NASCAR MEDIA CONFERENCE

November 2, 2021

Rick Hendrick

Press Conference

An Interview with:

THE MODERATOR: Good afternoon. Thank you again for joining us here on this Tuesday afternoon in advance of the NASCAR Championship 4 this weekend at Phoenix Raceway.

We have now been joined by Rick Hendrick, car owner of Hendrick Motorsports.

Rick, I'm going to ask you an opening question here. It's been a pretty big season for Hendrick Motorsports. When we started in February, did you have any idea that your team would take home 16 NASCAR Cup Series wins this season?

RICK HENDRICK: No. You know, you always think you're in good shape, but this has been a phenomenal year. I think when I look back at our organization and look at it across the board running four cars, all the cars have been competitive, all of them have won races.

It's really nice when you have a balanced attack, that you don't have one car running 20th. All of the cars have been able to lead laps and run up front, win races. I've been extremely happy and humbled by the success of the organization this year.

THE MODERATOR: A big year as well for Chevrolet, taking home the manufacturers championship. What does that mean to you to be able to help them take home that honor this season?

RICK HENDRICK: I guess outside of us winning the championship, being able to bring it home for Chevrolet is super important to me and our organization and all the Chevy teams. They take a lot of pride in NASCAR racing and racing in general. They won a lot of races. They're used to winning a lot of manufacturers cups.

At the beginning of the year that's always a big goal for us. They are a major player in our success. It was super exciting and rewarding to see them get excited about winning the manufacturers championship again.

THE MODERATOR: We're now going to go to questions.

Q. Cliff Daniels told me he wasn't sure whether he'd get a chance to work with another driver after not winning with Jimmie Johnson. Were there ever any thoughts in your head of maybe he just would take a different position other than a crew chief?

RICK HENDRICK: I think your question is Cliff Daniels, looking at him in any other position other than a crew chief? Is that what you said?

Q. In light of the fact that he wasn't able to win a race with Jimmie. Was there a concern he wasn't a winning crew chief?

RICK HENDRICK: Okay, I'm sorry.

Look, he's a super sharp guy. If you look at the way they ran toward the end of the year, we were just getting our program better and starting to click. Of course, Chase won the championship, but Jimmie had some good races there at the end. So that was good momentum.

You could just watch him as he ran the team and made the team better that he was going to be in a good spot this year. Did I think he could win this many races? Nobody ever expects to win that many races in a year.

But he's a super sharp guy. He's been in and around our program for a long time. Worked with Chad as an engineer on his team.

I've been amazed at how much talent he has in a leadership role.

Q. Chase opened the season as the champion. Should have been celebrated all year. Instead you signed this new guy who comes in and wins all these races, takes over the spot as top dog. Has that affected Chase at all? Any sort of issue that you've had to address?

RICK HENDRICK: None. Chase is very competitive. He wants to win. But he's happy for the organization. He's never said anything about the fact that he won the championship, and now Kyle's winning a bunch of races.

It all comes down to next Sunday. He's in it to win it. He's got a chance and a good shot at being a back-to-back champion.

He's a team player. Chase is super cool. I've been amazed at his maturity and how he looks like just a pure veteran of 10 or 12 years.

Actually every time Kyle wins, or one of the other cars wins, he texts me and congratulations me. He's not a guy that goes off in a corner and says, I need what they have or whatever.

Q. He's so quiet, delivered two good lines in this post-season. Merry off-season, happy Christmas, the thing last week about his fans. Did you know he's got that in him, that wit and humor?

RICK HENDRICK: He's quick. He's really quick. He's just a super bright guy. I am just amazed at how he can come back. You might ask him a question or you may say, Man, you had a good race, I'm sorry that you didn't win it. He's always, Hey, we did well, we did it to ourselves, whatever.

He's very, very, very sharp. You can't rattle him. I've never seen him get rattled over anything. I think he's poised for another championship here come Sunday.

Q. I'm really excited for your answer on this one. Alex Bowman, is he a hack?

RICK HENDRICK: Describe a hack. I don't know what a hack is.

