WRAL Sports Fan

NASCAR

Hensley recalls his moment of glory for Earnhardt

By SceneDaily.com

Mar 25, 2009

Jimmy Hensley holds an unusual distinction in NASCAR circles. He won just one pole in Cup competition, yet he didn’t start that weekend’s race.

What makes the story more interesting is the fact that Hensley, now 63, wasn’t even competing in NASCAR’s Cup series at the time. Yet the personable driver from Ridgeway, Va., was called upon by one of the top teams of the day to put its car in the field at Martinsville Speedway. Hensley didn’t just get the car in the field, he put it on the pole for the 1989 Old Dominion 500.

And it wasn’t just any car. It just happened to be the Richard Childress Racing No. 3 Chevrolet of Dale Earnhardt.

A popular NASCAR driver who competed in Cup from 1972 through 1995, Hensley was driving an oil truck full time and running occasionally in what is now NASCAR’s Nationwide Series when Hurricane Hugo hit the East Coast in the fall of 1989.

The storm, which resulted in 109 deaths and caused $10 billion in damages, ripped through the Caribbean before making landfall on the coast of South Carolina and beginning to move up the East Coast.

While it looked as if it might force the cancellation of the Sept. 24 Cup race at Martinsville, that wasn’t the case.

Hensley, driving for Hickory, N.C.-based car owner Dwight Huffman at the time, was scheduled to compete at Martinsville but said the weather forecast was so grim, he headed off to his “real” job that Friday morning, “I remember when I got up, the clouds looked like they were right on top of the ground,”

Hensley recalls. “I was driving the oil truck, too, so I just went on to work. I thought it would be a washout. About 9:30, they called me and said , ‘Hey, you need to get over here. They’re going to dry the track.’”

At the track, Hensley says he was still sitting in his car for what was then called the Busch Series when Kirk Shelmerdine, Earnhardt’s crew chief, and fellow RCR employee Will Lind approached him with a proposition.

“They asked if I’d come over and warm their car up,” Hensley says. “They said Dale couldn’t get to the track because the storm had torn his farm up.”

There was a good reason Shelmerdine and Lind had tabbed Hensley. The local favorite had won two Busch races at the track in 1987 and ’88, so it was obvious he knew how to get around the tiny, flat half-mile track.

“I said, ‘Sure.’ I was excited,” Hensley says. “We had about the quickest time in every practice, but I kept thinking Dale would walk in and jump in and qualify the car. I never dreamed I’d be asked to qualify it. I just thought I was out there having fun and practicing.”

That changed, though, when Hensley was told Earnhardt, a three-time Cup champion and the points leader at the time, likely wasn’t going to arrive in time to qualify the car. When Shelmerdine asked Hensley if he’d qualify the team’s car, Hensley became, in his own words, “a basket case.”

“Nervous? Man, I had buzzards flying around in my stomach!” he says.

“I knew Dale could sit on the pole with that car. Easily. I almost screwed it up, but I was lucky enough to get in a real good lap.”

Good enough to edge noted veterans Darrell Waltrip and Geoffrey Bodine for the top spot.

Earnhardt, meanwhile, after assessing the damage surrounding his Mooresville, N.C. farm, finally made it to the track, just in time to see Hensley pull off pit road.

“I think they let him run across the track right as I was coming out for my lap,” Hensley says. “Which I didn’t know at the time. I came back down pit road and he was the first one to stick his head in the car. “He said, ‘Good job boy!’ And I was thinking, ‘Where’d you come from? Why weren’t you here about 30 minutes ago?’”

Today, Hensley continues to work outside of racing, installing fire-protection systems. While he says he misses competing, “I always loved to work. So once I couldn’t drive ..., I just got back in the real world.”

And occasionally, he says, he’ll still be asked about his racing career and putting Earnhardt’s car on the pole at Martinsville.

“A lot of construction guys will look at me,” he says, “and you know they recognize you, but you’re there on a construction job, so they aren’t so sure.

“Once they find out, it’s a pretty neat deal, really.”