2004 Hendrick Motorsports Aircraft Crash - Hendrick Motorsports, based in Charlotte, N.C., is among the most successful teams in Nascar, with 128 victories and 5 championships in 20 years in Nascar's elite series. This season, Johnson leads all drivers with six victories, including the past two races, and Gordon is in second place in the Nextel Cup standings with four races remaining.
He finished ninth Sunday and is 96 points behind the leader, Kurt Busch. Dale Earnhardt Jr. is 125 points behind, and Johnson is 207 back after holding off Jamie McMurray for his first Nextel Cup short-track victory.
2004 Hendrick Motorsports Aircraft Crash
Martinsville is also the place where a Hendrick Motorsports plane crashed near the track on the way to the October 2004 race. Among the 10 people killed were four members of Hendrick's family — his brother John, his son Ricky and nieces Kimberly and Jennifer.
Team Penske, which has three drivers in the top six in the standings, and Joe Gibbs Racing, boasting three in the top nine, are the best of breed in NASCAR at the moment. But hanging right with them is Hendrick Motorsports, whose Chase Elliott and Alex Bowman have each already won a race this season.
The cost per car to run a full season comes down and the opportunities to attract Sponsorships increase. That translates into a greater likelihood for success – assuming that everyone from the chief engine builder down to the least-experienced
member of the pit crew is doing his job. All ten people on board were killed; Among them, members of the Hendrick family including John Hendrick, president of Hendrick Motorsports, his twin daughters, Ricky Hendrick, former Busch Series driver and heir to the Hendrick empire.
[3][4] Hendrick Motorsports staff involved includes Kimberly and Jennifer Hendrick, General Manager Jeff Turner, and chief engine builder Randy Dorton. The pilots were Richard Tracy and Elizabeth Morrison. Other passengers include Joe Jackson, an executive at DuPont and Scott Lathram, Tony Stewart's pilot.
News of the crash reached NASCAR officials during the race at Martinsville Speedway, but the information was withheld until shortly after Jimmie Johnson, the rising star of the Hendrick Motorsports empire at the time, crossed the finish line in first place.
The traditional victory lane ceremony was scrapped, and the Hendrick drivers and crew were summoned to NASCAR's on-site command center, where they learned what had happened. Jim Hunter, Nascar's vice president for corporate communications, said the plane had taken off from Concord, N.C.
The A.P. reported that it crashed about 12:30 p.m. in the Bull Mountain area about seven miles west of Blue Ridge Airport near Martinsville. "Absolutely we're sad that the aircraft went down and we lost everybody on the airplane," Johnson said.
"I found that today, there is a lot more happy stories in reflecting back on, especially this weekend, of Ricky, some of the things he would do and the stunts he would pull on his dad.
SURFERS PARADISE, Australia, Oct. 24 (AP) -- Bruno Junqueira of Brazil beat out his Newman/Haas teammate Sébastien Bourdais of France to win the Lexmark Indy 300 and keep Bourdais from clinching the Champ Car title on Sunday.
"You think back to all the victories up there and how we almost at this race 30 years ago folded it up and shut the doors — and here we are today with all the wins and the championships," Hendrick said.
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Rick Hendrick has been synonymous with cars ever since he became the youngest owner of a Chevrolet dealership in the country at the age of 26. Some 43 years later, his corporation does more than $10 billion in business at 140 dealerships and related auto services across 14
states. It was a win that possibly saved Hendrick Motorsports (which was called All-Star Racing at the time), as team owner Rick Hendrick thought he might have to shut down the team if the winnings weren't enough to keep it going.
He did not even attend that race. Ricky Hendrick, 24, raced briefly in the Busch Series and the Craftsman Truck Series, then retired after an accident in 2002. He was co-owner of the Busch Series race team led by Kyle Busch and the Nextel Cup team led by Vickers.
Ten people associated with Hendrick Motorsports perished Oct. 24, 2004, in a plane crash in heavy fog seven miles short of the airport while en route from Concord, North Carolina, to a NASCAR race at Martinsville Speedway.
So whenever a Hendrick Motorsports driver wins at Martinsville — the organization has 21 Cup wins at the track — it is an emotional time. And it would be again Sunday if one of the four can pull it off.
The organization's 128th victory came in 2004, when Jimmie Johnson was victorious at Martinsville Speedway, the smallest track on the NASCAR circuit and nestled in western Virginia near the North Carolina border. That victory took on added significance on Sept.
