On the Sunday after the NASCAR All-Star Race, most of the NASCAR community is relaxing after a late Saturday night.

Not this year.

On Sunday, five men were inducted as the first class of honorees into the brand new NASCAR Hall of Fame. These men – Dale Earnhardt, Richard Petty, Junior Johnson, Bill France Sr. and Bill France Jr. – were honored by their friends, peers and family in a three-hour long ceremony from the new Hall of Fame in downtown Charlotte.

They were, and are, what broadcaster Mike Joy called “the Mount Rushmore of NASCAR.”

The first to be inducted into the Hall of Fame was Bill France Sr., the man who created NASCAR. He turned a hobby of racing cars on dirt tracks and the beaches of Daytona into a legitimate sport that men and women have made careers being a part of.  He built two of the sports most famous tracks – Daytona and Talladega.

“While Bill Sr. created NASCAR and built two superspeedways, he did far more,” John Cassiday, a long-time friend and legal counsel to the France family, said during the ceremony. “(He) championed the effort to gain national and worldwide recognition for NASCAR’s brand of stock car racing. His efforts attracted some of the finest competitors and corporate sponsors, many of whom are substantial supports of this Hall of Fame.”

Bill France Sr.’s son, vice chairman of NASCAR Jim France, accepted an honorary ring on behalf of his late father.

“If Dad were here today, he would be proud, as well, but in a different way,” France said. “He would be proud mostly for NASCAR. He would be proud of this Hall of Fame, a commitment made to honor our past and to recognize the individuals who are responsible for making NASCAR what it is today, for their great                accomplishments.”

The second inductee, Richard Petty, became the first driver to be inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

Petty, a seven-time Cup champion and winner of 200 races, was honored by his cousin and former crew chief, Dale Inman and his son, former racer and broadcaster Kyle Petty.

“Richard Petty was also a teacher,” Kyle Petty said. “As he came along, as the sport grew and changed, he was one of the first to embrace the media and understand what the media meant to the sport and to him and to the sponsors as sponsors came into the sport. He taught that to the other drivers and he’s taught that to the generations of drivers since then, to the Earnhardts, Labontes, Tony Stewarts of the day.”

Petty also talked about a secret of his father’s that nobody probably knew – how big of a NASCAR fan Richard Petty was.

“I think that’s what made him a great racecar driver,” Petty said. “He loves the sport. He carries a passion for this sport. He loves to drive. He loves to work on it. He loves the guys he raced against. He loved the fans. He loved everything about the sport.”

Richard Petty expressed what his son talked about when he took the stage to be honored.

“The fans is what it’s all about guys,” Richard Petty said. “We wouldn’t be here without the fans. There wouldn’t be a Richard Petty. There wouldn’t be a NASCAR. But the press was telling the fans about NASCAR. The fans came. The fans developed a love, a real love for it.”

The third inductee, Bill France Jr., was the pioneer that led the second generation of NASCAR into what it is today.

France Jr. was the idea behind the television contracts, the marketing and sponsorship that made NASCAR a household name.

Inducting the late Bill France Jr. was Rick Hendrick, the man behind Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson.

Hendrick honored his friend by telling stories about France Jr. and how he actually helped build Talladega and Daytona by driving bulldozers.

He also told a story about how the Tom Cruise movie, “Days of Thunder,” was created after long meetings with France Jr., Richard Childress, Dale Earnhardt and Hendrick’s former driver, Geoff Bodine.

“So Richard and I sat there. Bill started off with the speech he’s given me many times,” Hendrick said. “This sport is bigger than you, it’s bigger than me, and it’s going to be here when we’re all gone. That’s the way he ran the ship.”

Accepting on behalf of Bill France Jr. were his children, Lesa France Kennedy and Brian France.

“One of the greatest quotes that I ever saw was a headline, when I was a teenager at Talladega, said about my father, “mowing the grass, painting the fences, running auto sports’ biggest show.’ I’m very, very proud of my father,” Brian France said.

The fourth inductee, Junior Johnson, was known as a driver and a car owner. As a car owner, he won six championships – three with Cale Yarborough and three with Darrell Waltrip, who along with Johnson’s son, Robert, inducted him into the Hall of Fame.

Johnson, who learned to drive fast while outrunning the law while working as a moonshine bootlegger, was Waltrip’s hero growing up.

Waltrip also talked about how Johnson was a real innovator within the sport.

“He learned about the draft,” Waltrip said. “Junior Johnson, the thing that we all use today to huge advantages, Junior Johnson discovered the draft at Daytona. He was an innovator. He always thought outside of the box.”

Johnson took the stage and discussed his relationships with Bill France Sr. and Jr. He talked about how he went from running moonshine to running NASCAR races.

He also told how the NASCAR Sprint All-Star race was created by an idea that he and a few other people in NASCAR came up with. He talked about how he was involved in moving the Cup awards from a hotel in Daytona Beach to the bright lights of New York.

“I thought it helped racing,” Johnson said of moving the awards ceremony to New York. “It took us a lot farther in the sport to be in New York. You want to promote anything, you really need to go up to New York to do it.”

The fifth and final inductee was the induction that everybody waited for – Dale Earnhardt.

Earnhardt, known to many as ‘The Intimidator,’ was what most call the greatest driver of all time who came from nothing and became larger than life.

Inducting Earnhardt into the Hall of Fame was his best friend and car owner Richard Childress.

Childress, who was noticeably choked up during his speech, told the audience about how he first heard about the man that would go on to win seven Cup championships (six of those with Childress).

He talked about how much Earnhardt loved his family, his wife and children. He also talked about how much he loved his fans.

“He knew they were hard-working people that spent their hard-earned money to come and watch him race,” Childress said. “He wanted to give them their money’s worth.”

Childress welcomed Earnhardt’s wife, Teresa, and his children to the stage to accept the honor and receive the ring.

“Dale Earnhardt was a man who personified the American dream,” Teresa Earnhardt said. “He worked hard. He earned everything he had and he enjoyed it. This is an achievement of a lifetime. To be able to celebrate it, for me this is a moment of pride for Dale that I just can’t put into words.”

Each of Earnhardt’s children, daughters Taylor and Kelley and sons Kerry and Dale Jr. spoke on behalf of their father, each talking about a different passion and love that their father had.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. spoke about the first time he raced against his father in a race in Japan.

“I got up underneath him on turn three and four,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “I just needed two inches to clear him. I didn’t have him cleared. I slid across his nose, up to the wall. He carried me all the way down the front straight-away with my back tires in the air all the way off into one. That was the day I met The Intimidator.”

The induction ended with the Junior Johnson and Richard Petty on stage with their families and the families of Bill France Sr., Bill France Jr. and Dale Earnhardt, celebrating what was one of the most historic days in NASCAR history.