Bronson Butcher in victory lane at Talladega Superspeedway earlier this season. (Action Sports Inc.)
Each week, I ask a member of the racing community to shed some light on their career path. Up next: Bronson Butcher, mechanic and tire specialist for GMS Racing and a part-time driver. These interviews are recorded as a podcast but also transcribed for those who prefer to read.
What do you do right now with GMS Racing?
I’m the tire specialist and mechanic on the No. 23 Xfinity car for GMS Racing.
People may have just picked up right there on your accent. It’s not the stereotypical Southern accent people hear in NASCAR. Where did this whole thing start for you?
I’ve kind of lost my accent by now, but I was born and raised in Australia — a small country town in Australia. There wasn’t much racing heritage in my family, but my parents were always rev heads and we’d go to the V8 Supercar races, the dirt racing, drag racing, all of it when I was a little kid.
I decided I wanted to get into racing myself and started racing go-karts when I was 8 years old. Just been doing it ever since then.
My first trip to America was in 2006. I went to Phoenix, Arizona, through a series of events. I won a state championship in dirt racing in Australia, kind of got invited to race in Phoenix and that was the first time I ever got the experience of NASCAR. Until then, no one had ever heard of it in Australia. It was kind of an unknown thing across the pond. From the first time I watched the Cup race in Phoenix in 2006, I knew that was what I wanted to do ever since.
When you first started with the go-karts there, what’s the karting scene like in Australia? Are there tons of people doing it? Is racing a big sport there?
It is. It’s just as serious as it is here in America. Everyone takes it real seriously. But the kind of tradition there, especially when I was growing up racing, everyone wanted to make it to F1 or V8 Supercars. It’s all road course racing. There aren’t any asphalt (oval) speedways. If you want to do speedway racing, you’re in dirt, sprint car stuff, which is really big in Australia too, but I was always into asphalt.
Since I first saw NASCAR in Phoenix there, I just knew that was what I wanted to do. It was actually the same year Marcos Ambrose made his rookie season in Trucks, and so kind of until then, no one had ever been to America to race NASCAR. For the next few years, 2008, ’09, and ’10, I raced, I’d come over to Las Vegas, raced Legend cars with T.J. Clark and his Spencer Clark-driven race team, and it kind of just snowballed from there.
What about NASCAR appealed to you that you’re like, “Wow, this is really cool, more than V8 Supercars and sprint cars?” Why NASCAR?
I’ve never seen racing that was so close, like two-wide, the whole field was nose to tail. Just the whole experience, the fans, I’ve never seen that many fans at a racetrack before. The motorhomes, tailgating as far as you can see.
That’s just something you don’t get in road course racing, really. It’s all about once they get through the first lap, they all spread apart and the race kind of settles that way. But yeah, NASCAR is unlike anything I’ve ever seen, just cars racing that close. They’re so competitive, especially back in 2006, those 15 guys racing within tenths of a each other, racing for a win. Any one of them could have won. So that was really impressive to me and a real eye-opener.
You said you would come over and do Legend car stuff. Was that with the intent of, “OK, I’m gonna get better on ovals and learns how to do oval racing?” Or at that time, what were your career goals and where did it go from there?
I’ve always — and still do — want to make a career out of racing. Cup racing is obviously the pinnacle there. So while I was finishing high school, I dabbled around in Legend car racing and Late Models. Raced a few Late Model stocks at Irwindale Speedway and the Bull Ring in Las Vegas, and when I finished high school in 2011, I packed up and moved to Mooresville, North Carolina.
The opportunity wasn’t there for my parents to move just with the whole visa situation — it’s not simple. But kind of got my start in racing with GMS Racing. I obviously needed a job to pay the bills and all that and started work there as a mechanic and just tried my hardest to find sponsorship, find a ride, just get my foot in the door, make sure people knew my name.
And so you’re still doing racing, as you mentioned, when you can. Obviously I’m sure this has to come first, your road life. When do you find time to race and how’s that going?
