Press Release | HENDRICK MOTORSPORTS
Celebrate the 40th anniversary of Hendrick Motorsports with this officially licensed history featuring stunning photography, including rare images from the archive of the 14-time NASCAR Cup Series champions.
Rick Hendrick built on a successful career in the retail automotive business to launch NASCAR team Hendrick Motorsports in 1984. Over the ensuing four decades, it has become one of the most successful and high-profile teams in the sport’s long history. Competing in the elite NASCAR Cup Series, as of 2023, the team had posted the most points-paying wins and the most championships.
Hendrick Motorsports’ driver roster is a who’s who of the sport’s greats, including NASCAR Hall of Famers Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson, Terry Labonte, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. Today the team fields four drivers: William Byron, Alex Bowman, and Cup champions Chase Elliott and Kyle Larson. Hendrick Motorsports even fielded a team at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2023!
Hendrick Motorsports: 40 Years relates the team’s incredible history through 40 stories focused on team milestones since its founding in 1984. Stories and highlights include:
The first win at Martinsville that saved the team
Involvement with the motion picture “Days of Thunder”
The dominance of Jeff Gordon and the Rainbow Warriors
The team’s historic 1-2-3 finish at the 1997 DAYTONA 500
The record-tying seven championships of Jimmie Johnson and Chad Knaus
Hendrick Motorsports and the Earnhardts
Becoming the first team to reach 300 wins at NASCAR’s highest level
The ground-breaking Garage 56 Le Mans program
Authored by long-time NASCAR journalist Ben White, with a foreword by Jeff Gordon and afterword by Rick Hendrick, the 200-page book includes images from top NASCAR photographer Nigel Kinrade and from Hendrick Motorsports’ archive. As the official 40th anniversary book covering the team’s entire history, Hendrick Motorsports: 40 Years is the ideal retrospective.
Author Ben White attended his first NASCAR Cup Series race in 1972 at Darlington, South Carolina, at age 11. The Clinton, North Carolina, native drove his own race cars on a few local short tracks in the late 1970s later joining Richard Childress Racing as a crew member in 1980. White started writing about NASCAR in 1983 for the Lexington Dispatch (NC) newspaper, and he continues to write for that publication today, as well as North Carolina newspapers in Fayetteville, Kinston, Burlington, and Asheboro. From 1989 until 2010, he was a staff writer, managing editor, and senior editor of NASCAR Illustrated Magazine and managing editor of the American Racing Classics book series from 1991 to 1994. White has authored numerous NASCAR books, including Motorbooks’ NASCAR Then and Now, NASCAR Racers, NASCAR Legends, and 20 Years of Hendrick Motorsports. White resides in Salisbury, NC.
(Photo Courtesy NASCAR)
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