Jeff Gordon's Rainbow Warriors: Where are they now?

Ray Evernham remembers the moment he first heard the moniker pitched, but the name of the pitchman eludes him.

It was 1993, Hendrick Motorsports. A 21-year-old rookie named Jeff Gordon was in the nascency of a Sprint Cup career that would last 23 full seasons and be transformative for Gordon, the modern race car driver and NASCAR. That career encompasses 93 victories and four championships. Now 44, but still with HMS, he could add one more of each in his final race Sunday at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

But back then everything was new for Evernham, the crew chief, and his band of 25 highly motivated future achievers. Most everyone on the team had a nickname, but the collective didn’t, until Robert, aka Julio, a short-term, part-time fabrication shop guy, had an idea.

Rainbow Warriors.

“I thought it was cool,” Evernham, now a Hendrick Companies consultant, told USA TODAY Sports. “The rainbow on the fire suit was big and the warriors, we were warriors. I’ve always been a big appreciator of American Indian culture and what really, honestly tremendous people they are. I thought, ‘Yeah, wow.’ We had no idea that the Greenpeace people, that their boats were stopping them from killing the whales, all good stuff, and certainly we had no idea about Rainbow Coalition and anything like that.

“We just thought it was cool.”

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Moustaches and hair style choices have changed markedly since Gordon’s time driving the DuPont rainbow-themed No. 24 Chevrolet from 1992 to 2000, since the mechanics and engineers and janitors with aspirations began talking and working themselves into proximity of and onto this exclusive and ultra-successful regiment. The program became a launching point for many, most of those within a Hendrick organization that continues to benefit from the foundation set with that Rainbow Warriors team that won titles in 1995, ‘97 and ‘98 and would win 10 or more races fron 1996-98. Gordon would add another championship in 2001.

They came from disparate backgrounds, Evernham as a racer from Modifieds, transporter driver/chassis technician Brian Whitesell from an engineering job at a Mack Truck plant, chief mechanic Ed Guzzo from a Ford dealership.

“That was just a pure group that realized they could do more as a group than they could alone,” Evernham said, then chuckled, “and we were fortunate enough to have Jeff Gordon and Rick Hendrick’s checkbook.”

Cultivating top talent

There were future crew chiefs like Chad Knaus, who has won six championships with Jimmie Johnson and the No. 48 crew, a team gene-spliced from Gordon’s original program; Andy Graves, then a chassis specialist, now group vice president and technical director for Toyota Racing Development; Steve Letarte, who was atop Gordon’s pit box from 2005-10 and captured a Daytona 500 win with Dale Earnhardt Jr. before becoming an NBC Sports analyst this year.

Among the group that helped win three of Gordon’s championships: Whitesell, now team manager for the Gordon and Kasey Kahne programs at HMS; Andy Papathanassiou, then pit crew coach, now Hendrick director of human performance, who helped implement the idea of speedy, athletic pit crews; Jeff Knight, an original Gordon rear tire carrier who is a crew coach at Germain Racing and pitted for Gordon’s replacement, Chase Elliott, at Richmond this year; Jim Wall, Hendrick Motorsports engineering group manager; and Gary Eaker, president of AeroDyn Wind Tunnel.

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“Everybody ended up having some talent, but ultimately it was more about getting better,” Evernham said. “We did not have a lot of experience. If there was a common thread, it was all those people who really had the ability and open-mindedness to learn and would put the extra effort in. Every one of those guys that were on that team gave. And really, they gave.

“If you weren’t like that on our team and if you weren’t a continuous obsessive compulsive to get better and push to get better, you didn’t last long around there.”

Knaus fit in. The Rockford, Ill., native joined Hendrick Motorsports in 1993 seeking bigger opportunities and greater responsibility to nurture his ambitions. He earned both at Hendrick first working as an assistant body specialist and fabricator, then on the pit crew as Gordon’s original rear tire changer.

“I think it was a really amazing time,” Knaus told USA TODAY Sports. “Our sport was going through a huge transition at that time, obviously Jeff being the new young guy, Ray Evernham coming in with the new mentality from the team structure in the sport, so it was awesome. It definitely set me up for probably the foundation of the way we race the [Johnson] car now.”

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Evernham sensed Knaus possessed the mettle for the job as he found him sleeping in cars at the shop parking lot in between his regular shift and off-hours tutelage.

“Chad came in as a body shop helper. He used to stay late to try and learn to set up cars,” Evernham said. “He pit-practiced, he did all those things and back then the pit crew didn’t get any extra money. Maybe $25. It was nothing for a while.”

Influence still felt today

Letarte still isn’t completely sure how he wrangled his job as floor sweeper for the Rainbow Warriors at 15. His father, a Hendrick chassis shop employee, and Evernham haven’t told him the whole story yet, he reckons.

“He came in and did his job, which at that time was cleaning,” Evernham said. “He cleaned and then he learned about tires or mechanics.”

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A full-time tire specialist by the 1997 Daytona 500, and Gordon’s crew chief by 26 – they won 10 races together and were second in points in 2007 - he eventually helped re-fire Earnhardt Jr.’s career before transitioning this season to the television booth.

“It was one of those life experiences that I kind of stepped into and had no idea what that would become an opportunity for me to be around a group of guys that really all were mentors at different levels,” Letarte told USA TODAY Sports. “They all brought a certain level of professionalism that you were forced to have to be around them, and I think that’s why you see such a wide variety of success out of that group of people.”

And they will continue to influence modern NASCAR, after helping Gordon create it nearly a quarter century ago.

Follow James on Twitter @brantjames