Rick Hendrick Offers Details On Plane Crash, Reacts To 2011 NASCAR Chase

Rick Hendrick is still recovering from injuries sustained in an October plane crash, the NASCAR team owner told reporters in a teleconference Monday morning.

Hendrick said he was wearing his seatbelt when a private plane carrying he and his wife, Linda, sustained a brake failure and went off the end of the runway in Key West, Fla.

But something, he said, “came loose in the seat itself.” Hendrick was flung into the seat in front of him and made hard contact with his head and chest, which caused four broken ribs, a broken shoulder and a concussion. His wife’s leg was “busted up,” he said.

“We’re glad it wasn’t any worse than it was,” he said. “... You sensed something was wrong (upon landing), but then it happened so quick. It goes so fast you don’t have time to react.”

Hendrick said he had to sleep in a chair for three weeks after the crash due to the broken ribs, but after healing and some physical therapy, he can now sleep at night.

“I’m not a spring chicken anymore, so I don’t bounce back quite as quick,” he said.

Because of his injuries, Hendrick did not travel to any of the final Chase races and wasn’t at Homestead to see Tony Stewart win the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series title in a Hendrick-powered car – the sixth year in a row a Hendrick engine has been used by the champion.

The team owner was watching on TV, however, and called it “the most unbelievable finish.”

He was keeping an eye on Stewart’s crew chief, Darian Grubb, as well. Grubb is looking for a job after Stewart-Haas Racing fired him at the end of the season (he was given notice after the Charlotte race), and Hendrick said he’d love to welcome the former Hendrick Motorsports engineer back to the team.

But he also said Grubb has many options and isn’t sure what the crew chief will decide to do.

“I hope Darian ends up back with us (in an engineering role),” Hendrick said. “I think he would help our organization. (But) if he wants to be a crew chief, then we don’t have that spot.”

Hendrick said all of the team’s current driver/crew chief combinations – Jimmie Johnson/Chad Knaus, Dale Earnhardt Jr./Steve Letarte and Jeff Gordon/Alan Gustafson, along with the incoming Kasey Kahne/Kenny Francis pairing – will stay intact for next season.

The team owner vowed to improve his organization after Johnson’s five-year reign as champion ended, saying the company was looking under every rock to find answers.

“When you’ve been to the top of the mountain and you don’t do it a sixth time, you start thinking about how you can be better,” Hendrick said. “Everybody, and those guys in particular, knew that it had to come to an end. The odds of you winning six years in a row, especially with the new format, I think it’s going to be harder and harder for anyone to do that.”

Hendrick also praised Earnhardt Jr.‘s turnaround and said he expected the No. 88 team to keep improving.

“From where I sit, as far as those two guys, (Earnhardt Jr. and Letarte) and our whole company feel we’ve got a good combination there,” he said. “And it’ll get better. You don’t go from running 15th to 18th to winning four or five races.

“(The 88 team was) in position to win two or three races and didn’t get it done. But I’m happy with the progress.”