The true story of 'T-Rex'

it ran one race it dominated that race and and was banned by NASCAR that part of its true t-rex is a great race car no doubt about it but I think it's it's urban legend has grown so big you know outside of itself that now it's it's more more the legend and the reality of the car was it was really mr. Hendricks idea mr. Hendricks said to all of us as crew chiefs and and you know our engineers and whatnot you guys get together and give Rex Stumpf who was our lead engineer at that time all of your ideas about building the ultimate race car and they went a page-by-page by the rulebook football along with NASCAR and built a car that was really really well built but we used to take it with us and test because it was built in you know the proper way and one day we're over at Charlotte I said hey you know what let's let's go ahead and and drag this t-rex out and and run it a little bit and find out how it compares to the other car Jeff went out and get gets into your X he goes out he's two or three tenths off of what we'd run with our regular carnies like ah you know it just there's there's something there I can't really explain it but it's just not feeling that good not like well let me let me play with it let's put a crazy setup in it so I had these ideas about some setups and I talked to Rex about my idea and he's like yeah that may work and for that time it was really unheard of to put softer front Springs and stiffer rear springs and a bigger sway bar and things like that in it and we did those changes in Brian weitzel and I were staying on top of the truck you know Jeff goes out and he goes around and and you know I clicked my stopwatch and I'm like app it was maybe look like 1/10 faster because I was just looking at the tents and also Brian's like Patton man you are going you know and it was like a second faster and I would just wasn't reading that the second part when we were like whoa and Jeff rolls into the garage he flips up his helmet his eyes I've got this big he's like well if if it wasn't for Jeff Gordon driving that car it might still be legal but that night if he just he was running laps in that race that were seven or eight tenths of second faster than the whole field and just can't just just totally annihilated them and Gary Nelson at that time or Buster can't remember which one said to me uh mr. France wants to see you so I thought he want to congratulate if you build on our friends you know truck yeah good race tonight bill you know kind of whatever so he says so he's sitting there and he said um he says sit down he said you need to pick up that phone right there and call your boss and tell him that car is illegal and I was like what no no they just said area it was passed inspection I said it he he said no it's illegal I said no sir we built that car by the rules it's 100% legal by the rulebook and he said it won't be tomorrow so I had to call mr. Hendrick and say hey boss we got a problem so that was that was starting the legend of t-rex and we had we had to make a few changes to it and we tried to run it again and it just never it was never never the same now the legend you know I hear all these things that we had all these super this and super that but it was just a really well built race car that Jeff Gordon decided to put his foot to the floor at the height of his career and just smoke those guys

Channel: Hendrick Motorsports

Views: 195,318

Rating: 4.9468913 out of 5

Keywords: Jeff Gordon, Ray Evernham, Hendrick Motorsports, NASCAR, Charlotte Motor Speedway, Jurassic Park, T-Rex, T Rex, All-Star Race, NASCAR All-Star Race, Chevrolet, No. 24, Chevy, No. 24 Chevrolet, No. 24 Chevy

Id: XQ-FS4pOCaE

Length: 3min 32sec (212 seconds)

Published: Wed May 16 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Nanojack]

I kind of know the story, that the T Rex was this envelope-pushing design, that it was so far ahead of everyone else that they made it illegal, but what really made it so much better than everybody else? Whenever I read an article about it, there's never any specifics. Even here, "soft front springs, hard rear springs, bigger sway bar.." How is that enough to make it over a second faster?

[u/deh321]

This needs to be a 30 for 30 short.

[u/ryan49321]

Still waiting for a respectable diecast to be made of this car. Fingers crossed for the Gordon legacy diecast they’ve been firing off although universal studios would probably never let it happen.

[u/UTTuba16]

The fuckin Frances lol

[u/YourFavYellowMan]

One of the highlights of my internship with the NASCAR Hall of Fame was being able to push that car around.

[u/lonewanderer812]

The car was so fast yet he only led 7 laps. He started dead last and worked his way up to 3rd at the end of the first segment. Then they inverted the entire field and he worked his way again up to 3rd at the end of the segment then drove away from everyone for the 10 lap shootout at the end.

[u/dj88masterchief]

Yea, but what did they change in the rule book to make it illegal?

[u/nofearspeed82]

Somebody just posted about this a few days ago. Inside it has a link where they talk about a lot of what they did

[u/girlwithaguitar]

Okay, but I actually need to call NASCAR out on this one. If there's nothing wrong with the car, you shouldn't make it illegal. It should be the job of the rest of the field to learn themselves what made that car so fast.