Hendrick Motorsports is the most successful NASCAR team in history for a reason. They’re not just dominating on the track, the team is rewriting the sport’s playbook by trailblazing its way through. With the help of robotic arms, laser scanners, and a NASA-level metrology lab, HMS has turned precision-level engineering into a winning formula, one that they hope will dethrone Team Penske during the Next-Gen era. Even though the majority of the Cup Series cars are standardized, the team is looking for every advantage it can get to gain a competitive advantage.

With two wins under their belt already and three drivers within the top six of the drivers standing, Hendrick Motorsports’ continuous innovation, combined with unparalleled execution, is leaving rivals behind. In a sport defined by fine margins, robots that can measure parts to thousandths of an inch are bound to give an advantage, right?

The time has passed when NASCAR vehicles were meticulously built by a team of engineers. The future is already here, as robots and digital tools are the new crew members, building cars in virtual reality even before they hit the racetrack. Even though 85% of the parts that are used must come from a single-source supplier, teams are given the freedom to choose how they wish to combine the parts during assembly, and that’s where they can find gains that lead to having a competitive advantage.

For Hendrick Motorsports Vice President of Competition Chad Knaus, that’s the difference between winning and losing. He told Motorsports.com, “They want to have a set of tolerances that everybody has to operate within and it’s up to us to take those tolerances, stack them up in a way that creates performance, whatever that metric may be that we determine is the most important performance enhancer for that track and apply it. Whether that be weight, whether that be geometry, whether that be shape.”

Unlike other sports, getting a result in NASCAR depends on the equipment as well. Each car is given a set of primary chassis pieces, seven center sections, ten front clips, and ten rear clips. To assemble a car, a team like Hendrick Motorsports must accurately measure hundreds of such pieces and assemble them with other individual components. According to Knaus, using automated measuring equipment at this stage makes a tremendous difference in improving the car’s performance.

Even though the process may seem daunting, Knaus said, “It helps us predict where we feel like geometry will be once we put the components together, and then after we put the components together we can go back and reaffirm that our math meets reality.” To be able to measure the parts, Hendrick Motorsports uses a company called Hexagon’s Absolute Arm, which uses touch probing and laser scanning to get accurate results. This allows the team to meet NASCAR’s stringent measurement criteria.

But that’s not all. Deeper in the metrology lab, Hendrick Motorsports also has robotic scanners that need very little human intervention to do their job. The team’s quality control supervisor Roy Crump said, “For the last two or three months, we’ve been trying to measure as many parts as we can just to verify what we have because like I said, in the past we were using two guys to measure with the Romer arms.” Ultimately, Rick Hendrick’s team is not just building racecars, they’re drafting a blueprint that will help them for years to come. With all the technology at their disposal, is it really surprising to see the team dominate in NASCAR?

Rick Hendrick’s vision goes beyond motorsports

It seems like dominating the stock car racing world wasn’t enough for Rick Hendrick. The NASCAR team owner recently introduced the Hendrick Motorsports Technical Solutions (HMTS), which is separate from the racing division. It will have a massive 160,000-square-foot headquarters that will be used to create engineering and manufacturing solutions for not just the government but also commercial programs.

After all, robots and precision technology can’t be only used for motorsports, right? Rick Hendrick has named veteran corporate executive Scott Lampe as the President of Advanced Manufacturing, and he will be overseeing the day-to-day operations at the facility. Lampe will be reporting directly to Hendrick Company’s President Marshall Carlson, who said, “Rick Hendrick’s vision has always been about building for the future. He recognized Hendrick Motorsports Technical Solutions can be a leader in advanced manufacturing, serving customers with ultra-high requirements.”

Construction for Hendrick Motorsports Technical Solutions began in November 2023. The facility has been giving alternate career options to the staff that was previously working in the motorsports division. As things stand, 180 employees are a part of the HMTS with 60 more expected to join in a year and a half. After making a name for himself in the racing world, it looks like Rick Hendrick is aiming to build a legacy in the tech space as well.