updated 6:00 p.m. ET March 17, 2005

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Top-level NASCAR team owner Rick Hendrick was anointed Tuesday as crew chief of the local effort to bring the highly coveted NASCAR hall of fame to the Charlotte region.

“This is where it belongs,” Hendrick told reporters at the Hendrick Motorsports Museum, where he was joined by dozens of business and public officials who are backing the campaign.

Charlotte and its northern suburbs are a stock-car racing hub and are home base for most Nextel Cup teams, Hendrick noted. Fans already flock to racing shops and Lowe’s Motor Speedway in Concord, considered one of the top tracks in the country.

Hendrick, who owns the No. 24 and No. 48 Chevrolets driven by Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson, said NASCAR and Charlotte cannot be separated: “Someone once said, ‘It was born here, it was built here and it belongs here,”’ he said.

Despite Hendrick’s confidence, few details were released Tuesday about Charlotte’s proposal, including where the museum would be built, how much it would cost and who will pay for it.

“I’m not in charge of that part,” said Hendrick, whose Hendrick Automotive Group operates 63 car dealerships from North Carolina to California. “I’m in charge of leading the people who have some skin in this game.”

Charlotte and six competing regions — Atlanta, Daytona Beach, Fla., Kansas City, Kan., Birmingham-Talladega, Ala., Richmond, Va., and Michigan — have until May 31 to submit bids to NASCAR.

“We need to put it in the right place where it will have the most community support, the most access to fans and it will be a state-of-the-art hall of fame that will recognize the sport in the proper way,” NASCAR Chairman Brian France told The Associated Press on Tuesday. “It is not one of those things, it is all of those things.”

Asked if he was surprised at the number of cities bidding for the attraction, France said, “I think this is a destination and a chance-of-a-lifetime moment.”

Luther Cochrane, chairman of the Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority’s board of directors, said officials preapring Charlotte’s bid have tabbed three or four sites as possibile locations for a NASCAR hall of fame.

Even without any concrete details to work with, Hendrick said Tuesday’s show of support by Charlotte’s business community “puts us a lap ahead” of rival cities. NASCAR expects to make a decision by year’s end.

“I don’t think these other cities are in our league,” Hendrick said. “We are going to win this race.”

Asked to handicap the field, Hendrick cited Atlanta, Kansas City and Richmond as leading competitors to Charlotte. While he didn’t mention Daytona Beach, that city can highlight its status as home of the Daytona 500 and as the place where the France family founded NASCAR and where the sanctioning body is still headquartered.

The shops that cluster near Lowe’s Motor Speedway, just north of Charlotte, have become a major tourist attraction in recent years. The Hendrick facility draws 200,000 visitors a year and others draw 100,000 or more, Hendrick said Tuesday.

Although a number of North Carolina’s top politicians are listed as “honorary grand marshals” in the campaign — including Gov. Mike Easley, who famously put a race car into the wall at Lowe’s during a 2003 charity event — the biggest name on hand Tuesday was Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory, who enthusiastically pitched in with a racing metaphor.

“We’re going to pull off the brakes and put the petal to the metal,” McCrory declared, adding stock car racing is synonymous with Charlotte in the same way country music is linked to Nashville, Tenn., and golf is associated with Augusta, Ga.

“Our goal is to make this NASCAR valley, with the hall of fame as the center piece,” McCrory said.

H.A. “Humpy” Wheeler, president of Lowe’s Motor Speedway, said it is critical for the region’s corporate community to get behind the effort.

“It’s important for Charlotte’s business leaders to lead the way,” he said. “We don’t have mountains or beaches in Charlotte so it’s important to have things like this to attract tourists.”

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