DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — In the days following the 2004 Hendrick Motorsports flight that killed all 12 people aboard, Bill France Jr. and Mike Helton showed up at Rick Hendrick’s front door in Charlotte, North Carolina.France, terminally ill at the time, was the chairman of NASCAR, the stock car racing series his iron-fisted father founded in 1948. Helton was the first non-family member at that time to rise to president of the series and very much in the France family inner circle. The duo represented the very top of NASCAR, and Hendrick was their biggest team owner. France had one question:“You OK?” France asked the grief-stricken Hendrick, who had lost his namesake son, brother and twin nieces in the crash.“And I said, ‘I’ll be all right,’” Hendrick recalled during an interview with The Associated Press. “And he said, ‘Whatever you need, whatever we can do, I just came here to tell you we’re here for you.’ And he turned around and went home.” That is the story Hendrick chose to tell when asked if there was a counter-narrative to the image of the France family that emerged during December’s federal antitrust lawsuit against NASCAR and current chairman Jim France brought by two teams, one of them owned by Michael Jordan.The lawsuit took a toll on the family, which settled the case after eight days of testimony that portrayed them as money-hoarding dictators who got rich while their teams were bleeding cash.“I felt bad for all of them,” said Brian France, the grandson of founder Bill France Sr. who spent 15 years as chairman before s …
