The Worst Hendrick Performance

the 2002 EA Sports 500 one of the seasons most anticipated races Hendrick Motorsports is entering this race not only with the point's lead but with a ton of momentum the past few races have been the best the team could ask for by entering Talladega they had a lot of optimism that was followed up by a huge flop they were looking to beat one of the best teams in all of restrictor plate racing but ended up beating themselves in what should have been one of the greatest races in team history it ended up being probably the worst actually no as a matter of fact it was the worst this is the worst Hendrick performance what makes this one of the worst races is not only the end result but the very beginning of the race right before the green flag ever dropped chaos ensued the whole ordeal took place during pace labs and involved two championship contenders rookie Jimmie Johnson and veteran Mark Martin Jimmie Johnson has been a model of consistency since entering the Cup Series in 2002 this will go down as one of the greatest rookie years in NASCAR history right from the jump he was successful a Daytona 500 pole three wins up to this point and is now a rookie leading the Winston Cup Series standings nobody could have predicted a season ago that Johnson would be a championship contender right from the jump the only person who can beat him is either himself or someone's equipment if we can just make all of that happen yeah we had a couple of guys get together coming down for the single one lap to go DJ yeah looks like Marco is trying to warm up his tires and maybe got a little loose and came over into the 48 so uh I don't know if there's any damage but would like to see what happens down so far that the tire hit the fender there [Music] what in the world world I have no idea he's talking like they the way he's talking to Ben les is all of a sudden just locked up he was turning to the left and it would not turn back to the right he just locked up understandably so crew chief Jack announced was pleading his case to NASCAR to let him repair the car right before the race began even owner Rick Hendrick was over there begging them but unfortunately NASCAR didn't oblige and the pole-sitter of the race had to come down pit road on lap 1 for repairs I think they were gonna let him probably repair the car before the race but once Mark Martin came down pit road right before the green flag dropped they were like okay it's too late so out of the gate right on lap one Hendrick Motorsports is in the hole but that's not to say it's entirely over Johnson's able to repair the car get back out there but still remains multiple laps down meanwhile his teammate / car owner Jeff Gordon is showing a killer instinct Jeff Gordon has won here a ton of times before but in this context a win here would be very important to many fans including his own Jeff Gordon had fallen on hard times which is very insane to me considering that entering this race he was well inside the top five in points but that just shows how good Gordon was during this era entering the 2002 season he was coming off of his fourth championship and this started this whole Drive four five campaign a campaign he would never accomplish unfortunately but still a Hall of Fame career nonetheless but in 2002 that took a bit of a detour when I say a bit of a detour I guess a bad season in Jeff Gordon's fans eyes was three wins and a top five points place finish unless he was running for a championship in these days everyone in the sport considered this and off year now back to the race Gordon was dominant right from the jump he started on the front row with his teammate Jimmie Johnson and even despite Johnson's trouble Gordon was still able to lead on his own without any sort of help from any team as they were running on lap 47 Gordon was only 11 points away from the point's lead Jimmie Johnson's lead banished but what about the other 200 cars in the field well actually there's four more the mb2 Motorsports entries of Kenny Schrader and Johnny Benson are using Hendrick powered engine in this shot you could see Kenny Schrader Terry Labonte Johnny Benson and the 25 of Joe Nemechek they are all Hendrick powered the Hendrick Motorsports engine department has upgraded this week to compete with the all high-and-mighty Dei on these restrictor plate tracks for two seasons Dei has completely dominated at both Daytona and Talladega if you want to win here so badly you have to beat the dynamic duo of Dale Earnhardt jr. and Michael Waltrip upgrading the horsepower is great and all but when your engines lack durability that's a problem in this race it was a major problem because this was one of the only Talladega races to go caution free and just that quickly a solid day turned into the worst problems for Jeff Gordon as we come back live to Talladega he crossed the start/finish line last time in 13th place but he has slowed on the backstretch and now he's coming to pit road under green another twist in the championship picture today and I see no smoke going up the car so looks like it could be a flat tire Dave as soon as I finished my interview with Robbie Loomis he said get off the cart please just talking to me now Jeff started recording that something was wrong under the hood he asked him down the down pit lane what would the problem was he said it's just in big big trouble basically the big big trouble was the engine gave out even after leading all those laps competing with the Dei duo Gordon was unfortunately out of the race and he wasn't going to be the only one Hendrick Motorsports engines had a major problem in this race in terms of durability they probably didn't anticipate the race to go as long as it did to be fair who expects a Talladega race to go caution-free in any sort of students exactly nobody but still Hendrick has paid millions of dollars to figure this stuff out and they probably should have anticipated it unfortunately they didn't and now are suffering the consequences now if you thought that was bad get ready because it's about to get way worse just taking his car to the garage [Music] over sports car Matt do I hear Jimmy Johnson's also struggling Alan the hits keep right on coming for rookie Jimmie Johnson remember he had that opening action at the beginning of the race now he reports a news crew chief Chad canals I'm down on seven cylinders and his kidding worse a bad day for the Hendrick engine department an old man last week was so great at Kansas Speedway for all those guys at Hendrick laughter to call this just a disaster would be an understatement this was an absolute catastrophe the reason being a total of six that is right six Hendrick engines failed that day all six failed within the final 70 laps making this by far the worst Hendrick performance ever in team history in the end Jimmy Johnson lost out on Rookie of the Year Jeff Gordon finished fourth in the standings and over the next two seasons Dei would continue to dominate at the super speedways Hendrick Motorsports would never be this terrible again and once again that'll do it for another video thank you guys so much for watching this is black flags matter catch you next time

Channel: Black Flags Matter

Views: 54,104

Keywords: nascar, nascar racing, motorsports, sports, sport, auto racing, 2002 ea sports 500, nascar winston cup series 2002, winston cup series, nascar highlights, talladega, nascar talladega, black flags matter, nascar black flags matter, the worst, hendrick motorsports, nascar youtubers, nascar youtube, nascar topics

Id: aHAjIHdj1JU

Length: 7min 46sec (466 seconds)

Published: Thu May 28 2020