Hendrick: This Could Be One of NASCAR's Best Years

By Ron Lemasters Jr.

On the occasion of his 30th season in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series as a car owner, Rick Hendrick had this to say about the coming season.

"I think it's going to be one of the best years in NASCAR racing we've seen in a long time."

Well, why wouldn't it be, when you have 10 championships, the most popular driver in the sport and one of its fastest rising stars sitting on the dais beside you?

He was talking about the proposed rule changes to the Chase, the new qualifying procedure and the new rules package for the cars once they leave Daytona, but the idea is still the same.

One of the most intriguing lines of the whole thing came from Dale Earnhardt Jr. when asked what he thought about the proposed changes making the Chase into a winner-take-all event at Homestead.

"I wasn't that excited about change until all the change started happening, let's change it all!" he said to general laughter. "You just kind of got to get used to it."

Someone asked Jimmie Johnson if the Chase changes were aimed at him, and that elicited a smile.

"It's crossed my mind, I'm not going to lie to you," he said. "At the end of the day, it's about what's best for our sport.We all know change needs to happen."

In a wide-ranging Q&A session, there was plenty of banter. One example was when Hendrick was asked who would win if the four-driver, winner-take-all Chase finale came down to his four drivers. "You don't really expect me to answer that, do you?" Hendrick said, and Jeff Gordon cracked a big smile, pointed to his left and said, "He does!" That broke the room up, as did Hendrick's reply. "If all of our drivers were in the running for the title at Homestead, I would be sitting on the pit wall sipping champagne with James Finch."

As to the 30th anniversary of HMS, Hendrick tried to put a finger on the one best memory, the event that stood out most to him.

"I would have to say the first Daytona 500 win, and when Ricky won the inaugural Truck Series race at Kansas," Hendrick said. "Of course, if Geoff Bodine hadn't won at Martinsville in 1984, I wouldn't be sitting here with you today. These guys would," pointing at the drivers, "but I wouldn't. That victory enabled us to keep the doors open, and it's not too often that a business shuts down and then reopens as a successful entity."