Hendrick Motorsports: The NASCAR Team With a Record 324 Cup Wins

Hendrick Motorsports is an American racing organisation that fields cars in the NASCAR Cup Series and the O'Reilly Auto Parts Series. It was founded by the Charlotte car dealer Rick Hendrick and has recorded a NASCAR-record 324 Cup Series wins. Four full-time Cup cars now carry the team's Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 bodywork.

The team's story is a mix of rapid growth, a model borrowed from the dealership business, a few detours into other categories and one painful chapter that the whole sport remembers. This guide walks through each part of that record.

How did Hendrick Motorsports begin?

The project started before the 1984 season as All-Star Racing, with Harry Hyde serving as crew chief and car builder. Rick Hendrick, who runs the Hendrick Automotive Group of dealerships, was behind it, and the team took the Hendrick Motorsports name in 1985. Its first win came in 1984 at Martinsville.

From the start the team leaned on the logic of the dealerships. Running several cars at once was a model that few NASCAR teams had managed well, and Hendrick became one of the first to make multiple entries succeed. The organisation has also been credited with new approaches to engine construction and to pit crew training.

A dealership owner's racing project that grew into the most decorated team in the Cup Series, and then reached Le Mans.

How did the team grow into a multi-car operation?

Hendrick's Cup effort grew to two full-time entries by 1986, reached three in 1987 and stood at four from 2002. That step-up mirrored the way the dealerships were run, with several outlets under one owner. The four-car structure has been the core of the operation since, and the team has kept building around it.

The team's engine shop is in house, and some of its engines are leased to partner teams such as Haas Factory Team, Spire Motorsports and Hyak. That arrangement turned an internal workshop into a supply business as well as a race operation.

How did the No. 5 car become central to the team?

The No. 5 is the most famous number in the organisation's history. Its first appearance came in 1985, when Brett Bodine ran twelve races and his brother Geoff drove it in several more. Later, the number was carried by a series of drivers in the Busch Series, including several development talents.

Brian Vickers won the 2003 Busch Series championship in the No. 5, and Kyle Busch took over the seat in 2004. Busch won five races as a rookie in that car and finished runner-up in the points. The number moved to JR Motorsports in 2008, after the Hendrick and Dale Earnhardt Jr. Xfinity operations combined.

What championships has Hendrick Motorsports won?

The team's titles are the most striking part of its record. The tally includes 15 Cup Series championships for owners and drivers, three in the Truck Series and one drivers' crown in the O'Reilly series. Across its other series the team has also won 33 O'Reilly races, 26 Truck races and seven ARCA Menards Series races.

In 2021 the team reached a milestone that had belonged to Petty Enterprises for decades. At the Coca-Cola 600, the No. 5 driven by Kyle Larson won the team's 269th race, which put Hendrick ahead of Petty's 268 and made it the winningest team in Cup history.

Which drivers raced for Hendrick?

The list of past drivers reads like a roll call of NASCAR. Benny Parsons, Darrell Waltrip, Terry Labonte, Mark Martin and Jeff Gordon all drove for the team, and Hall of Fame status came for several of them. Dale Earnhardt Jr. and the seven-time Cup champion Jimmie Johnson were also among its drivers.

Further names on the roster include Ken Schrader, Ricky Rudd, Tim Richmond and Geoff Bodine, along with Casey Mears, Kasey Kahne and Kyle Busch. Each of them added a different chapter to the team's story.

What did the Xfinity and truck programmes achieve?

Hendrick's own Busch Series cars ran during 1984-1990 and returned for 2000-2007. The Xfinity side changed direction after 2007, when its operations combined with JR Motorsports. Rick Hendrick remained an equity partner and stayed listed as the owner of the No. 5.

The truck programme had its own stars. In 1995 Terry Labonte won once at Richmond in a Hendrick truck, and Jack Sprague went on to win the Truck Series title three times, the first of them the season after 1996. The No. 24 team won five races in his first full season, in which he finished second in points.

The No. 24 truck effort ended after a one-race deal at Daytona, which let the team focus on its Busch Series cars. The truck programme was revived in 2013 for Chase Elliott, who ran nine races in a truck built by Turner Scott Motorsports.

What did the ARCA and IndyCar efforts involve?

ARCA was the first proving ground for many Hendrick cars. Between 1985 and 1996 the team ran five ARCA races, two of them with Brett Bodine, who took pole for both. Tommy Ellis finished second at Atlanta in 1988 and Jack Sprague was fourth at Talladega in 1996.

