Forgotten Legend: One of Hendrick Motorsports Underrated Drivers Geoff Bodine and His Magnificent Career

Hall of Fames are tricky. Several sports in the world have it and NASCAR is not an exception. The tricky part of a Hall of Fame is that several deserving people are sometimes not included in it. When it comes to NASCAR, that someone is former racer and Hendrick Motorsports icon Geoff Bodine. The HoF has been going on for several years now and it is quite incredible how someone like Bodine has not made it into it given everything he has done for the sport and Rick Hendrick.

Alright, he did not win the Cup Series but is that the only criterion? Geoff Bodine’s is the stuff of legends. The 74-year-old took part in 575 races spanning almost three decades. He won 18 of them and finished in the top-10 190 times. He also earned 37 pole positions. Those are numbers deserving of having a place in the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

How Geoff Bodine helped Hendrick Motorsports stay in business

2024 marks the 40th anniversary of Hendrick Motorsports but had it not been for Geoff Bodine, the team perhaps would not have made it this far. In its first year, Rick Hendrick’s team was called All Star Racing and Bodine was one of the racers they had signed. When the team began its operations, things were tough. As one would imagine, getting sponsorships for a new team was always going to be a challenge and there was a fear of shutting down.

Rick Hendrick needed to win right off the bat and that is where Geoff Bodine came in. In only the eighth race in the team’s history, the driver of the iconic #5 car took victory in Martinsville. That was the first of HMS’ 301 Cup Series wins. Had it not come that year, the team might have shut down and not become the winningest organization in all of NASCAR today.

Bodine would go on to score two more wins that year, solidifying the team’s place in the Cup Series. However, perhaps the greatest achievement of his career came in 1986. The feat was so big that it stamped HMS’ authority as a mainstay in NASCAR’s topmost division. Against all odds, Geoff Bodine won the Daytona 500 that year.

Geoffrey Bodine had several on-track rivalries but perhaps the most popular one was with Dale Earnhardt. There were several people that The Intimidator intimidated during his career. Bodine simply did not care. He raced Earnhardt as hard as anybody and the two had several close shaves on track.

After Bodine’s Daytona 500 victory, the two drivers were called to Daytona by NASCAR executive Bill France Jr to talk about their on-track incidents. This was recreated in the movie Days of Thunder where it was shown that the two were given separate rental cars and they raced to the venue. While the racing did not happen in real life, the two drivers were indeed fierce rivals but had a lot of respect for one another.

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A man who brought Hendrick Motorsports onto the map and stood toe-to-toe with Dale Earnhardt Jr. That is the mark of someone who deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. Geoff Bodine’s career was not all glory, though. He had a habit of getting into crashes and suffered one of the worst in the history of motor racing.

Survivor of one of the worst NASCAR crashes of all time

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In the year 2000, Geoff Bodine was in the twilight years of his racing days and ran the Daytona 250 Truck Series race. He was in the #15 Billy Ballew Motorsports Ford. It was the first race of the campaign and the fans witnessed something horrific. Bodine’s truck was hooked and went airborne, crashing into the barriers and taking them apart due to its sheer momentum.

Flames rose from his truck on several occasions and many drivers struck him after the initial accident as they could not get out of the way. Nobody believed that anyone could survive a crash like that. But Geoff Bodine did. He was seen fiddling with his oxygen mask on the stretcher he was put on after the wreck. If there ever was a case of divine intervention, this was it.

Geoff Bodine was one of the greatest drivers to have ever raced in Hendrick Motorsports. Anyone on the team would agree with that statement. It is a shame that he has not made it into the Hall of Fame yet but surely someday NASCAR will finally bestow the much-deserved honor upon him.

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