The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Owner misses Hendrick win at Martinsville
Rick Hendrick absent from team’s 40th anniversary.
CHARLOTTE — No detail had been overlooked as Hendrick Motorsports spent more than a year planning its 40th anniversary celebration. The first employees hired by Rick Hendrick were invited, special throwback paint schemes designed and Hendrick was to drive the pace car.
The extravaganza was to be held at Martinsville Speedway, the first track Virginia native Hendrick attended as a child. It’s sort of his home track — even though Charlotte Motor Speedway is in the shadow of what Hendrick calls his motorsports “campus” — but it’s also the most complicated track for NASCAR’s winningest team.
Martinsville is where Hendrick has built its legacy with a track-record 29 victories, and it is where Rick Hendrick’s first of a record 305 wins (and counting) has kept the team in business.
It is also where his son, his brother, his twin nieces and some of his key executives were among 10 killed in 2004 when a plane crashed on its way to that October’s race.
Just like he wasn’t there for the day of a 1984 organization-saving win and that awful day 20 years ago, he wasn’t there for the 40th celebration at Martinsville over the weekend.
“The crash that took so many of our people makes it hard to go back up there,” Hendrick said Monday. “But you can’t blame the track for what happened at the airport.”
Hendrick, 74, tends to make the annual trip each spring — it is the October race he struggles with — and a great deal of effort was put into the celebration. But Hendrick had knee replacement surgery five weeks ago and scratched his trip.
Hendrick instead watched on TV at home with his wife, daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren, surrounded by celebratory balloons, as Daytona 500 winner William Byron led a 1-2-3 finish Sunday for Hendrick Motorsports. Kyle Larson was second and Chase Elliott third. Alex Bowman, the other Hendrick driver, was eighth.
It was Byron’s second win in three races and third of the year.
It figures that Martinsville, again, played such a role in what’s become of that kid who grew up on a tobacco farm near tiny Palmer Springs, Virginia. He worked on race cars in his spare time, but really wanted to race speed boats. His mother put an end to that, so Hendrick, who first visited the Martinsville short track with his father, moved to automobiles.
He now is the largest private car dealer in the United States, his NASCAR team is the greatest in sport’s history and next month Rick Hendrick will enter the Indianapolis
500 for the first time when Kyle Larson attempts to run the race and the CocaCola 600 in North Carolina on the same day.
His rise is full circle from Martinsville, where start-up All-Star Racing was out of money just a handful of races into Hendrick’s NASCAR career. His crew chief talked Hendrick into at least giving Martinsville a go, and even though Hendrick had to miss the race because he was at a church retreat, Geoffrey Bodine won the race that helped launch Hendrick into what it is today. Some facts:
■ Bodine’s win at Martinsville came in the eighth race of the 1984 season; Byron’s win Sunday came in the eighth race of Hendrick’s 40th anniversary season.
■ Byron’s win was a Martinsville record 29th for Hendrick, which became the first team in track history to go 1-2-3 at NASCAR’s oldest and shortest track.
■ Martinsville is the only track where the current Hendrick lineup of Bowman, Byron, Elliott and Larson have all won a race. Hendrick has won the past three spring races at Martinsville and also won the fall playoff race last year.
■ Hendrick Motorsports is the only team to have led more than 10,000 laps at Martinsville.
His only other mention Monday of the 2004 plane crash was that “spring race I can go to OK; fall race, no.”
Thus, he ended up missing out on his own party Sunday, when he texted vice chairman Jeff Gordon so many times throughout the day that Gordon had to stop looking at his phone. The wait was worth it when Gordon called from victory lane.
“I didn’t want to do anything other than hold my breath and wait for it to be over,” Gordon said. “When I did talk to him, we just had a great moment of kind of in awe and shock.
“Even as much as he’s accomplished, this company has accomplished, when we do things like (Sunday), especially something that’s never done before, the 1-2-3 finish at Martinsville, he’s just so humble and appreciative. I love that about him.”
