MARTINSVILLE, Virginia, 26 October 2004 — There was no celebrating Jimmie Johnson’s NASCAR stock car race victory Sunday as a small plane crash reportedly claimed the lives of 10 people connected to Hendrick Motorsports.
News of the tragedy wasn’t revealed to competitors or fans until just after the race ended.
Johnson, who averaged 66.103 miles per hour in a Chevrolet Monte Carlo, had just completed a celebratory burnout near turn 4 and was preparing for a bigger celebration of his second consecutive checkered flag when officials of the hugely popular NASCAR stock car series told him the news.
NASCAR spokesmen had no immediate details on what had happened other than to announce that the plane had disappeared from radar. But the Charlotte Observer reported that a Beech 200 plane owned by Hendrick Motorsports crashed in thick fog en route to a NASCAR race, killing all 10 people aboard, including the son, brother and two nieces of owner Rick Hendrick.
The Beech 200 King Air took off from Concord, North Carolina, and crashed Sunday in the Bull Mountain area 11 kilometers from the Blue Ridge Regional Airport in Spencer, near the Martinsville Speedway, said Arlene Murray, spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration. “It’s just very tough,” said Donnie Floyd, an employee of Hendrick, who placed a bouquet of flowers outside the company’s Charlotte, North Carolina, headquarters. “We are like one big family.” The cause of the crash was not immediately known, but it occurred in rough, hard-to-reach terrain in weather described as “extremely foggy” by Dale Greeson, who lives about a mile from the site.
Hendrick Motorsports issued a statement late Sunday asking “that those affected be kept in your thoughts and prayers, and respectfully requests that privacy be considered throughout this difficult time.” National Transportation Safety Board investigators were to begin their investigation yesterday.
Hendrick Motorsports identified the dead as: Ricky Hendrick, Rick Hendrick’s son; John Hendrick, Rick Hendrick’s brother and president of Hendrick Motorsports; Kimberly and Jennifer Hendrick, John Hendrick’s 22-year-old twin daughters; Joe Jackson, an executive with DuPont; Jeff Turner, general manager of Hendrick Motorsports; Randy Dorton, the team’s chief engine builder; Scott Lathram, a pilot for NASCAR driver Tony Stewart; and pilots Richard Tracy and Elizabeth Morrison.
