joe Gibbs Racing (early 2000s) and Roush Racing (mid-2000s) each claimed the title of best team in NASCAR for brief periods -- Hendrick isn't kept down for very long. Its valleys aren't as deep or as sharp as those experiences by other organizations, and its peaks are significantly more pronounced. The 2010 season was enough of a struggle to precipitate major personnel shakeups in the offseason, and yet behind Jimmie Johnson the team still added yet another title. But because only one team won races, at Hendrick it qualified as a down year. His influence is everywhere, it seems. When Kurt Busch needed clarity on where to go after his exile from Penske Racing, Rick Hendrick played a part. Tony Stewart won last year's Sprint Cup title for a Stewart-Haas organization that was given a huge boost by Hendrick cars and engines. After Stewart won at Texas last fall to take another bold step toward his third championship, he talked to Hendrick -- who was recovering from the crash-landing of an airplane in Key West -- on the telephone in Victory Lane. Hendrick didn't win the championship in 2011, but a Hendrick-made engine carried Stewart to the title, so the team's director of engine development, Jeff Andrews, sat at the head table during the postseason banquet for a sixth consecutive year. Although a long winless streak (by Hendrick standards) preceded victory No. 200, and Jeff Gordon is mired in the worst slump of his illustrious career, his cars were still so good they are still in the mix every week. Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Kasey Kahne are in the midst of revivals, even if they haven't won. Johnson lurks in the points. Gordon is fast and in contention almost every race, despite the weekly misfortune that seems to follow him around. In every case, the potential is still there. At Hendrick, it's always there. Why does Hendrick succeed? There are likely more reasons than there are events on the Sprint Cup schedule, and so much of it begins with relationships and loyalty. There are many people at Hendrick who have been there a very long time, some since the beginning, and wouldn't think about working anywhere else. Hendrick has proven adept at not just finding driving talent, but locking it down. The relationships he built even outside his own organization were evident in his associations with drivers like Dale Earnhardt -- who once won a race in the then-Busch Series in a Hendrick car -- Mark Martin, and Earnhardt Jr., the latter of whom felt close enough with Hendrick to drive for him after he separated from his late father's team. No question, Hendrick can shake hands, cultivate relationships, and close deals with the best of them -- just ask the folks as Lowe's, who bought completely into the then-unknown Johnson because Hendrick and Gordon convinced the sponsor he could win. But Hendrick has also fostered a culture of reliability and quality control that's as buttoned-down as the white dress shirts his employees often wear. Hendrick Motorsports seems less a race shop than a laboratory built on scientific exactitude. Engines are put through two 800-mile tests on Hendrick's in-house dynamometer before they're put under the hood. After races, components are measured, eyeballed for cracks, put through a Magnaflux machine to check for flaws. In 2006, a part called a wire lock failed inside Gordon's car at Michigan, and the engine failed as a result. Since then, every wire lock has been inspected by hand. Other teams have similar procedures in place, of course, but not every team has Hendrick's track record to show for them. Gordon's engine failure in this year's Daytona 500 was notable precisely because that kind of thing happens so infrequently to Hendrick equipment. According to Johnson's crew chief, Chad Knaus, quality control at Hendrick is at such a level that everyone feels the pressure. No one wants to be the person who lets something slip through. That attention to detail is evident every weekend, in parts that usually last, in drivers that usually contend for championships. Johnson, an unheralded former off-road racer with a middling Nationwide career before he moved to the Sprint Cup level in Hendrick equipment, may one day prove the greatest find in NASCAR history. But it's not just Johnson -- only twice in the Chase era has Hendrick gone to the finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway without a dog in the hunt, and its unprecedented 1-2-3 finish with Johnson, Martin, and Gordon in 2009 remains an organizational high-water mark. From its driver stable to its sponsor lineup to its quality control procedures, Hendrick simply presents a depth other teams have struggled to match. It won't always be like this, of course. Hendrick brought Kahne on board this season because its driver lineup was beginning to get a little gray in the temples. As recent events at Kansas and Talladega showed, Hendrick parts do occasionally break. NASCAR is cyclical, and no team can stay on top forever, and not even Hendrick is immune to the ebbs and flows of the sport. Gordon is in the autumn of his career, Johnson's title streak has been snapped, and last year no Hendrick driver finished in the top five in final points. But the name on the front of those buttoned-down shirts will remain the same, as will the processes set in motion inside those glass and steel race shops, all of them opening the possibility that one day another Gordon or another Johnson will be unearthed. More than any championship or race win, Hendrick's greatest achievement is an organization that seems able to sustain itself, even in an era of contraction and economic duress. No wonder the soil in Bennettsville was once believed to be so valuable. It's amazing what can spring out of it. |
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