CONCORD, N.C. -- Many people wonder what happens to a stock car once a race is over and it’s time to prepare for the next week. While many chassis are disassembled or retired, some are taken down another avenue to see the track again.
Enter Hendrick Motorsports Track Attack. The brainchild of Bill Snider, the new program allows NASCAR Cup Series chassis to be remodeled into road course cars that can be purchased by any enthusiast racer. Snider, the managing director of the program, has teamed up with NASCAR champion crew chief Lance McGrew to manage the car builds.
“Hendrick Motorsports has chassis that we retire that have a lot left in them,” Snider said. “We also have components that have more life, as well as brand-new components, so we’ve put together a couple of different packages to sell to customers for sanctioned events and track day use.”
The program now is involved with road-course competition. On July 31, two Hendrick Motorsports Track Attack cars placed third and seventh in the Ultimate Track Car Challenge shootout, which was put on by Grass Roots Motorsports at Virginia International Raceway. It was the first time Hendrick Motorsports competed in the competition, making the feat even more impressive.
Ron Malec, who was Jimmie Johnson’s car chief for all seven of his championships, drove the No. 25 third-place car and Adam Boatman, who is a Track Attack team member and a professional driving instructor, piloted the seventh-place No. 5 Chevrolet in the shootout. The Ultimate Track Car Challenge originally was supposed to run in May but was postponed due to COVID-19.
“Including us, there were 18 cars,” Snider said. “When they rescheduled it to run in July, we decided to go ahead and (participate). Between Lance, Adam and myself, we started looking at what events we could run to show the enthusiast community what these cars are capable of.”
Snider said Hendrick Motorsports Track Attack plans to compete on more road courses. His team has been working for more than a year with retired chassis models and has been completely hands on in every aspect of the program – from reworking the cars to the advertising.
However, Snider said it wasn’t a walk in the park to get everyone on board with reusing the retired Hendrick Motorsports vehicles.
“It was me looking at these cars and having some conversations,” Snider said. “We started with two and went out there and showed them and have continued to sell them. It’s so unconventional but the group that we have – Lance, Ron, Adam, all of Lance’s guys – they believe in what we’re doing. We’re going to do everything we can to build the best, safest product possible and make it more affordable than our competitors.”
So who can get in on the program? The base-model Track Attack package retails for $125,000 – a fraction of what it would cost to buy a comparable high-performance or exotic car.
“There are people on limited budgets who have it in their blood,” Snider said. “They love high-performance automobiles and working on them to try and make them go faster. They go to road course tracks all over the country.
“You have the budget racer who is running a four-cylinder all the way up to the person who spends $400,000 on a European exotic to run on the track. What we’ve done is marketed these cars and pitted them against other cars that retail for well over $100,000. We’ve run equal or faster than them for far less money.”
Everyone who has bought from Track Attack has some level of driving experience. There are High Performance Driving Education programs offered by many tracks that educate people about how to drive on a road course properly and safely.
Each car is created exclusively by the Hendrick Motorsports Track Attack team and designed with each buyer in mind. To learn more about the program, click here.