Standing in the shadow: Rick Hendrick is a winner, a czar of car sales and tycoon of race teams. But behind both is a man haunted by loss.

• Author: Martin, Edward
• Position: COVER STORY

As evening comes to the hollow at the bottom of Stowe Lane, a crowd gathers. Under red canopies, tables bulge with burgers, chicken, corn on the cob, boiled new potatoes, desserts. A master of ceremonies hops on a low stage painted in a checkered-flag design. "Dale, Jimmie--y'all come up here." Race driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. takes his place beside teammate Jimmie Johnson. "Would you guys lead us in the birthday song?" Earnhardt begins in a cracking voice, then Johnson joins in, both so off-key the crowd cackles. Employees with recent birthdays spin a wheel and collect checks based on where it stops, from a few hundred to a thousand dollars.

It's the annual family night at Hendrick Motorsports LLC. Rick Hendrick watches from the side of the stage. At 59, his hair has gone gray, the once athletic body rounder, the result of medication and a taste for sweets--especially ice cream. Here, on the Mecklenburg-Cabarrus county line within earshot of Lowe's Motor Speedway, the things that matter most surround him.

Up the hill is a sprawling gray building, its glass front and oval columns raked forward. Newly built race cars and exotic technology crowd its 600,000 square feet. Computer-driven stereolithography creates precision mockups of complicated race-car parts. A $2.2 million dynamometer simulates racing conditions for 700-horsepower engines that propel Earnhardt, Johnson, Jeff Gordon and Mark Martin around tracks at 200 mph. Vintage cars are on display along Papa Joe Hendrick Boulevard, named for his late father.

Linda, his wife of 36 years, is at his side. He cradles a grandchild. They're family--and reminders of family. Many of his more than 500 racing employees and drivers consider themselves family of a sort, too, bonded by the unrelenting pressure of building and racing cars. Hendrick lost his son to racing. Earnhardt lost his father.

Rick Hendrick's passion is automobiles, driving, racing and selling them. Parked here are his 599 Ferrari--$302,000 list, 200 mph top speed--and his 620-horsepower Corvette ZR1. Cars have made him so rich he "could burn a wet mule with hundred-dollar bills," former racer Buddy Baker jokes. Hendrick doesn't discuss his net worth, but Forbes estimated his closely held Hendrick Motor-sports cleared $21 million in 2007. Hendrick Automotive Group was profitable last year on sales of more than $3.7 billion, down from $4.3 billion in 2007 but still ranking as the nation's second-largest privately held dealership chain and seventh overall. In a year when 900 dealerships nationwide closed--including 25 in North Carolina--Hendrick bought nine, bringing his total to more than 80. Johnson won his third NASCAR championship, Hendrick Motorsports' eighth in 14 years.

As a spinning carousel with its laughing children bobs behind him, Hendrick shakes hands, pats shoulders and poses for photographs with employees with the ease of an executive whose accomplishments are cause for celebration. But there is another Rick Hendrick, the one whose success has been shadowed by tragedy as unrelenting as mortality itself. He gave up his championship boat racing team after a crash killed best friend Jimmy Wright in 1981. His star NASCAR driver Tim Richmond died of AIDS in 1989. In 1996, Hendrick was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia only days before being indicted on charges of bribing Honda to allocate him more cars. He pleaded guilty, he says, because he was so ill that fighting it would have killed him. His father, whom he revered, died of lung cancer in 2004. Three months later, a plane crash took his son, his brother, twin nieces and several business associates--10 in all.

Now, as car sales plummet and empty seats gap-tooth racetrack grandstands, another shadow, less personal but real, looms. Is America's love affair with the automobile fading? And how will Rick Hendrick fare if the public's ardor for cars cools like the evening air in the hollow at the bottom of Stowe Lane?

His roots help explain how he has weathered more than 35 years in these fiercely competitive endeavors. "Some people can sell cars, groceries, you name it," says David Carter, director of the University of Southern California's Sports Business Institute in Los Angeles. "But you feel better doing business with someone who cares about what they're selling. Rick Hendrick delivers authenticity."

Growing up in the sun-seared tobacco fields of Palmer Springs, a Virginia crossroads just over the state line near Kerr Lake, he would walk plant to plant, harvesting heavy green leaves that coated his hands and arms with tarry black gum. "I dreamed about doing something--anything--off the farm." His mind wandered to cars. "I was a gearhead from...