CONCORD, N.C. - With the curtain finally and formally lifted on the Atrium Health Motorsports Athletic Center on Thursday afternoon, the racing world got its first peek at the latest and greatest investment made by team owner Rick Hendrick into his racing venture and future.
The facility, rivaling those at some of the top athletic colleges at professional sports team complexes in the country, has already served as a gathering place and a home for Hendrick Motorsports' pit crews since early December. Through a recently announced partnership with Atrium Health, the new complex also contains state-of-the-art recovery devices, a nutrition station and a full-time athletic trainer and physical therapist.
Certainly, the AHMAC represents a new bar in terms of pit crew training and recruitment across the sport. And according to Hendrick Motorsports development manager, Roberto Medina, it was a big answer to a need.
"We were looking to recruit a higher caliber athlete, and we were growing as a department, so our facilities really got to a pinch point," Medina said. "We were out of lockers. They were small lockers and there's a lot of equipment the guys use, so they were out of space. And then for the caliber of athlete we were trying to recruit, they're just used to coming from top programs across the country and facilities that are at the top in the country as well and coming to a new sport like racing, it's just new. We had to create an appeal for it and the facility was a big part of that."
RELATED: A look at all eight wins in the Clash for Hendrick Motorsports
In order to create something that could match up to some of those facilities, Medina and company went to the source, visiting college athletic complexes at Clemson, Auburn and Alabama, as well as the MLS' Charlotte FC and even Fort Bragg, among others. In the end, every piece of machinery and every feature right down to color shades of trim and angles were meticulously plotted.
And that includes a rock wall at the back of the weightroom, a feature pit development manager Evan Kureczka said he had to fight for. At least, at first.
"I had to sell Roberto on it. He was against it," Kureczka smiled. "Just the grip strength in general with what (pit crew members) are required to do. It's a different way to train it. And it looks really cool.
RELATED: NASCAR brings back The Chase as 2026 playoff format
"We pulled up to Inner Peaks (a climbing facility in Charlotte) and Roberto says, 'I've got five minutes.' Then an hour and a half later, I'm like, 'Roberto, I've got to get back to work.' I couldn't get him off the wall."
"It hit some grip muscles that you just don't hit in other things we've done and trained with," Medina conceded. "That's pretty unique and it's a cool feature to have too. It's fun to do. It's a team-building thing as well. Obviously, you do the work out, but there's all the chit-chatting that goes on in between. It's more than just the physiological advantages."
For an organization that has long stressed the importance and embracing of culture, that camaraderie was at the front of mind from the start of a process that took nearly two years to fully come to fruition. Blueprints went through multiple iterations and were originally planned around the building behind the pit pad which already served as a homebase of sorts for crew members. But around the 2025 kickoff lunch, Hendrick walked the grounds and a decision was made to overhaul the building behind the museum. Less than a year later, that facility had its grand opening on Thursday.
"There were definitely some challenges, but we took all those ingredients over there and put it over here and it morphed into something else," Medina said. "It turned out really nice. It's more prominent on campus, especially with the partnership with Atrium that came about. This was a better product at the end of the day."
As tours wound their way through the twisting corridors and into locker rooms, recovery rooms and the weight room on Thursday, there were plenty of Easter eggs to discover. To give away a few, on the back wall of the weight room are the outlines of 16 race tracks, at all of which, Hendrick Motorsports has logged 10 or more Cup Series victories. Angled glass, wood and branding throughout the facility match the Hendrick Motorsports logo. The locker room, when viewed from above or on blueprints, is in the shape of an "H".
Even the pathway through the complex was heavily considered.
"We put a lot of thought into the athlete path of travel when they come in here," Medina explained. "Knowing they're coming in to lift and where they're going after lifting - to the locker room, to the practice pad and vice versa - we wanted them to go by nutrition, so that had to be in a strategic area. We also wanted to make sure they took advantage of our staff and training room and recovering modalities, so, we put a lot of thought into what goes next to each other. It's very strategic."
There's a film room and a barber shop. There's a hot tub, a cold tub, a sauna and red light therapy. There's the newly minted Evernham Conference Room and a kombucha kegerator, the latter of which is a personal favorite of Kureczka's.
RELATED: Take a look at the Speedweek, DAYTONA 500 schedule
But more than the individual pieces of the center they helped bring to life, in closing, both Medina and Kureczka stressed the AHMAC as a sum of its parts, representing an investment from the organization's leader into the future.
RELATED: Check out Hendrick Motorsports' unveiled 2026 paint schemes
"Everyone is really grateful for this space. At the end of the day, it's an investment that Mr. H made, and our leadership made sure everything happened," Medina said. "(Crewmen) will tell you how grateful they are when they see the investment and how important their health is. Ultimately, it's going to all effect their performance and that was the goal."
"It ties into our 40-year anniversary (in 2024) and that was Mr. H's deal was the next 40 years. This was the first commitment," Kureczka said. "That's where it really came about was his commitment to the company. We've done this for 40 years, here's our next 40 years and showing the direction we're moving."