So for the last few years I built my own Legend car and I’ve raced all across the country the last two seasons. I got the pole at (U.S. Legends Asphalt) Nationals last year and was leading the last lap — but didn’t lead the last lap. I sold the Legend car and GMS Racing, they have a Super Late Model we built for Spencer Gallagher to run the Snowball Derby two seasons ago, and since then it’s been sitting in the shop. (Team president) Mike Beam came to me one day and said, “If you want to get this car ready and find a way to get to the track, we’ll let you race it.”
So my first race was the Thanksgiving Classic at Southern National Motorsports Park last year, and we finished second. Had a bunch of the guys from the Truck teams and the Xfinity teams come help me that weekend. We had a lot of fun and Mike gave me the chance to (race) anytime I can make it to the track this year.
So I did a race at Cordele (Georgia), the SpeedFest at the beginning of the season. Was having a good top-10 run and got caught up in a mess on the restart. And then had a fifth-place run at Concord a couple weeks ago.
But obviously, it’s like you said — the road life is what pays the bills so I’ve got to keep chasing that and hopefully we have a few off weekends towards the end of the season and we’ll go racing more.
You mentioned the visa situation. It’s obviously a little bit harder for you and your situation to just pack up and fly across the globe essentially and leave your family behind. What were some of the difficulties in doing that and has that been hard for you still to this day?
It is difficult. Obviously I’ve got a few more barriers than a lot of people to cross when it comes to living here and trying to make a living. The visa and immigration stuff isn’t easy, but it hasn’t really slowed me down any.
It’s funny, it comes up in conversation with my dad every once in awhile — when I was first trying to race in America and trying to make it over here back in 2008, 2009, we never had broadband Internet. We were still using dial-up where your phone rings when you try to connect to the Internet. Those times were miserable, it’s like to load a webpage was five minutes long. It’s funny what we managed to do with the limited resources we had back then. So right now it’s not so bad.
I tell a lot of people, whether you’re from Australia or California or Ohio, we all get on the Internet to talk to our family. My plane ride’s just an extra 10 hours for most people. It’s really not that bad. It’s a small world of technology these days, and we’re able to make the most of it.
When you first came to Mooresville, did you know anybody? How did you end up at GMS at that time?
When I was racing Legend cars in Las Vegas, Spencer Gallagher was my teammate, we raced for the same team. And T.J. Clark, who was the team owner at the time, he was the mentor for Spencer, and kind of helped move Spencer to Mooresville and start up. At the time, it was ARCA racing and the K&N East Series. So when I decided I moved over here, I called up Spencer and TJ.. and told them my plans, and they’re the ones that offered me the job and I kind of got my foot in the door.
Wow, that’s amazing. It would be one thing if you had grown up in Las Vegas or something, but just the fact that you happened to be racing there and then met them, that’s pretty cool.
Yeah, it is amazing. With racing, it’s just how much of a tight-knit community it is. Everybody knows everybody and everybody’s helping other people. It’s really cool.
Do you feel like with the situation you have now with the racing stuff, you’re going to just keep trying whenever you can to drive and get that racing opportunity as a driver? What’s your plan with it all?
I’m definitely not giving up on the driving thing yet. For this season, I’m going to do as many races as I can in the Super Late Model and balance that with the Xfinity Series stuff we’re doing. GMS Racing is doing a lot with helping develop future drivers, getting them through Trucks and up to the Xfinity ranks. I think I’d like to be on board with that and possibly if I’m not driving, help other kids come through and possibly help them race with a Super Late Model. I’d definitely like to see other kids come up, kind of give them the opportunity I had, too.
If somebody else was reading this and they’re in the situation, they’re like, “I really don’t want to give up my driving dreams yet, but maybe I need a stable income while I’m still trying to do it.” Would you say that it’s still possible to find a career doing both where you’re able to balance them?
