Featured Racer : Chuck Hendricks

This has been a long time coming, and to be quite frank, it kind of hurts to give this guy the credit he is about to receive.  That's OK though, with his dementia he won't know if it really happened or he just thought it did.  That's right, the Featured Racer for this month is none other than my brother, Chuck Hendricks of Madison, MS.

Chuck Hendricks - Featured Racer - October, 2018

So, why would I honor him in this way?  He probably won't consider it an honor, only a past due credit that should be given his way.  You see, Chuck has this massive ego.  His ego is so large he thinks he can make everyone's cars faster than his own and still out-drive them.  The problem here is, he actually does help other people with their cars.  In some cases, he actually works on their cars until they are faster than his.  He then has to work on his own more to pick up a little more speed.  But, even if he can't match the speed of the car he worked on, he WILL just out-drive them.

Racing at the local track in his area, Charlie's Garage, he holds most of the track records.  He will also always be found ready to help others right up until race time.  Even the owner of the track has been known to send his cars home with Chuck to try to get them handling better and pick up speed.  Chuck has been referred to as a cheater by some.  The problem is these people were just calling him this because they couldn't figure out how to make their own cars faster.  I guess they were just envious of him and his abilities and were too proud to ask for help.

Chuck started racing slot cars on a home track back in the late '50s.  He ran on his first commercial track about the age of 16 or 17.  His first actual opportunity to race on a commercial track came at the age of 20 or 21.  He fell in love with racing slot cars and quickly became one of the fastest, if not the fastest, at the track.  I know this because I was there.  This was rather crude racing by today's standards.  The track was an old American Raceways King.  It had the old transformers for power and the overhead lap counter.  Races were held by people choosing what lane they would race on and running for X number of minutes counting the total laps on that one lane only.  Later, another primitive track would open.  It had an old American Orange and the race procedure was pretty much the same.  The next track he spent a significant amount of time on was the first modern track set-up we had seen in the area.  It was a Blue King with the 4 1/2" spacing instead of the old 4"spacing.  It also had a modern lap counting system with marine batteries for power instead of weak transformers.  Here, he once again went to the front of the pack in racing.  It was also his first opportunity to run wire chassis with wing bodies.  It was like a dope addict sitting in front of a bag of heroin.  He couldn't help himself and he learned more and more about racing and working on cars, eventually moving into the International 15 class and dominating as one of the fastest in that class as well.

Chuck now races twice a week at Charlie's Garage in Pearl, MS and as often as he can at Dungeon Raceway in Prattville, AL.  He has not learned to dominate at Dungeon Raceway yet, but he has moved up in the field of racers to be a challenger.

So, why go on about a guy who currently is the big dog only at his local track?  It is because of his constant efforts to help others become better racers.  He works on cars for others to help them, but he also tries to show them what he is doing so they can work on their cars better themselves.  He is one of the better people I know with a soldering iron and he is always willing to help others improve their skills there as well.  He also will stand trackside and help others learn how to drive better giving tips about when to brake and how much throttle to use coming out of the turns, etc....  His efforts there have helped as much, if not more, than his mechanical skills.  Why talk about Chuck?  I guess it is because he is good for the hobby of slot car racing.  He is one of these guys who puts others racing and their racing needs before his own needs.  He promotes the local track even if something has happened to frustrate him.  He was once banned from the local track for a couple months because he made a comment about there being a problem with the computer... and he still promoted the track during this period.  By the way, there WAS a problem with the computer.  How important is Chuck to that local track?  During the time when he was banned, the track only had enough people to race about 50% of the time.  Was that because of Chuck not being there?  We cannot say for sure, but when you can't even get 6 cars to race half the time, something is wrong.  You can say for sure though, Chuck is important to the local racing.  Without him, the racing would not be at the level it is now at Charlie's Garage.

Chuck also has a facebook page that is well worth visiting.  Rocking Chair Racers on facebook has many posts about the work he is doing on his cars as well as the races at the tracks he goes to.  You can find a link to Rocking Chair Racers towards the bottom of the right column on Slots New?  Chuck is also currently doing a fine job writing the race results posted in Slots New? for Charlie's Garage.

Oh, Chuck, you do remember "Rocking Chair Racers" was a name I came up with.  Don't you?  Or is your dementia making you think you came up with that name?