Look, he's won four races this year. Denny's won two. I think Denny just lost it Sunday. Alex races everybody clean. He's a good soldier. The sponsors love him. The crowd loves him.

I think when you're in the middle of a disappointment and you're frustrated and mad, you might say things that you wouldn't say normally.

If he's a hack, I'd like to have more of 'em.

Q. You've been around so many of the greats. We can see Larson's unbelievable. What is your opinion as to what makes him so great, why he's that good?

RICK HENDRICK: He's driven a little bit of everything. I think car control and racing on the dirt has helped him a lot. But he's got tremendous confidence. He believes that he can drive anything, and he believes he can win in anything.

That confidence builds a lot of -- he just gets in a car ready to go. He doesn't complain. But he also spends more time than people might know studying setups and studying the history of the races, digging into the information in our company just to see if he can get better or he can make the car better, wanting to help Cliff.

But I think confidence, car control is just something that he's just got a ton of.

Q. Mr. H, regarding Cliff Daniels, seems like whenever you hear him on the radio, he's a very calming influence. That seems to trickle down not only to Larson but also the rest of the team. How have you seen that maturity beyond his years, is that part of why you thought he was destined for this kind of season?

RICK HENDRICK: He worked under Chad. He has that same temperament of wanting everything perfect. But he does not get rattled. You're exactly right.

You don't know how a guy's going to act under fire till you put him in that position. He just is very methodical. He spends a lot of time with Kyle. When I told Kyle that was going to be his crew chief, Kyle didn't know, he hadn't won any races. As soon as they started working together, Kyle loved what he could see in Cliff.

I've been amazed at his ability to call a race, keep calm, build a pit crew, do all the things that he's done this year, and doesn't get rattled. Some of the decisions he makes, you would think he's been crew chief for five or six years.

He's a real talent. He's built a really good team. I can tell you the four crew chiefs here are working better than they've ever worked before. When I went in the shop yesterday, Rudy and Cliff were standing there talking, Alan. They were discussing things about the cars. We don't have four teams anymore, we have one team with four cars. People work on the same cars.

The crew chiefs live together. Rudy has made a big impact on our company. So it's been the best chemistry by far that we've ever had.

Q. How much of that is a credit to Chad Knaus and his leadership?

RICK HENDRICK: Chad is a perfectionist. Yes, he gets a lot of the credit for the preparation. Things have to go on here when the guys are on the road and not in the shop. Chad is very detail minded.

He has learned, too, that he's got to spread his knowledge. He can't just focus on one car. He's got to be focusing on four cars. That's been a step for him. But he's just accepted it. I've just watched him mature. Not mature, that's not the right word, but I've watched him work into being a leader of many people rather than a leader of a few, wanting to do a lot of things himself.

He brings a certain amount of attention to the game. He's very methodical and very driven. You spread that through the shop and you've got him back at home getting the cars ready, feedback from the four crew chiefs, it's a great combination right now. I think we've got a lot of good years ahead of us.

Q. At the top there you talked about how you're humbled by the success of the team this season. I asked Jeff yesterday, obviously you won the championship last year with Chase, but does this year feel more like an indication that the organization is back where it needs to be with performance?

RICK HENDRICK: Absolutely. I mean, when you have a Jeff Gordon and Terry Labonte, you won four championships in a row, you won a ton of races, then you kind of go through a rebuilding year, you don't Jeff or Jimmie or Dale, and you've got Alex Bowman and William Byron and Chase Elliott.

You watch Larson. He say, Hey, he's got a tremendous amount of talent. Can he be a team player? Can he come in an organization and have an impact, really help the other guys? The answer to all those is yes.

I've been amazed with William Byron, his year. You work at where he was, if he had gotten in the Roval, he looked like he was going to win that race. He could have been a player in the championship.

Alex won four races. Chase is going for the back-to-back championship. When you have everybody working together, when you have the crew chiefs not trying to hide things but legitimately wanting to help each other and make all the cars better. Communication between the drivers where you don't have a driver that's upset with the other driver or jealous, just building a wall between them.