Yeah, it’s been very difficult, but the one thing’s that got me through and got me the opportunity to drive the race car is the hard work that it took. It’s a full time job trying to do the mechanic stuff in the Xfinity and Trucks Series. But I’d still work on my Legend cars late at night, and I think the GMS Racing gang and Mike Beam saw that and saw how bad I wanted it, so they’ve given me this opportunity for no other reason at all, really. So I always believed and heard that hard work pays off at the end. You might not always see it, but it definitely does, and I think if anyone has that dream and ambition to keep driving, just keep chasing after it. You don’t know where it will take you.
I never thought I’d end up here when I was 10 years old racing go-karts in Australia. And I might not make it to the Cup level, but I’ve had a lot of fun and a lot of good experiences along the way.
I understand what you’re saying about losing your accent since being over here, but I can still hear it. Do your family and friends in Australia say, “What’s happened to your accent?”
Actually this offseason is the last time I’ve been home in five and a half years, and so everyone there thought I sounded like an American. I tried to go home for a month and try to get my accent back a little bit.
Joey Meier, then an employee for Dale Earnhardt Inc., brings Dale Earnhardt Jr. the American flag after the famous 2001 victory at Dover — the first race after 9/11. (Courtesy Joey Meier)
Each week, I ask someone in the racing community to shed some light on their career path. Up next: Joey Meier, who serves as both spotter and pilot for Brad Keselowski.
Are you the only pilot/spotter full-time guy in NASCAR history?
No, no. That’s actually where a lot of pilots used to be. Dale Earnhardt’s pilot, Terry Labonte’s pilot, Harry Gant’s pilot, they all spotted back in the day. Before a spotter was required, the pilot was already at the racetrack and with the limited manpower and the availability of the pilots (it made sense).
One of the things we do well, as you know from most piloting, is we talk on the radio well. So Mike Collier, Danny Culler, Eddie Masencup, those three come to mind. They would actually spot. Eddie Masencup stayed with Terry Labonte the longest. I’m kind of the second generation pilot/spotter, but I’m the only one right now that does both fly and spot.
You’ve been with Brad for quite a while now — I guess his whole career?
So Brad and I met when I was at Dale Earnhardt Incorporated back in 2006. To back up just a couple of years, Martin Truex Jr. ran the Busch Series in ’04 and ’05 with Chance 2. I was with him, and at the end of ’05, he went Cup racing, I went with him in the Cup car.
We didn’t have a Busch team at DEI. A younger, new kid came through the garage in 2006 who was driving for a lower funded team out of Tennessee, Keith Coleman Racing — Brad Keselowski. He asked me, “Hey, I need a spotter.” I had never really heard of the Keselowskis; only saw his mom on the roof a little bit, but had never met any of them. And I started spotting for him at Keith Coleman Racing in 2006.
Then he went to JR Motorsports in ’07 a little bit, and they only had a single car team over there. Whenever he would run a second team with Dale Jr. driving, then I would spot for Brad, and then essentially TJ (Majors) was spotting Dale Jr. So I stayed with Brad and did at least one race from 2006 all the way to when he came to Penske in 2010.
I was at DEI spotting for Truex. Then Truex left DEI in 2009, Jamie McMurray was coming over to fill that spot, but he was bringing his own spotter. So I was going to be out of a spotting gig, but I was still going to be able to fly at Champion Air (owned by DEI). Everybody was trying to figure out how I was going to fly for one race team and spot for another, and as you can imagine the logistics of that weren’t going to work out well.
The fall race of Michigan in 2009, Brad approached me and says, “Hey, I think I’m making a deal here, I’d like you to come fly my airplane that I don’t have yet and spot for me for this new race team. Can’t tell you who it’s with, but it’s a big name team.” I said, “Let’s talk about it as it gets further.” And the rest is history. He came to Penske in January of 2010 and I left DEI at the same time and came with Brad and I’ve been with him ever since.
