Terry Labonte ties Richard Petty at North Wilkesboro, matches Bill Clinton at Camden Yards | 40 wins in 40 days

Editor’s note: This is the 26th in a 40-part series highlighting 40 of the greatest wins in the history of Hendrick Motorsports to finish its 40th anniversary season. A new installment will be released each day from Nov. 22, 2024 through New Year’s Eve. Votes were taken from Hendrick Motorsports employees as well as representatives of the NASCAR Hall of Fame and Racing Insights with all unanimous selections being ushered in automatically. The remaining wins were deliberated and decided upon by a small panel.

CONCORD, N.C. - It was an odd mix of emotions for Terry Labonte as the NASCAR Cup Series made a stop at North Wilkesboro Speedway in 1996. 

When Labonte rolled off the starting grid that weekend, it would mark his 513th consecutive start, tying Richard Petty for the record at the time. 

But though Labonte was flattered to be mentioned alongside, "The King", he wasn't necessarily in a mindset conducive to reflecting on his own career longevity. The way he saw it, he was a long way from finished. 

He and the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet team proved just that as Labonte would go on to win his second series championship just one week shy of his 40th birthday. 

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And that spring weekend at the 0.625-mile short track would serve as the first warning shot as Labonte sat on the pole and held off hotshot teammate Jeff Gordon to pick up the win. 

“It was awesome. It meant so much to me to set a record like that and it wasn’t like we were riding around in the back to set records,” Labonte said. “To go out and win a race the day we went out and tied that record, that was special.”

A special day called for a special paint scheme and Labonte certainly had that. His Kellogg's Corn Flakes ride, usually painted bright yellow, instead sported a chrome silver look to honor Labonte's new status as NASCAR's "Iron Man". 

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Upon grabbing the pole, Labonte joked that the ride was more like a "silver bullet". The speed in that particular Monte Carlo was so supreme, Labonte and crew chief Gary DeHart coaxed team owner Rick Hendrick into allowing them to pull it out of the organization's museum later that season, with nearly catastrophic results. 

“We got down to battling for the championship and DeHart and I got to talking and we said, ‘We need to get that car and take it to Phoenix (Raceway). Every time we race it, it’s really, really fast,’” Labonte recalled. “So, we got the car out of the museum and took it out to Phoenix. We went out there and ran the first lap in practice and Gary gave me the lap time and I was thinking, ‘That was close to being at the top of the speed list.’ I said, ‘Man, I wasn’t even running that hard. I’m going to get after it a bit.’ And I hit the throttle hard and it stuck and off I went. I hit the wall and broke my hand.

“After that we fixed it up and put it back in the museum for good.”  

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Not even a fracture in his left index finger would derail Labonte that season. His consecutive starts streak eventually reached 655 and he remains just one of 17 drivers with multiple championships in NASCAR's premier series. 

On that sunny day at North Wilkesboro, Labonte certainly had one of the dominant cars, leading a race-high 167 laps. But his wasn't the one in position to win as the stretch run arrived. 

That was the No. 2 of Rusty Wallace, which paced 119 circuits on the day. While Labonte's car surged on long runs, Wallace was better in shorter stints. Wallace led as the race slipped under 50 laps to go and from behind, Labonte's Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jeff Gordon was closing quickly on them both. 

But as fate would have it, it was a good thing Labonte wasn't in the lead. With 25 laps to go, John Andretti, Joe Nemechek and Wally Dallenbach made contact with each other and the barrels at the beginning of pit lane. Andretti slid down the track just in front of the leaders and Wallace had nowhere to go as he plowed into the No. 37 car. 

A red flag flew, and Wallace's car was critically damaged. 

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When the cars refired it was suddenly a battle between teammates and crews as the field, led by Labonte and Gordon, hit pit road. The No. 5 crew was good enough as it kept Labonte in the lead but Gordon wasn't done as his 24 car filled Labonte's rearview mirror over the course of the closing laps.

But Labonte had experience to lean on - 17 seasons, three prior wins at North Wilkesboro and 513 consecutive races worth. 

“If you can get off the corner straight on the bottom, you’re going to be hard to pass and I learned that running up there,” Labonte said. “That’s what I always tried to look for when we were getting the car set up in practice.” 

And that was the difference. Labonte was just good enough through the center and off the corners to somehow hold Gordon at bay and he got to the line first, putting a cherry on what was already a big day. A day, in fact, that transcended auto sports. 

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Labonte was invited to throw out the first pitch at a Baltimore Orioles game soon after, meeting the MLB's own Iron Man, Cal Ripken Jr., who'd broken Lou Gehrig's mark for consecutive starts in the fall of 1995. For most, throwing out the first pitch can be quite a nerve-wracking prospect. 

But "Iron Man" wasn't Labonte's first nickname and the "Ice Man" title applied as Labonte fired a strike. 

“We got invited up to Baltimore, we went to Camden Yards to meet Cal Ripken Jr. because he’d just set the baseball consecutive starts record that year too,” Labonte said. “We went up there and I threw out the first pitch. Got to meet Cal and a few weeks later he came to Dover.” 

“I remember it was kind of cold. I had on a jacket and went down to this little place where you can throw the ball. This guy told me, ‘Come down here and you can practice.' The guy says, ‘Well, do you think you’re ready?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know, I’m a little bit nervous.’ And he said, ‘Don’t worry about it, if Bill Clinton can do it, you can do it.’” 

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And that's just the way 1996 went as Labonte held off Gordon again, this time for the series points title. Gordon would come back with championships in 1997 and 1998 and as for Labonte, he'd finish no higher than sixth in a season for the rest of his career, which officially came to an end in 2014. 

Now, some 28 years removed, the man made of ice and iron still holds a special place in his heart for the group he led that season. 

“When you have a team like that it’s just so hard to keep it all together,” Labonte said. “People on the team win the championship and they can start to think it’s because of them. Then people try to hire away your people. It’s just so hard when you have a top-notch team and back then it was a lot harder because there were so many more teams where today, there’s not as many owners.

“But we had a great team. I’d have put them right up there against anybody.”