The team's ARCA record grew in the 2000s. In 2003 Kyle Busch drove a Hendrick ARCA car to three poles and two wins, and he won the 2004 opener at Daytona after qualifying second. In that same season a trio of development drivers, Feese, Reid and Krisiloff, shared the ARCA seat, and Feese scored a win at Nashville.

In 2024 Hendrick entered the Indianapolis 500 in partnership with Arrow McLaren, with Kyle Larson in the No. 17. Larson became the fifth driver to attempt the Double, and the team announced in April 2025 that he would try the race again.

How did the development programme shape young drivers?

Chase Elliott was the best-known product of the programme. He made his ARCA debut at Mobile International Speedway at age 16, took a pole and recorded six top tens in six races. A year later, at 17, he won the ARCA race at Pocono and became the youngest superspeedway winner in the series' history.

Elliott ran the 2014 ARCA opener at Daytona to gain NASCAR approval for superspeedway racing in the Nationwide Series. He finished ninth after a fifteen-car crash, and he went on to win the Nationwide Series championship. Kyle Busch, then 18, had been part of the same pipeline in the Busch Series in 2003.

More recently, Corey Day became the anchor driver of the No. 17 team. He made his first career win at Talladega in 2026, followed by a Dover win, and he took the pole at Las Vegas to win there during The Chase. Day has been announced to return to the team for 2027.

What has the No. 17 Xfinity team done recently?

The No. 17 became a regular feature of the Xfinity schedule after 2022, when Hendrick announced three races with Larson, Bowman and Byron. The team added races each year. Larson dominated at Road America that year before losing a late duel to Ty Gibbs, and Elliott added Pocono in 2023.

The team's first Xfinity win since 2009 came in 2024, when Larson took the No. 17 across the line at the Circuit of the Americas. Elliott followed with a win at Charlotte the same season. In 2025 the team ran a sixteen-race schedule, with Larson winning at Bristol and Byron at Charlotte.

Which other car numbers did the team run?

Hendrick has used many numbers over the years, several of them for one-off efforts. Tim Richmond started from pole for the No. 0 car at Charlotte in 1984 and finished fifth. Geoff Bodine ran the No. 15 car, winning the team's first Busch Series race at Rockingham and taking the 1987 season opener at Daytona.

The No. 80 carried HendrickCars.com sponsorship in 2009, when Tony Stewart won the Camping World 300 at Daytona in it. The number represented the affiliates of the Hendrick Automotive Group. Jimmie Johnson finished third on his debut with the No. 48 at Lowe's in 2004.

Did Hendrick Motorsports race sports cars?

Yes, but the stint was short. From 1985 to 1988 the team was involved in the GM Goodwrench IMSA GTP Corvette project, which included a twin-turbo V6 engine. Doc Bundy and Sarel van der Merwe drove the car in the IMSA GTP series, and the programme ended in 1988 when Hendrick and GM stopped it.

Sports cars returned only once more, in the 2023 Le Mans effort described below. The engine business, which leases units to partner teams, continued throughout.

What happened at Le Mans in 2023?

In 2023 Hendrick entered the 24 Hours of Le Mans in partnership with NASCAR, Chevrolet, Goodyear and IMSA. The team ran a modified Next Gen Cup car, a Camaro ZL1 that stayed close to its Cup specification, in the experimental Garage 56 category.

The car carried working headlights and tail lamps, a bigger fuel tank, carbon ceramic brakes with higher ratings and tyres from Goodyear. Jimmie Johnson, Mike Rockenfeller and Jenson Button drove it, and it finished 39th out of 62 entries. It outperformed the GTE Am cars, the closest class equivalents, and later appeared at the Goodwood Festival of Speed.

How did the 2004 plane crash affect the team?

A Beechcraft King Air 200 carrying ten people had left Concord, North Carolina, bound for a small field close to Martinsville Speedway. On 24 October 2004 it crashed into Bull Mountain in heavy fog after a failed attempt to land. Everyone aboard died, and the team lost several of its own people.

Six of the dead were Hendrick family members or employees, including John Hendrick, Jeff Turner, the driver Ricky Hendrick, the twin daughters of John Hendrick and the chief engine builder Randy Dorton. The two pilots and a helicopter pilot working for another team were among the others killed.

NASCAR officials learned of the crash during the Martinsville race and kept the news from drivers until the race ended. For the rest of 2004 every Hendrick car and the Haas CNC Racing car carried photographs of the victims on the hood, with the words Always in our hearts.

Key records at a glance