I didn’t even realize that you were with Brad before he was the Brad we know today. So going back before that, what came first — the piloting or the spotting? I’m assuming that it’s the piloting based on what you were saying about flying with Champion Air. How did this all get started for you?
So we’re going to back up to even before I was born. My father (Fred Meier) and my uncle were involved in NASCAR in 1958. They both raced on the beach. The last year that they raced on the beach, dad and uncle drove a Sportsman car and a Modified car on the last race in 1958 on the beach.
Unfortunately, my father’s car broke during qualifying. He qualified, but wasn’t able to start because we didn’t have backup engines in 1958. But my uncle qualified I believe in the top 15. Got a really nice picture that’s actually in the Hall of Fame — Mr. (Glenn) Wood was in the pole, and in the shot you can see the number 237 is tenth row, maybe eighth row back there. So he actually qualified.
Fred Meier, father of Joey Meier, qualified for the final race on the beach but did not run due to a mechanical failure. (Courtesy Joey Meier)
There’s been racing all my life. When I was born, I was actually born on a Wednesday — and my mom was on the track the previous Saturday before I was born, at the race with my dad.
So now we fast forward and now I’m old enough to work on cars. That’s what I’m going to do for a living, I’m going to work on cars.
You wanted to be a mechanic?
Yep. Worked on cars, grew up at Hialeah Speedway, I was going to be around race cars, was going work on cars for a living. Took auto mechanics in school for two and a half years. I graduate. My mom and dad were divorced when I was very young, so I never knew them together. Lived in the same town, had very good parents, saw both of them all the time.
I graduated on a Wednesday, and my mom was at my dad’s house for one of the first times that I can ever remember as a get-together. And that Saturday I was at Hialeah Speedway as I normally would be, working on McCann Motorsports’ Street Stock or Thundercar, and my mom was involved in an aviation accident. She was severely injured, recovered later on, but I had never been in aviation up to that point. That sucked me into aviation.
I was going to be a race car mechanic or an automotive mechanic. That was it. So in ’84 with her accident, it drew me into aviation. I moved down to Marathon, which is where she was recovering, and I worked at the airport as a line guy and they gave us a really good incentive to get my pilot’s license. Even after I got my pilot’s license, I then quit flying and went back to aviation maintenance for two and a half years. Got my airframe and powerplant license and I was still trying to pursue that career.
Somewhere down the road of aviation maintenance, flying was really a secondary thought because I was a gearhead, gotta turn wrenches. Moved back down to Marathon as an A&P mechanic working in the back. Started flying a little bit again, trying to fulfill some of my licenses.
Well, Dale Earnhardt flew into Marathon, Florida. He’d gotten one of those King Airs, and he flew into Marathon, Florida in 1988. The day that I met him and my future boss, Mike Collier, who spotted for Dale in the Busch car back then, it instantly changed my career path. Now I went from being a possible airline guy, most likely gearhead aviation maintenance guy, to now I want to combine racing and flying because I didn’t know there was an ability there. So then I got all my ratings.
So how did the meeting with them go, or why?
Well I was a huge Earnhardt fan, a huge NASCAR fan. So I had my toolbox back in aviation maintenance and one of the line guys, Alex, came over and said, “You won’t believe who’s out here.” So the tail number was 1 Delta Echo. Before the logo/crest became famous, he had the Dale Earnhardt signature on the tail. He’s like, “You’re not gonna believe who’s here. Dale Earnhardt’s here.” I’m like “No way.”
I rolled my toolbox out to the plane, he signed the back of my toolbox, which I still have. And I met Mike Collier, my boss. Wore him out, all day long. Just a superfan. He was in the FBO, just bullshitting with this huge fan.
He made the mistake of giving me his cell phone number. And I have it — same number to this day, from 1988, he had a cell phone, to this day, it’s the same number. So it’s kind of cool.
