Triumph Over Tragedy for Earnhardt Jr. and Hendrick

February 15, 2008

By Rebecca Gladden

Rebecca Gladden

When I see Rick Hendrick, I feel sadness.

Even when he's smiling, even when he's joking.

Even when he's congratulating his winning driver in Victory Lane with a gregarious hug and a hearty handshake.

His weathered face is full of character, his eyes are bright. His broad smile is warm and sincere.

Still, behind it all, there is an ever-present hurt that can't be hidden and can never be assuaged.

Such is the challenge for a man who strives every day to put on a brave face. A man who has lost so much, yet perseveres. A man who carries the burden of a tragedy few of us can imagine.

On a cold, foggy October day in 2004, a Hendrick Motorsports airplane en route to Martinsville Speedway slammed headlong into a mountainside, killing all ten people aboard. Among them was Rick Hendrick's brother John, his nieces Kimberly and Jennifer, his 24-year-old son Ricky, and several key personnel from his company.

For months afterwards, the thought of getting out of bed in the morning completely overwhelmed him.

Eventually, Hendrick found the inspiration to return to his life's work by honoring the memory of the ten who had perished. "It was something they gave their life for," he said in a 2005 interview. "Would we walk away from it or would we finish it?"

The ties that bind in NASCAR run deep - the daring, the danger, the determination, and the death - particularly among the sport's pioneering families, whose histories are intertwined like the branches of fragrant jasmine vines that cling to the old North Carolina homes where many of them were born and raised.

Families like the Hendricks and the Pettys.

And the Earnhardts.

In a seemingly mirror image of Rick Hendrick - a father who lost his only son and namesake - Dale Earnhardt Jr. was 26 when he lost the father whose name he bears.

The tragedy was a bit different for Earnhardt Jr., whose dad died in a racing accident that shocked the world. Losing a parent is not the same as losing a child, though neither is any more or less difficult to bear.

Still, Earnhardt Jr.'s situation is unique because of his fame and popularity. Following in his father's footsteps as a racecar driver, he endures unending scrutiny -- the comparisons, the maybes, the incessant speculation of how his life might be different if his father was still here.

Last summer, Dale Earnhardt Jr. announced that he was leaving Dale Earnhardt, Inc., the racing company his father created and the only NASCAR home Junior had ever known. His decision to move to Hendrick Motorsports stunned many in the racing community.

It shouldn't have.

In their very first press conference together last year, Earnhardt Jr. recounted the napkin story -- his earliest meeting with Rick Hendrick, when Junior was just 15 years old. "I had been fortunate enough to be invited on a trip with Kenny Schrader around the Midwest to run some dirt tracks, and it was going to end up at Topeka, Kansas, where Rick was racing and my dad was going to race with Schrader. I was running around with Schrader for the whole week and we get to Topeka and that's the first time I had ever met Rick. (He) introduced me, and (Rick) said, 'Have you got a contract to drive for anybody?' I wasn't even racing, you know, I was not even close. But I thought it was a joke and he wrote down on a napkin - wrote a contract down on a napkin and I signed it. We were joking around. Obviously he's a pretty smart businessman, and I figured even if it was a joke I'd better sign it, because it might come in handy one day."

Indeed.

At the same time, Hendrick recalled that even then, he felt a natural paternalism toward Dale Jr. "The first thing I was concerned with was how Dale (Sr.) let him go to the Midwest with Schrader," he laughed, adding, "I felt like I kind of needed to protect him a little bit."

Hendrick also remembered fondly how his own son, Ricky, had once predicted Earnhardt Jr.'s move to HMS. "This one has got a special place in my heart," he said of Earnhardt's decision, "because Ricky told me about four years ago this was going to happen one day, and I said, 'I don't think it's ever going to happen.'"

Obviously, fate had other plans.

This past Saturday, in his debut event in a Hendrick Motorsports car, Dale Earnhardt Jr. raced his way to Victory Lane at the very track where his father lost his life seven years earlier. The move he made to get past Tony Stewart with less than two laps to go in the Bud Shootout reminded Stewart of another great driver he'd competed against. "He's one of the best restrictor plate drivers there's ever been," Stewart said of Earnhardt Jr. "He learned a lot from his dad, and I'm not sure he's not better than his dad, in all honesty."

Over in Victory Lane, Rick Hendrick had other memories racing through his mind. "I have never had so many emotions going through me at the end of a race," said Hendrick -- quite a statement from a man with hundreds of spectacular wins as a team owner. "I thought about Ricky, because he wanted this, and they talked about doing this, and this happened."

As owner and driver embraced - a father who lost his son and a son who lost his father - tears welled in my eyes. Each has been living for years with a void wrought by tragedy that could have crippled lesser men, driven them from the sport they love.

Somehow, through the tortuous twists and turns of fate, they found each other.

If you doubt the importance of this, just ask Ken Schrader, the man who facilitated the napkin meeting so many years ago.

"Junior and Rick are both filling a hole in the other one's life," Schrader observed.

The road ahead will still be bumpy, but they are no longer traveling it alone.

You can contact Rebecca at.. Insider Racing News



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