Hendrick vows to race on

Hendrick owns four Nextel Cup teams, including the Chevrolet's of Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson, both of whom are contenders for the championship. He also fields cars for veteran Terry Labonte and Brian Vickers, as well as a Busch Series team for Kyle Busch.

"If you look at this year, it's been one of the best and one of the worst at the same time," Hendrick said, speaking at the NASCAR finale at Miami-Homestead. "We've got 14 Cup wins, five Busch wins and three ARCA wins, 22 wins [total], with Kyle as rookie of the year and second in points and two guys going for the championship tomorrow.

"I'm proud of those statistics, but I'm more proud of the fact that these guys, Pat Perkins and the guys at motorsports, not only took care of my family but the other families. We had a job to do, and the organisation had a job to do, and they showed up at Atlanta and raced. We were fortunate enough to win. Everybody in that organisation, 450 strong, stepped up."

There had been concerns, of course, that such an enormous loss could do deep and irreparable harm to the Hendrick group, considered the strongest in NASCAR. Hendrick said clearly that that is not the case.

Hendrick read from a prepared speech and announced beforehand that he would take no questions, adding that he would answer all questions when the time is right, perhaps by January. He did, however, pose a question to himself in making a statement about Hendrick Motorsports.

"I can answer one of the questions for you," he said. "What's going to happen at Hendrick Motorsports? Who's going to take the place of [son] Ricky and [brother] John? Before that we lost my dad four months prior to this deal. How about Jeff Turner, the general manager, or Randy Dorton, who has been with me 20 years, and Joe Jackson, who was one of my best friends from DuPont?

"We're going to honour these people by going on. I can't replace my family, and I can't replace people like Randy Dorton and Jeff Turner, but what our company has always done is we're a strong group, a lot of people with back-up that are committed. The way we close those holes is together each one of us picks up pieces.

"When I got back to Motorsports [two weeks after the crash], and I've been there this week, it was amazing to me all the things Randy was doing and Jeff was doing and Ricky was doing. Everybody had picked up a little piece of it.

"To honour all of those people on that plane, I'm more committed to this sport than I've ever been. Together we're going to try to be a strong competitor and a good citizen of this sport. The folks on that plane will never be forgotten, but we have to go on."