29, 2019, when Chase Elliott captured the 256th checkered flag in the organization's history. "It's a very deep emotion (winning here), something you take a lot of pride in representing the company," said Jimmie Johnson, who has eight career Cup wins at Martinsville.
"To see Rick in his face and the expression that he has, you can sense in his voice and his eyes how much it means for him to win here. Dale Earnhardt Jr., who came to Hendrick Motorsports in 2009, knows what the track means to the organization.
He quipped Friday that "I grew up in a house full of clocks," referring to the grandfather clock that is awarded to the winner and his father's six victories at the 0.526-mile oval. "That's a credit to the people working there;
the management makes a lot of great decisions putting people in key positions. … Rick has an influence on his employees. Everybody really strives from the top to the bottom to give their best.” Harry Litten, manager at Moody's Funeral Service in Stuart, Va., said the Virginia State Police had listed the dead as Ricky Hendrick, son of the team owner, Rick Hendrick;
John Hendrick, brother of Rick Hendrick and president of the race team; Kimberly and Jennifer Hendrick, twin daughters of John Hendrick; Scott Latham, a pilot for the driver Tony Stewart; Randy Dorton, engine director for the Hendrick team;
Jeff Turner, the team's vice president and general manager; Joe Jackson; and the pilots Dick Tracy and Liz Morrison. His formal involvement in NASCAR began in 1984 when he founded Hendrick Motorsports, and Geoff Bodine drove onto victory lane three times that first season to launch the dynasty.
There were no victories the following year, but Hendrick cars have won at least one race a season on NASCAR's top circuit since 1986. On October 24, 2004, a Beechcraft Super King Air aircraft, registered N501RH[2] and owned by NASCAR team Hendrick Motorsports, crashed into mountainous terrain in Stuart, Virginia, during a missed approach to Blue Ridge Airport in Martinsville, Virginia.
The aircraft was transporting eight passengers and two flight crew to Martinsville so they could attend the NASCAR event at Martinsville Speedway that afternoon. And they have gotten through it. Jeff Gordon and Terry Labonte had given Hendrick Motorsports five series championships before the plane crash.
Gordon would win 24 of his 93 races after the tragedy. Jimmie Johnson has captured seven NASCAR Cup series season crowns since that day, tying the NASCAR record. Among the wins was the one on the day of the crash in 2004. Johnson won the race and his car was brought down pit road with police there to inform the Hendrick drivers of the tragedy.
In the last race of the season, Rubens Barrichello of Brazil started from the pole for the second straight year and led early, but finished third. Barrichello's Ferrari teammate, the series champion Michael Schumacher, finished seventh.
Elliott is third in points, followed by Bowman in seventh, seven-time series champion Jimmie Johnson in 11th, and William Byron in 16th. Johnson is in his final season of racing, but the average age of the others is just 24 and change, making for a bright future.
Six of those who died were Hendrick family members or key employees of Hendrick Motorsports. Among them were Rick Hendrick's son Ricky; the owner's brother John, president of the racing team; John Hendrick's twin daughters; Jeff Turner, general manager of Hendrick Motorsports;
and Randy Dorton, the chief engine builder. "I remember just how emotional it was, how hard it was just to try to talk," Hendrick recalled. "But I had to thank them and tell them I was thinking about them.
And when I saw the people, I said, 'This place is going to go on, and we're going to take care of each other. Because you're family, too. And we're going to do whatever we got to do to take care of each other.
We're going to get through this.'” Few racing teams can boast of a stable of drivers as talented as the Hendrick Motorsports quartet, and fewer still have the history of the organization that began posting wins on the top NASCAR racing circuit in 1984.
Rick Hendrick was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 2013 and the NASCAR Hall of Fame in 2017, and Hendrick Motorsports has maintained its standing as one of the most successful outfits at any level of racing.
"That was one of the races that we could go to even while we were in the school year as kids," Earnhardt said. "There's a lot of history there, a lot of memories there and I had some good cars and just have never really been able to get the job done.
The NASCAR Cup Series is for all practical purposes ruled by seven race teams that field multiple cars each weekend. The economies of scale come into play when the likes of Team Penske, featuring Brad Keselowski, and Joe Gibbs Racing, with Martin Truex Jr., can spread out the overhead for technology and engine development over fleets of cars.
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