Anyone who has been following grassroots asphalt racing in Virginia and some of the surrounding states for a long time likely knows about the legend of the Flying 11.
NASCAR Hall of Fame (HoF) nominee Ray Hendrick made the car famous, and his son Roy continued the legacy, carving out a successful grassroots career in his own right. This year, due to Ray’s first-time HoF nomination and Roy’s passing in August, there’s been an uptick in tributes and throwback paint schemes to honor the Hendrick family.
In September’s ValleyStar Credit Union 300, the annual late model race at Martinsville Speedway, there were two Flying 11 schemes. Ray Hendrick is the all-time wins leader at Martinsville, going to victory lane 20 times there.
One of the tribute schemes was driven by Buddy Isles Jr., who always races the Flying 11.
“It’s big to run it here [Martinsville],” Isles told Frontstretch. “They’ve got the all-time wins here with the Flying 11. It’s pretty huge.”
Before Isles raced the iconic scheme, his father Buddy Isles Sr. carried the torch.
“We’ve been running it 17 years now, 20 years total, including asphalt,” Isles said. “Dad caried it for about 35 years. We’ve got a lot of wins between me and my dad, and I think Ray’s [Hendrick] got like 800. It’s well over 1,000 wins [total] now between just the three or four people I knew that drove it.”
The reason the Isles family is so ingrained with the Flying 11 is because Isles’ uncle, Jack Tant, was its creator and original owner.
“Jack Tant, my uncle, actually designed it [the Flying 11],” Isles said. “He owned the car, built the motors and designed it right in his shop in Littleton [N.C.].
“So Jack Tant created it and all and had a couple drivers before Ray that were really good. But when Ray took over, he was just dominant. Jack stayed with the motors, and then Clayton Mitchell did all the setup work.”
That trifecta of Ray Hendrick, Tant and Mitchell delivered 700+ wins in NASCAR-sanctioned races in the modified and late model sportsman (now the NASCAR Xfinity Series) divisions. Hendrick won five track championships at South Boston Speedway, and he also scored victories at tracks such as Charlotte Motor Speedway, Talladega Superspeedway and Dover Motor Speedway.
The NASCAR Hall of Fame website labels Hendrick as “a driver that was willing to race ‘anywhere and everywhere,’ filling his schedule with modified and late model sportsman races across the East coast.”
The other car to run the Flying 11 design was the No. 26 Clarence’s Steak & Seafood House machine driven by two-time NASCAR Advance Auto Parts Weekly Racing Series champion Peyton Sellers. The Clarence’s car is another legendary scheme in Virginia. So its orange colors combined with the wings of the Flying 11 around the number was like the Virginia late model equivalent of when Jimmie Johnson ran a scheme combining his No. 48 with Dale Earnhardt‘s and Richard Petty‘s legendary cars.
But more so than that, Roy Hendrick drove the No. 26 with sponsorship from Clarence’s between 1975-78 with the Flying 11 wings on it. So what Sellers raced at Martinsville en route to another Virginia Triple Crown championship was the scheme that Roy had previously raced.
“Clarence took a leap of faith on me a long time ago and stuck it out, and we’ve had some success together, that’s for sure,” Sellers told Frontstretch. “To be able to carry that No. 26 tradition on, and think about what the Hendrick family has done for the State of Virginia.
“Just a little bit of an opportunity to pay tribute to the Hendrick family with Roy passing away this summer. He meant a lot to short track racing as well as his dad. Good opportunity. The timing was right.
“I’m pretty happy [with how it looks]. I hope it looks as good on the track as it does in person. The orange kind of jumps out and gets you a little bit.”
While Roy Hendrick may not have become as well known across the East Coast as his father, everyone in the Virginias and even some of the North Carolina late model scenes were well aware of how good he was. Roy Hendrick won several track championships at Southside Speedway, South Boston Speedway and Orange County Speedway. In 1983, he won the track title at all three of those facilities. He even won a 300-lapper at Southside the night his father passed away.
The Ray and Roy Hendrick tributes this year even reached beyond the grassroots level and onto the national stage.
In 2017, Denny Hamlin, who grew up racing at the same tracks Ray and Roy Hendrick frequented in Virginia, ran a throwback Flying 11 scheme for Darlington Raceway’s Throwback Weekend. Hamlin had the scheme on the No. 18 in the Xfinity race, and he ran it again the next day on his No. 11 Cup ride. He swept the weekend.
“When he [Hamlin] put the [Flying] 11 on that car, I about had a heart attack,” Roy Hendrick told Frontstretch a few months before his passing. “I couldn’t believe he was gonna do that.”
Hendrick said that he cried in victory lane for the Xfinity race and that he wished he had celebrated harder with Hamlin after the Cup win. He also expressed that many in the area believe Hamlin has forgotten where he came from, but that that was not at all the case.
Fast forward back to this year, and Hamlin again pulled out the Flying 11 to race in the Southern 500, just one month after Roy Hendrick’s passing.
“Sobering for him to pass away,” Hamlin told Frontstretch. “He was certainly an instrumental part of growing my love for the sport. He was part of the kind of three-man battle at Southside Speedway each and every Friday night: Wayne Patterson, Eddie Johnson, Roy Hendrick. Those were the guys that constantly battled every Friday. With that famous Flying 11 that he had, that his dad had, it was a staple in our sport.
“When we did a throwback to him in I believe 2017 at Darlington, I was able to win the race, he was able to be there in victory lane. And so it was just awesome to see how full circle it all went, being that I was such a fan of his growing up and now he’s wearing the No. 11 of the car that I was driving that day.”
About the author
Michael Massie joined Frontstretch in 2017 and has served as the Content Director since 2020. Massie, a Richmond, Va., native, has covered NASCAR, IndyCar, SRX and the CARS Tour. Outside of motorsports, the Virginia Tech grad and Green Bay Packers minority owner can be seen cheering on his beloved Hokies and Packers.
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