Bodine's Olympic bobsled on display at Hendrick Motorsports Museum & Team Store

CONCORD, N.C. (Aug. 4, 2010) -- "Night Train," the bobsled produced by former Hendrick Motorsports driver Geoff Bodine and raced by the American men to win the gold medal in the 2010 Winter Olympics is on display starting today in the Hendrick Motorsports Museum and Team Store. Click here for museum hours, directions and a map of the Hendrick Motorsports' campus. The sled will be on display until the beginning of October. Bodine, who drove the No. 5 Chevrolet when Hendrick Motorsports first began in 1984, created the Bo-Dyn project in an attempt to give American bobsledders their own equipment. He was inspired to do this after watching the U.S. men’s bobsled team finish seventh in the 1992 Olympics with European sleds. He enlisted the help of his friend and NASCAR chassis engineer Bob Cuneo, and the Bo-Dyn Project was born. Cuneo, the project’s lead engineer, brought his background as a chassis builder for NASCAR modifieds into the construction process. He started building sleds in 1992 and continually tweaked the design – notably using Kevlar, a DuPont product. Several American bobsled competitors collected medals while using the Bo-Dyn sleds including the women’s team, which took the gold in the 2002 Salt Lake City Games. But the biggest Bo-Dyn triumph happened with this sled in 2010. Two years earlier, Cuneo developed this unit for research and development but doubted it ever would be raced competitively. However, when Steve Holcomb steered the sled during a practice run, he insisted upon racing it in during his team’s 2008 season in Europe. Cuneo made the final adjustments, but didn’t have time to paint it so Holcomb victoriously raced the sled still bearing black primer. Cuneo jokingly called the sled the Night Train, and the name stuck. When the 2010 Olympics rolled around, Cuneo painted the sled flat black to maintain its identity and the four-man American team went on to win the United States’ first men’s gold in bobsledding since 1948.