TUESDAY, APRIL 9, 2024
Drive 30 minutes south of Mercedes-Benz Stadium, or 20 minutes south of the airport, get off I-85 and drive another 10 minutes or so East past several car dealerships, down two-lane blacktops featuring a couple of small “Jesus saves” signs and a beautiful if not curiously placed very large floral arrangement near the end of person’s driveway.
Look to the left at a beautiful plot of land featuring rolling hills and groves of old trees. There is the spot that may one day determine how many more trophies U.S. soccer teams will win, including the first World Cup for the men’s team.
That spot, 200 acres of nature that felt welcoming on a beautiful spring day, will in a few years become the home of the U.S. Soccer’s first National Training Center in Fayette County. Rather, it will be home of the Arthur M. Blank National Training Center, an honorific bestowed on Monday to the owner of Atlanta United and the Falcons. The center, helped by a $50 million pledge from Blank, which will house the United States Soccer Federation’s 27 national teams, and its headquarters. It is the first national training center in USSF history.
The groundbreaking was held on Monday, complete with strategically placed large pieces of yellow construction equipment in the background. At the podium there were eight shovels with black handles and red blades, not coincidentally the colors of Atlanta United and the Falcons, ready to throw some mulch.
Blank was there, along with Gov. Brian Kemp, United States Soccer Federation President Cindy Parlow
Cone, whose vision it was two years ago to build the center, and JT Batson, an Augusta native who was tasked with helping turn that dream into a reality. More than a hundred people attended the event, but perhaps none were happier than Parlow Cone.
“To finally be on the land that we’re going to build the next home of U.S. Soccer, it’s going to be home to all of our staff, to our 27 national teams, many youth players, and adult amateur players, just to have a place that we can call home to convene soccer in this country, I mean, there’s no words to describe it other than it’s literally a dream come true,” she said.
The idea of the center came to fruition with the help of Blank and his team, Truett Cathy, who helped find the land, and others in governmental positions. It has an estimated cost of $200 million, a price which Batson said the developers who will build the center have promised will not be exceeded.
It will include at least 12 outdoor fields, an indoor field, a gym and locker rooms that will total more than 100,000 square feet, and offices, administrative space that will total more than 20,000 square feet ... anything needed to help the players on all the teams and those working for the federation to be the best they can be. Because the level of the ground elevates from the Southern end of the property to the north end, many of the fields will be built on tiered land, with most of the grass fields at the southern end, the office spaces in the middle, and some more fields and the turf fields at the northern end.
Blank said he knew within 10 minutes of Parlow Cone’s initial pitch to him that he was going to help her get the center built. Once done, the different teams will no longer have to caravan around the country to get together to prepare for friendlies and tournaments. Coaches and trainers will be able to share ideas on a common ground, rather than through Zoom. Referees can convene. It will be a facility to help grassroots efforts to grow the game.
“It’ll be just a fantastic facility,” Blank said. “And I think you’ll see later Atlanta become more and more of a national mecca for soccer, which is what we’ve talked about.”
For those who grew up playing youth soccer in Georgia, or just fans of the sport, standing under the spacious white tent and watching the presentation induced goosebumps and chills of amazement at how much the sport has progressed within the state. A ticket sales record was set last weekend for the SheBelieves Cup, played at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Atlanta United holds numerous attendance records for games in MLS, U.S. Open Cup matches, the All-Star match and the MLS Cup.
Now, the city will soon be the home of U.S. Soccer, as well as hosting part of this summer’s Copa America and eight matches in the 2026 World Cup. It could be also be part of the 2025 Club World Cup and the 2027 Women’s World Cup.
Kemp said that growing up in Georgia, he never imagined that the city would become the capital of soccer in the U.S.
“It’s pretty amazing that you think about just how excited people are just for the SEC championship game,” he said. “Obviously, we’ve had Final Fours and basketball, national championship games, Super Bowls, but to think about this global sport — really, it’s a worldwide sport — we’re going to see that especially during the World Cup and have really U.S. Soccer headquartered here in Georgia, it’s a big statement for our state, for the city of Atlanta and the local Fayetteville community.”