‘That Car is Illegal’: HMS Legend Recalls Rick Hendrick’s Banished Brainchild ‘T-Rex’

NASCAR officials and the team are often at odds with the legality of the race cars. Time and again, the rule of delivering a race-legal car has been pushed to its limits, but nothing comes close to what Hendrick Motorsports tried to pull off with its bold invention named T-Rex. Although the race car was banned from competing in the race after the All-Star race in 1977, it sure was an engineering marvel that Ray Evernham and his team delivered.

Taking a stroll down memory lane, Evernham shared key insights into the ambitious project and how NASCAR ultimately termed the car illegal even after passing inspection. In conversation with Kevin Harvick on the Happy Hour podcast, Evernham also shared key details of building the race car, which helped Jeff Gordon bag a sweet $1,000,000 in prize money.

Evernham explains how the ambitious project by Mr. H was put into action

Speaking on the podcast, the Hall of Famer stated that the car was Rick Hendrick’s idea. According to him, all he had to do was give his ideas to Cech Gardy, who at the time was a fabricator. Going into the All-Star race at Charlotte, Evernham made drastic changes to the #24 car. He made key changes to the chassis and added a big sway bar that gave the car an aerodynamic advantage.

Thanks to the ambitious ideas of Ray Evernham and the team, Gordon was able to cruise to victory lane at Charlotte. Owing to the successful run, the HMS camp was in celebratory mode, but that was soon put to a halt. Evernhamd recalls, “We go up and do all the toast, and we come back, and Buster Alton says, Mr. France wants to see you. I’m like, okay.”

He was expecting to share a beer with the owner of NASCAR, but instead, he was hurried into making a call to his boss. “I go up in there, and he’s sitting there, and he goes, See that phone right there. I said yes, sir. He said you need to pick it up, call your boss and tell him that car is illegal. I said no, it’s not illegal, it passed inspection and inspectors looked at it the whole time. And then he goes, won’t be tomorrow and that was the end of T-Rex.”

However, this was not the only instance where NASCAR had to intervene and keep a tab on extreme inventions of race cars.

Sam Hornish Jr’s Penske car brought back T-Rex memories during the 2008 All-Star race

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Like the T-Rex, the #77 car was far from a conventional race car. It had an unconventional design that was beyond anyone’s wild imagination at the time. The rear housing of the car was angled and pointed towards the outside wall, giving it a significant edge while coming to the corners. Needless to say, the car was fast owing to its unique design, but unfortunately, the car suffered a similar fate as T-Rex, getting banned by NASCAR.

It might look like Hornish Jr and his team were out of bounds with their design of the race car but they were only building on the current trend. “You know, we just maybe pushed down the envelope a little bit further than some of the other people have. It’s something that we saw other people doing earlier on in the year and decided that we wanted to try it out, and actually you know, there’s been people running it all year,” Hornish Jr explained.

It’s fair to say the fans of the golden era not only witnessed the best racing but also the best inventions in the sport. Given how controlled and measured everything is in the modern era of racing, a project like T-Rex is out of bounds for most of the teams.

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