Again, it's the best we've ever had when you look at four crew chiefs and four drivers. We had Jimmie Johnson that won seven, won five in a row. The rest of the organization was running at that par.

This has been a phenomenal year for us.

Q. On the topic of Kyle, when you signed him, you mentioned he had championship ability, which he's proven this year. You also talked about how you had to get comfortable with his heart, who he was as a person. Having gone through this year, Kyle away from the racetrack, has he lived up to everything you would have hoped in terms of what he has done to better himself?

RICK HENDRICK: More. Much more than I would anticipate him doing. He pledged $140,000, $150,000 to causes so far. He visited a week or so ago three food banks in Raleigh, Charlotte, Charleston, gave away a ton of money. He's been kind of the front of our whole program for feeding people. He goes into markets and situations with kids, goes to speak to kids.

He's doing so much on his own, not just with us, but he's got other charities that he's been supporting. I don't know any driver out there as busy as that guy is, that spends as much time trying to do good for other people.

If you just look at his track record, what he's accomplished this year, going and visiting food banks, schools, giving money away, just trying to be a model citizen, I'm just really proud of him.

I didn't ask him to do any of that. He did that on his own.

Q. On Kyle, strictly talking about his performance in the NASCAR Cup Series this season, are we seeing, in your opinion, the kind of expectations or promise that people thought Kyle was always possible -- that was possible with Kyle when he first came into NASCAR or is it something more to it than that?

RICK HENDRICK: Well, I think the word was, before this year, that Kyle was fast but he couldn't close, he couldn't run a 500-mile race and be there at the end. He's proven everybody wrong in that area.

You know when a guy's fast, he's capable. But then I've witnessed him being so good at managing his tires and giving up a little bit in one part of the race to be better at the end, give up a little bit early in the run to be good at the end of the run. That takes a lot of patience. When you couple patience and understanding of what the tire and car can do, then you put that talent with it, you see the results this year.

I've been amazed at how he can control a race. I say control it for himself, can feel the race along with Cliff telling him what's going on.

He doesn't mind getting coached, either. You can hear Cliff telling him somebody is driving a car length deeper, backing off a car length before he is. He takes it and soaks it in. It's been amazing.

I can see why he's won so many races, not just in our car but everything he gets in. He's competitive, smart. He knows how to race. I mean, a lot of people might be fast, but they don't know how to race. He knows how to race.

Q. When you were talking about how far the organization has come in general, how it's working better than ever as a unit, how important do you think that will be as we move into the NextGen car and all the changes that come with that?

RICK HENDRICK: Yeah, I think the momentum that the team has, I think the way they work together, can only be more beneficial in the new car. I mean, you still are going to have a lot to work with. Although most of the parts and pieces are handed to you, but still you have tire data, setups. There's a lot that you have to make work.

If you have four guys that are working together and four crew chiefs that are working together, you're going to get there a lot faster.

I've seen it with everything that we've done, whether it's pit crews. We looked at our pit crews towards the end of the year. The 5 team had one of the best pit crews on pit road. There's a lot of new guys and a lot of guys that were off of pit crews in our organization.

I think just the chemistry, we'll take that into the new year with the new car. I think if we execute exactly like we're doing now, we should have really good results. I don't know that we'll win as many races, but we'll be super competitive.

Q. I was thinking about the Playoff drivers that are advancing on. They're all solid. They're all very calm. Truex, Elliott, Larson, Denny Hamlin, a veteran. What do you think the difference will be for the finale at Phoenix? Is it the maturity? The team that doesn't panic? Who gets stressed out? Luck? Who is more aggressive after what we saw last week? What do you think?

RICK HENDRICK: I think a lot of racing luck is going to play into it. You get trapped with a caution, do you pit, do you have a flat tire, do you have mechanical problems.

Those four cars are going to be awful close. Who hits the setup right. Doesn't matter what you did last week or even when you went there in the spring.

I think you got to have a flawless race without any mistakes. That's the unknown when you go into a championship like this. You got four cars, they're all great cars, they've been there all year, they all know how to win, they have won. Two of them won championships.

