CONCORD, N.C. - Teamwork is one of the most important values for Hendrick Motorsports team owner Rick Hendrick. It will play a huge role in this weekend’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Talladega Superspeedway, as Kyle Larson, William Byron and Chase Elliott each try to claim their Championship 4 spot in Phoenix.
As is tradition, the race will feature side-by-side pack racing with long, multi-car draft lines, naturally lending itself to teams working together to gain whatever advantage they can.
However, back in 2011, the definition of teamwork was very different when it came to superspeedway racing.
At the time, NASCAR Cup Series superspeedways were dominated by a peculiar phenomenon known as “tandem” racing. Two cars – usually from the same team or manufacturer – would pair up to establish a singularly fast on-track partnership. They would bump draft each other to build passing momentum over the other duos who had also linked up.
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Tandem racing was never more evident than on the massive Talladega Superspeedway, and NASCAR superstars, Jimmie Johnson and Dale Earnhardt Jr. took full advantage of being Hendrick Motorsports teammates in the spring race of 2011. They would combine for one of the most dramatic endings in the history of the sport.
“When we started this tandem stuff … it felt so unnatural to run second by having to draft a guy that was going to win the race,” Earnhardt Jr. said to the Charlotte Observer back in 2014. “That was the oddest thing to wrap my brain around. Man, we’re going to run a race today and I might have to settle for second, intentionally.”
At Talladega, the pairings seemed to happen organically that spring. Hendrick Motorsports had brought four really fast hot rods that weekend, as the Concord, North Carolina-based team swept the first two rows during qualifying with Jeff Gordon on the pole, Johnson second, Mark Martin third and Earnhardt Jr. fourth.
Starting on lap one, Gordon and Martin teamed up, and so did Johnson and Earnhardt Jr. Each teammate had co-joined for what wound up being the better part of the race.
“We never went more than a half a lap without each other,” Johnson said afterwards.
From the start, it was a wild one. Three laps in, with Gordon and Martin leading the way, the duo of Clint Bowyer and Michael Waltrip began their challenge for the lead. By lap 10, Denny Hamlin had pushed Ryan Newman to the top. The rest of the afternoon played out in a similar fashion.
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The Johnson-Earnhardt pair had a brief scare on lap 28. The first caution of the day would wave when Landon Cassil hit Brian Vickers on the backstretch, sending him spinning. Both Johnson and Earnhardt Jr. evaded, but Earnhardt Jr. still received a bit of damage with contact from the encounter. While the No. 48 held a slight speed advantage among the duo, Earnhardt Jr. knew he had to push Johnson the rest of the way if he was going to come out with a good finish.
One breathtaking part of tandem racing was the speed advantage that could be gained in two-car drafts. It was estimated that the right duo with momentum could see as much as a 20-mph advantage to those teams around them. While exciting at times, it often seemed like teams were performing a risky high-wire act as they steamed around the 2.66-mile, high-banked superspeedway.
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With that dynamic in place, tandem after tandem would grab a bit of momentum and bolt to the front of the field, which resulted in a jaw-dropping 88 lead changes. It quickly became evident that excellent timing, a little good fortune and a great drafting partner were going to be key as to who would prevail.
With three laps remaining, there were seven pairs of cars with a shot at the trophy. All four Hendrick Motorsports drivers were very much in the mix. The pairings of Carl Edwards and Greg Biffle and Bowyer-Harvick held a sizable advantage to the rest of the field entering the penultimate lap.
That would change coming out of turn four heading for the white flag. Gordon-Martin caught and passed Bowyer-Harvick for the top two spots crossing start-finish. The Hendrick Motorsports teammates remained out front until turn three of the final lap, where Johnson-Earnhardt Jr. were on a heater – diving to the bottom lane with momentum in fifth and sixth.
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That move led to a four-wide battle, as Johnson had just enough steam to edge past Bowyer at the stripe by .002 seconds, tying for the closest margin of victory in sport’s history. That record stood until 2024, when another Hendrick Motorsports driver, Kyle Larson, edged Chris Buescher by .001 of a second to win at Kansas Speedway.
“When you're four wide coming across the finish line, that’s a pretty good race,” Johnson said in his post-race interview. “There was just so much going on at the end of that thing coming to the stripe. They were worried about racing each other and left the bottom open, and we had momentum on our side and off we went. We were just the lucky guy at the end with a good run. We had some big ‘mo’ on our side.”
After the race, an ecstatic Johnson handed Earnhardt Jr. the trophy. Earnhardt Jr. finished fourth.
“Well, I got it and gave it to him,” Johnson said in his post-race interview. “He goes, ‘I don’t want it.’ I said, ‘Well, I’ve got to give you something - here. Thanks.’ He’s got the checkered flag over there, and I can’t wait to thank him for a good job done today.”
“If I couldn’t win the race, I wanted Jimmie to win the race, because I had worked with him all day, and he’s my teammate and I’m proud to be driving for Hendrick Motorsports,” Earnhardt Jr. said to the media following the race. “This was a great finish and a great weekend for us to be able to qualify like we did (sweeping the top four starting spots), race like we did and we have awesome engines, and we build great cars. And we all finished very well today, and that’s a tribute to the craftsmanship we have back in Charlotte.”
After the season was over, NASCAR introduced a new set of rules that curtailed the practice of tandem racing. The sanctioning body cited fan and driver dissatisfaction, and safety concerns, as a reason for the change.