But I called him all the time and I finished all my ratings and said, “This is what I want to do, I’m gonna work for you one day.” Called him every month and would say, ”Hey man, cool race.” He didn’t care about racing, he was flying. But I was a huge race fan. So I left when I got all my ratings and went down there, then went to Connecticut for a couple of years to do charter cargo maintenance and went to the airlines from ’92 to ’97.
What airlines?
It was the Trans States airlines, the TWA regional carrier, and we did that for five years. But in the middle of that, in the late ’96s I really wanted to pursue getting out to the North Carolina area. I was living in St. Louis. And I moved, came out with my resume, dressed up in a goofy suit.
My best story about that is I walked into a race shop — back then there wasn’t a fan zone — and I walked into the back of the shop and I sat in one of they guy’s offices. Here I am, goofy blue suit, packet of resumes, and a gentleman walks in, he says, “How did you get in here?” I said, “I just walked through that door.” He says, “Make sure it’s locked on your way out, have a nice day.”
That gentleman was Paul Andrews (the famous crew chief). Now we fast forward really quick, years later, he worked at DEI. Flew on my airplane, and I had to remind him of that stupid story of some guy in a blue suit. He’s like, “I remember that. Some guy was just sitting in my office.” I go, “Yeah, that was me.”
So in ’96 I went over to Mooresville, I attempted to get a job. Mike Collier actually set me up with an interview with Jasper because they were in Indiana. I called and said, “I really don’t want to work there, I want to work for you.” He said, “Well, I think we’re going to expand. I think we’re going to expand. Hold on.”
Then if you remember, if we go back in history, Jeff Green was just starting to drive the 14 car, the (Racing) for Kids car. We actually missed a race, then Steve Park was getting into the Busch car after Jeff Green got out of it. And then we started expanding on the Cup side. When we did that, we got our second King Air. And the minute they got that second King Air, Mike called and said, “Are you still interested?” Two weeks later I was there, and I started at DEI right away.
Joey Meier, shown early in his flying career. (Courtesy Joey Meier)
I went to school at the end of June for the King Air, went three days, the fourth day I came home to unload my truck, the fifth day I was in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with the Busch team and the truck team racing Milwaukee, and that was how fast it happened. So then right away, the minute I was at the racetrack, had wrenches in my hand, had no idea of spotting at the time. We had the perfect spotter, Steve Crisp, who spotted for Dale Jr.; Kevin Cram spotted for Ron Hornaday. And I was listening to those guys and said, “That’s really cool, I think I can do this.”
I was still working in the garage. That’s what I did. Tony (Eury) Sr. used to tell me, because I’d run back and forth at the time from the truck team to the Busch team — I was the only one flying then so I knew both teams really well — he was like, “You’ve got to pick a team, son. Who are you gonna work with?” So that’s just one of those funny stories, I showed up in my white tennis shoes and here I am at the racetrack working on one of these cars.
And that kind of worked its way through the 90s. Dale Jr. went Cup racing, still worked in the garage, worked alongside Jeff Clark, did a lot of underneath, helped them changed valve springs right there.
And then they had that fatal ARCA wreck at Charlotte (in 2002). And NASCAR changed the rules — because up to that point, we didn’t have to have a spotter for practice. We’d spot from the top of the truck.
Well, we only had a couple of King Airs at the time, and manpower was very low. I was at the racetrack, so I was able to go spot. I worked on the car, would go spot practice, go back down, work on the car — we didn’t spot qualifying then.
And then for the race, the other spotter, who was Stevie Reeves, would fly in. Ty Norris would do the 8 car — which I did during practice because I was working on that car at the time in the garage. And then Stevie would fly in a do the 1 car.
But during practice on Fridays and Saturdays, I would spot for Dale Jr. Ty would spot for the 1 car, and then Stevie would fly in on Sunday. So I was doing practice only, really staying in the garage.
