By The Commish

January opened cold and blustery in Charlotte as the NASCAR Sprint Cup teams prepare for January testing. Still, there are harbingers of racing season almost everywhere one looks. In my own neighborhood, transporters, souvenir haulers, and show car transporters have been rolling in and out of ProCal to be decaled, and friend Dennis reports that his backyard in South Carolina has been ringing with the sounds of engines on track at Greenville-Pickens Speedway. For the last couple of weeks, transporters have been heading south on I-85 to Kentucky or south on I-95 to Lakeland for extra testing. And this week, the teams make their first migration south to Daytona for testing. The 2008 season is upon us.

I was recently in north Charlotte on business, so I decided to swing up to Hendrick Motorsports to see how the teams are preparing for the new year. The most obvious signs of change are in the Hendrick Museum building, where many of the exhibits have been removed and most of the show cars have been pushed back against the fringes of the walls to make more room in the center. The familiar kiosks with Hendrick's championship trophies have been jammed into a window embrasure. The old Busch shop is now the chassis shop, allowing a small glimpse of new race cars being built, but it's very different. The entire facility is being converted to an expanded souvenir shop, mostly to accommodate the anticipated demand for Dale Earnhardt Jr. merchandise. When I asked a staffer where the exhibits were going, she wasn’t sure. "Some got put in the storage buildings," she said. "We sent some of Ricky's stuff up to the 5/88 shop. But I don't know about the rest of it." There are apparently plans for a new Hendrick museum, but no signs of construction yet.

The Hendrick Shop, too, is in disorder. Virtually all of the hanging displays are crowded with Earnhardt and 88 merchandise. I saw one lonely rack of Mears Gang sweatshirts, a few racks of Gordon merchandise, and one rack of Jimmie Johnson tops and a few barrels of sale merchandise. Flat goods like bumper stickers, license plate frames, flags, and decals were virtually non-existent except for the 88. Moreover, about a third of the shop has been converted to a temporary shipping facility for Internet orders; the cashier told me that they’d been overwhelmed at Christmas with demand for "all the new Junior stuff—that was almost all of it." For those of us used to seeing the shop dominated by Gordon merchandise, this was a very new and unwelcome sight.

Up at the 24/48 shop, things were quiet. The cars still on display were downforce cars, not Cars of Tomorrow. Gordon’s four championship trophies and some of his other major wins still dominate the main wall of the shop, with some of Jimmie Johnson’s recent trophies in the side showcases. The main trophy gallery hasn’t been updated, as far as I can tell, since 2005. The receptionist still had 2007 hero cards to give out, but she didn’t know when the new ones would be available—or when the display cases might be updated. Interestingly enough, neither of Johnson’s Nextel Cup trophies is on display in the 24/48 shop. All was fairly quiet as the team came back from lunch; country music was playing quietly back in the shop, but there wasn’t nearly as much activity as I would have expected. "It's still quiet here," the receptionist said. "Maybe in a few weeks it will be busier."

Up the hill in the 5/88 shop, things were livelier. Unlike the 24/48 shop, the newer building has a big viewing window that lets visitors see into the shop itself, and four mechanics were hard at work preparing Casey Mears’ Daytona test cars 5A and 5B. Most of the other cars were still under car covers from the 25 team, and the display cases were filled with materials from the museum—- Geoff Bodine’s first win trophy, Tim Richmond's uniform and shoes, Ricky Hendrick’s custom motorcycle. Unlike the 24/48 gallery, which is full of trophies, these teams don’t have a lot of hardware to show (and most of it is in showcases now blocked by parked cars). A steady stream of visitors focused on the only Car of Tomorrow on display in the whole complex, Dale Jr.’s new 88 AMP Chevy. The receptionist estimated that there are about four-five times as many sight-seers now as previously came to the shop on an average day. The newest member of the HMS team, it seems, is drawing a lot of attention, even though none of his memorabilia is on display.

This is the building where Rick Hendrick has his offices, but the only sign of that-- other than a tape loop showing in the gallery-- was seen high overhead, in the second-floor conference room. There, alone and unnoticed, the Nextel Cup trophy glinted in the January sunlight. It’s early days yet; too early to tell what the season will hold. In the next month, everything will change. It’s time for the hibernation to end.

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