Today, Hendrick Motorsports is the biggest organization in NASCAR, a team that has more wins than any other in the history of the sport. But a big chunk of HMS’ success and domination, which is still ongoing, began in the 90s. And it can be argued that it all started with the entry of Jeff Gordon into Rick Hendrick’s team. But this leads to a question: how did Hendrick sign Gordon?
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This was exactly what Gordon himself recently revealed. “It was at Atlanta, and I was running the Busch Grand National Series for Bill Davis and driving a Ford and (Rick) just happened to be there on a Saturday, which was pretty rare for him,” Gordon said. “He was walking to a suite along the side of the track and saw smoke rolling off the right rear of the car I was driving and it made him stop and look.”
Gordon recalled how Hendrick insisted on watching him race, speculating that “this kid is going to wreck”, wondering who he was as he eventually ended up winning the race. At that time Gordon was with Ford, but a conversation about him involving Rick Hendrick and Jimmy Johnson in front of his then-roommate Andy Graves at the HMS campus led to Gordon showing interest in signing for HMS. “I think the next day I was at Rick’s office and we were talking about how do we get you to Hendrick Motorsports. At that time, there wasn’t even a third team. It was a two-car operation with Ken Schrader and Ricky Rudd as the drivers,” he described.
“I want to say that was March or April in 1992 and by the end of that year, I was driving in my first race as a rookie and starting my (full-time career) in 1993 with Hendrick Motorsports. From that point, the rest is history.”
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There will never be another Jeff Gordon
One doesn’t need to look too deep into the long list of Jeff Gordon’s achievements to conclude that he is one of the all-time greats of NASCAR. Gordon is a 4x Cup champion, a NASCAR Hall of Famer, and a driver with 805 starts in the Cup with 93 wins to his name along with 477 top 10s.
Gordon is also majorly responsible in the formation of the #48 team, which Jimmie Johnson ran in and won 7 Cup championships. He is also the current Vice Chairman at HMS. Moreover, he is also the first driver who has over $100 million in career winnings.
Then there’s his contributions to the sport in pop culture with his appearance on Saturday Night Live, among his many other notable media appearances that ensured NASCAR became more popular than ever across the country.
