Hendrick motorsports plane crashes

[Jeff California]

Update 9 - 6:10pm: We have now received this official confirmation from the FAA:

The FAA confirms everyone on board was killed. The list of passengers is as follows: Ricky Hendrick, John Hendrick, Kimberley Hendrick, Jennifer Hendrick, **** Tracy, Joe Jackson, Liz Morrison, Jeff Turner, Randy Dorton, and Scott Lathum.



www.martinsvilledaily.com

www.cnn.com

Most of you probably dont know this "Hendrick" name. Rick Hendrick is huge in Nascar and is the car owner for big names like Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson, and Terry Labonte. Ricky is his son, John is his brother and served as President of his huge organization. Im not too sure about the others..

A sad day for their families and race fans.



*Update 10 - 6:49pm: We have received the following information regarding the relationship of the planes passengers to the Hendrick Racing Team... John Hendrick was team owner Rick Hendrick's brother. Ricky Hendrick was his son. Kimberly Hendrick and Jennifer Hendrick were twin sisters, **** Tracey and Liz Morrison were the pilots, Jeff Turner was the VP and General Manager of Hendrick Motorsports. Randy Dorton was an engine builder for the company

[xiknal]

Jeff,

My condolences to you and Mark and other NASCAR fans who take this loss very personally.
Keep the faith. Hopefully we will know soon why this happened.

Barb

[Passenger Mark]

I just read this... I watched the race, and when Rusty got cheated (another story), I turned it off, and went to the store.

Jeff, Were they coming from the race???

Mark

[Jeff California]

They were headed to the race. Nascar found out about it during the race but kept it quiet.. and escorted Johnson (who won) along with the rest of the Hendricks teams to the Nascar trailer to inform them. After Johnson won, they went from his "burn out" to Nascars VP who announced the wreck with no details. Then the coverage ended. There was no victory lane celebration, so I figured it must be pretty bad..The twin girls that were killed were Johns daughters (Ricks brother, the Pres of Hendrick motorsports). One of the people on the plane was Tony Stewarts pilot who was catching a ride to the race.

CNN.com posted a link to martinsvilledaily.com (a small paper) and then removed the link about 10 minutes later.. That link had the up to the minute news about the crash.. I have a feeling one of the exec's at the daily said "get our link off cnn.com!! you are crashing our servers!!"

Next weekends race will be... well... like it was after dale senior died.

Jeff

[Passenger Mark]

That team had a Lear... small jet...

Same as Rusty's...

Tough stuff... Yea.... next weeks race will be hard.

[Passenger Mark]

Sorry... my mistake...

It was a Beech 200 Super King...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v132/mark9091/Aircraft/Beechsuper.jpg

There is a good article on Nascar.com...

www.nascar.com/2004/news/opinion/10/25/hendrick_carrying_on/index.html (http://www.nascar.com/2004/news/opinion/10/25/hendrick_carrying_on/index.html)

I particularly like the poem at the end... very true!