Anniversary: Rick Hendrick's NASCAR domination hits 30 years
The most accomplished team owner in NASCAR — perhaps in all of professional sports — says one of the secrets to his success is failure.
"I do not study how companies succeed and got to be great," Rick Hendrick told USA TODAY Sports. "I study companies that fail. The reason is their leaders do. They refuse to change and don't stay abreast of what's going on in the world. I share this with every department in every company we have, because we have to change."
If adaptability is the bedrock of Hendrick Motorsports' unprecedented run in NASCAR — a record 14 national series championships, including 11 in Sprint Cup, and a modern-era record of 219 victories — Martinsville Speedway is the team's best example.
This weekend, Hendrick will be celebrating its 30th anniversary in NASCAR at the 0.526-mile oval that's the site of its first victory — April 29, 1984 with Geoff Bodine. The track also has yielded more victories (21), top fives (70) and top 10s (110) than any other track for Hendrick.
But those triumphs also are mitigated by the team's greatest tragedy — the Oct. 24, 2004 crash of a plane on its way to Martinsville that claimed 10 lives, including Hendrick's brother, son, nieces, his team's head engine builder and general manager.
Since regrouping and restructuring in its wake, Hendrick has enjoyed its best stretch, winning six of the past eight championships with Jimmie Johnson and the past two Daytona 500s with Johnson and Dale Earnhardt Jr. The team believes it's the most efficient in U.S. pro sports, earning 11 titles in 30 Cup seasons — a 36.7 winning percentage that's ahead of the Boston Celtics' 17 titles in 67 seasons and the Montreal Canadiens' 24 Stanley Cups in 95 seasons. The New York Yankees — the team to which Hendrick most often is compared in NASCAR — are fourth with 27 World Series titles over 113 seasons.
The comparison isn't entirely analogous — Hendrick has four chances at winning every race with drivers Johnson, Earnhardt, Jeff Gordon and Kasey Kahne. But it still is competing against 39 teams in each game, and no team in Major League Baseball, the NBA, the NFL or the NHL has won as many crowns since Hendrick started from the modest beginnings with a 5,000-square-foot shop and five employees in 1984.
"When I first got in, nobody wanted to work for me," Hendrick said. "Dale Earnhardt shook down my first car, thought about it a little bit but knew he'd have a better opportunity with Richard Childress. As you start winning races, you get opportunities and more people."
Over three decades, the team has expanded to 500 employees on a 140-acre campus with 430,000 square feet of workspace near Charlotte Motor Speedway.
It's mirrored the 38-year rise of Hendrick Automotive Group, which has grown from a staff of nine to 10,000 and annual revenues of nearly $6 billion on more than 150,000 cars sold.
"His love and passion for cars is second to none," six-time champion Johnson said. "He has an automotive empire and then his racing stuff, and they really play off of one another. I know a lot of other successful business men diversify, but Rick is a car guy, and I think there is a lot of weight in that. People want to work for him and they show up and do the best that they can."
Commands respect, loyalty
Felix Sabates has been a close friend of Rick Hendrick for 30 years, as a rival team owner in NASCAR, as a co-owner of the Charlotte Hornets and as a competing businessman. Sabates has owned a few dealerships in Charlotte for several years and has found the competition as stiff as on the track.
"It's difficult to hire people away from his dealerships because they all like working for him so much," Sabates said. "I know a lot of professional owners, and they don't even want to know the names of the executives who work for them. Rick knows all their names and their families. It's like a cult."
At Hendrick Motorsports headquarters, the staff universally precedes Hendrick with "Mr." or often "Mr. H." Even team president Marshall Carlson, who happens to be Hendrick's son-in-law, uses the courtesy title, which isn't a company policy.
"He wouldn't be offended if any of us called him Rick," Carlson said. "We have a lot of respect for what he does for all of us and want to show him the respect he's earned."
