DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) — In the days following the 2004 Hendrick Motorsports plane crash that killed all 10 people aboard, Bill France Jr. and Mike Helton showed up at Rick Hendrick’s front door in Charlotte, North Carolina.
France, terminally ill at the time, was the chairman of NASCAR, the stock car racing series his iron-fisted father founded in 1948. Helton was the first non-family member at that time to rise to president of the series and very much in the France family inner circle.
The duo represented the very top of NASCAR, and Hendrick was their biggest team owner.
France had one question:
“You OK?” France asked the grief-stricken Hendrick, who had lost his namesake son, brother and twin nieces in the crash.