Jeff Gordon joined Hendrick Motorsports in 1993 and was paired with Ray Evernham, who had worked with Gordon in his stock car debut in the Busch Series. The No. 24 team was sponsored by DuPont, and the car's vivid multicolor paint scheme — dominated by oranges, yellows, and blues — earned the crew their nickname. Evernham recruited and trained crew members with an emphasis on athleticism, precision, and rehearsal, treating pit stops with the same structured preparation that professional sports teams gave their game-day execution.
The team's first full season together produced a 14th-place points finish and the 1993 Rookie of the Year for Gordon. By 1994 Gordon won the inaugural Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, his first superspeedway victory. In 1995, at the age of 24, Gordon won his first Winston Cup championship — the youngest champion in the sport's modern era — with the Rainbow Warriors executing pit stops that were consistently among the fastest in the series.
The team won the 1997 Winston Cup championship, highlighted by Gordon's first Daytona 500 victory, his second Crown Jewel win at Charlotte (the Coca-Cola 600), and the Southern 500 at Darlington — victories that together comprised the Winston Million. Gordon claimed his third championship in 1998, a season that produced a modern-era record 13 victories. Among the standout achievements were four consecutive wins and 17 consecutive top-five finishes during the season; Gordon clinched the title with a 364-point margin over Mark Martin.
The partnership ended abruptly in 1999 when Evernham left Hendrick Motorsports to form his own team, Evernham Motorsports, having accepted an offer from Dodge. The split was attributed to tension within the Hendrick organization. Evernham's departure effectively ended the Rainbow Warriors as a defined entity; Brian Whitesell replaced him as crew chief for the remainder of 1999. Gordon continued winning, adding a second Daytona 500 in 1999 and his fourth championship in 2001 under crew chief Robbie Loomis, but the particular combination of Gordon and Evernham commanding the Rainbow Warriors represented a specific era.
The Rainbow Warriors are credited with accelerating the professionalization of NASCAR pit crews. Evernham's emphasis on dedicated pit crew athletes — rather than mechanics pulled from the shop — and his intensive rehearsal programs influenced the operational standard across the sport. The crew's choreographed stops, regularly completed in under 16 seconds for four tires and fuel, set benchmarks that rival teams spent years attempting to match.
Gordon finished his career with 93 Cup Series victories, four championships, and a record 16 Crown Jewel wins. The DuPont paint scheme and the Rainbow Warriors name are among the most recognizable liveries in NASCAR history, synonymous with the period in which Gordon and Hendrick Motorsports dominated the sport's premier series.