Said Gordon: "He's a very loyal guy. If you need something, and you've been there for him, he'll take the shirt off his back and do whatever it takes for you. He really respects loyalty, but he also knows how to read if you're the right person for the job or not. He can be around somebody for a short period of time and tell you right away their strengths and weaknesses. If their strengths outweigh their weaknesses, he'll give them the opportunity to show their strengths."
When the team makes major changes, it often reshuffles crew instead of releasing employees. Earnhardt's last two crew chiefs (Tony Eury Jr. and Lance McGrew) were moved to other positions in the organization. When the organization swapped three of its four crew chiefs (keeping Chad Knaus with Johnson), it was Hendrick's idea to switch the head mechanics between teams without disturbing the rest of the crew.
Though involved more heavily in the team's business and marketing (he was among the first to pioneer consumer product sponsorships with Folgers, helping sell 200,000 cases annually), Hendrick sometimes suggests personnel moves after observing the interaction of crew members inside one of his team's haulers for an hour on the Sunday morning of a race.
"Rick puts such value in human capital, that he is wise enough to know how to tweak and refine but not lose those relationships that people have had over time," Carlson said. "We all drink the Kool-Aid and become part of the 'Hendrick Way,' so it's much better to have that person maybe expand in a role or focus in a certain area rather than flushing them or moving them out."
Hendrick has been aggressive with taking risks on unknowns, such as putting Gordon and Johnson in Cup rides before they were proven.
"I was willing to try whatever," he said. "If we dreamed it, we tried it. So many teams have blinders and want to stay in a rut. We weren't afraid to step out. I tell people I used to throw for the end zone every time I got my hand on the ball. I'm not quite that brave anymore."
One of the first experiments was putting old-school crew chief Harry Hyde alongside free-thinking Gary Nelson.
"It was a real chore trying to get them to work together," Hendrick said. "I'd have to say to Gary, 'I'll bring Harry over to look at your cars, but I'm going to tell him he needs to help you figure out how to fix them.' Sure enough, I took Harry over, and he'd tell Gary all the things wrong with the car and then go back and make his the same way."
Blending divergent personalities has been a core principle for Hendrick.
"Maybe I should have gone to school to be a psychiatrist or something," he said with a laugh. "I try to get the people to believe in the good of the company. People think it's corny, but I believe in that family atmosphere. We look after each other and go through the tough times and celebrate together, and it builds character in the organization. I'm as proud of the relationships as the trophies and championships because we've done it together."
Former Charlotte Motor Speedway president H.A. "Humpy" Wheeler said Hendrick's touch comes from growing up the son of a tobacco farmer in southern Virginia.
"Rick mastered all this by being brought up around the good old boys," Wheeler said. "You can't understand those people without living with them. He understands the true nature of the emerging NASCAR (is) that old mixture of Southern Scotch-Irish and the wizards from the Midwest and West with their computer brains. This is what really separates him."
"No clutter, no waste"
Hendrick likes telling employees he starts site visits to his dealerships in the service department, and by the time he reaches the front showroom, he can tell if the store is turning a profit without looking at the balance sheet.
"There's no way to look like a slob and run a business like a pro," Carlson said. "That's part of winning. To play the part, you've got to look the part."
The "No clutter, no waste" mantra also is observed by his teams. After a tour of the race shop, a Bank of America executive once told Hendrick if he were to have open-heart surgery, he'd want it done in the team's engine assembly area. His crew members don't wear T-shirts, and starched white shirts are the standard for his executives.
"When my guys walk out with neat and clean uniforms and they're buttoned up, sometimes you actually intimidate other people by your look," he said. "It's like when I walk in a dealership and want it high and tight."
The future of Hendrick Motorsports will be intertwined with its sister company later this year. Off the boulevard leading to Charlotte Motor Speedway, the team will open a new entrance to its base that will be flanked by Hendrick dealerships and also open up another team museum to its fans.
"You try to plan as much for the future as you can, and our goal is just to stay competitive," Hendrick said. "It's hard to plan for five to 10 years down the road. I take it a year at a time because the sport changes, the world changes, and you've got to change with it."
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