I think it's just going to be mistake-free. Whoever can get through it without making mistakes will probably win. It could be any one of those four. I hope it's one of our two.

Q. As we move to the finale, what do you think of all the talk that we had last week, I know it was a cutoff race, Martinsville, but now we move on, about how much respect you show, don't show, how much respect these drivers owe each other that are in the Playoffs? You have two of your drivers who are in it together and they're teammates, or those who are not in the Playoffs. What about the whole respect thing and the whole entertainment that it shows, what you want out of the crowning of a champion where respect fits in or doesn't?

RICK HENDRICK: I think when you look at it and you see guys that haven't won a race this year, and they want to win a race for their sponsor and their organization, you don't expect them to move over. You would hope they don't deliberately race somebody too hard.

Everybody that goes in that race has got a reason for wanting to do well. I mean, some of them are looking for a job. Some of them have pressure from sponsors, from their teams. Everybody wants to do well.

I do think Martinsville is a tough racetrack to ask people to not race hard. I mean, there's always feelings after Martinsville. There always has been and there always will be when you race that close together.

But I think Phoenix will be a little bit different. I think everybody deserves to be able to go out and race. I think the guys in the championship just ask for respect from the other guys. If you're running eighth or 10th, it's early in the race, don't do anything to try to jeopardize somebody's chance of winning a championship.

But that's true every week. I mean, I think our guys, not just our organization, but this sport right now, most of those guys if not most all of them race pretty clean. You see them go four-wide at places where I don't think you can run three-wide, and they come out okay.

If somebody loses it and gets into somebody, that's just racing. I mean, that's going to happen. I just hope it doesn't happen Sunday.

Q. Not so often does the championship come down to just two teams. This is really kind of a mano-a-mano situation. How is the emotional side of this for you? Is the vibe different this week in the shop?

RICK HENDRICK: The guys that are working, that go to the track with the 5 car, they want to win. The guys that are with the 9 car, they want to win. But they're all in there together. They do have feelings that they want their car to win the race, but they're looking for the organization to do well.

I don't think there's tension between our cars. There's just tension and nerves that they know it all comes down to just one race. We worked so hard all year, won a lot of races, but it's just going to come down to who can win this race or finish in front of the other guys.

There's no tension among our guys. Now, whether that will change in the race if they're racing each other hard... I fully expect the guys to race hard, race clean. I've been in this situation before with Terry Labonte and Jeff Gordon. I've been in the meetings with the teams. I say, Look, guys, I'm going to tell you if the 9 car wins, I'm going to go tell the 5 guys congratulations, a great year, then I'll go celebrate.

I worry about showing any favoritism to any one of them. I won't be on the 9 box or the 5 box, I'll be somewhere neutral. I do think a lot about whatever happens Sunday, I don't want to hurt the momentum we've got now.

However it works out, we've got to come back and race in '22, and we want to have the same success that we had this year. The reason we have is because everybody's working together.

For me it's like just don't ruin for everybody. I'm amazed, when I've been in this situation before, have people working in a corner, I'm not letting anybody see what I'm working on. Our guys are going, looking at scans together. I'm just really proud of them because it's a great feeling to know that you've got an organization that's got two guys in it and they're going to put the best car out there and let them settle it.

Q. You signed with Liberty recently. Did any of the accusations or bad press given with the university of late give you any pause with going through the relationship?

RICK HENDRICK: No, they're great people up there. They'll get it worked out. That's a situation that's unfortunate. But they'll get it resolved and move on.

Q. Do you talk to anyone there about what's going on, if it might be a lingering issue about the way you do business?

RICK HENDRICK: No. I mean, I've spoken to several of them. They're really good people. Things that happened years ago, whenever it did happen, they'll make it right and move on. Things like that, I mean, when you have -- it's not pleasant, but they're dealing with it. They're being very up front, very transparent.

Q. Have you had any fan blowback or pushback, you personally or Hendrick as an organization?

RICK HENDRICK: No.

THE MODERATOR: Rick, thank you again for spending so much time with us today. We know you're very busy. We wish you the best of luck this weekend in Phoenix.

RICK HENDRICK: Thank you.