If we go back to 2001, there was a very famous scene at Dover, where a kid runs out and hands Dale Jr. a big flag. That was me.
You were the one who gave Dale Jr. the American flag after the 9/11 race?
Yes, that’s me.
I did not know that.
I actually cut it down. We were going to Victory Lane, I grabbed the snips, cut the flag off, I was walking to Victory Lane with it and he said, “Come bring me that big flag!” So I jumped over the wall with it and walked out and I’m the one that put it in the car. So that’s again, very small world.
So then, when Michael came to DEI in 2001, initially Danny Culler was spotting for him, and I made the move to go spot full-time on the 15 car. We won the Daytona 500; we were the first car in the new Victory Lane at Daytona. We won one of the 150 races. In fact, it was the first 150 race because I couldn’t get to victory lane at the time, we had no crossover. So my very, very first win was at Daytona as a spotter.
And then Michael’s career changed and I was with Truex in ’04-’05 on the Busch team, and went full-time with Truex in ’06, ’07, ’08. Got Truex’s first win at Dover, which was fantastic.
I thought we were in really good shape at DEI. At the time, we were expanding, things were going very well. And then something really small happened — some driver left. And then everything kind of took a turn downhill, and I met Brad and here I am years later. So it’s a bit of an interesting path from where I started to where I am.
Joey Meier spotted for Martin Truex Jr. during the Busch Series days.
So that raised a couple questions through this story that you just told. First of all, so you were a big Earnhardt fan and a big NASCAR fan. Once you got to be working for the airline, with his company, did you have much interaction with him and what was it like to be around him?
We’ll back up even before. At the airlines, you have a pilot bag. Everybody’s seen the pilots walking through the big black briefcase looking thing. I had his white decaled signature on the side of my pilot bag. So yeah, I was a huge fan.
So now we fast forward to being hired, flying Dale Earnhardt and working for Dale Earnhardt was essentially like working for my dad. It was that big of an honor.
I lost my father on my 30th birthday in 1996 and got hired at Dale’s in ’97. He was instantly the guy that I not only looked up to, but wanted to impress. I wanted to make sure that my standards met him — before, that would have been my father. And Dale, not that he even knew it, but he was the guy that whenever you work for somebody, regardless of who that boss was, you wanted to make sure Dale was happy.
And the flying side, normally he rode on the plane, so I flew him quite a bit on the team plane to the racetrack and then Teresa and Taylor, who was young enough to be in school at the time, would ride out either Saturday or Sunday and he would ride home with them.
But a little bit of trivia, I was actually fortunate enough to be one of the spotters at the 24 hour race (in 2001). I spotted for Dale at the 24 hour race with Ty Norris, and we had Andy Pilgrim and Dale Jr. and Mr. (Franck) Freon and those guys drove the Corvette.
We flew home after that 24 hour race, and Dale handed me a little cash money, and said, “Man, I really appreciate it. Take your wife to dinner for being gone so long.” So working for him, there’s nothing but accolades that I can say. He’s everything that everybody has ever said good that I could ever remember, and it was a huge crushing blow to me personally — as it was to the industry — when he left us in February of ’01.
But up to that point, my life was set. I was going to be there forever. And I would have been there forever. If there was ever a chance for me to get a tattoo, it would have been the DEI crest. I don’t have any tattoos, but that was as close to where I figured I was going to be there forever. A lot of people’s worlds changed in ’01, but working for him was fantastic.
Given your roots in racing and everything, I guess, do you ever reminisce with Dale Jr. or people like that?
It’s interesting, because I was fortunate to — Dale did a video with the Matthew Good Band and we went to Memphis, we went to Texas, we went to Vegas. We were gone for the whole week doing that video. Well I was the pilot, and they stuck me in a couple of scenes of the video. It’s really a lot of fun.
So if we went back on YouTube and found that…?
Yup, Matthew Good and Dale Jr. You’ll see a couple pictures of me and the plane. So it’s pretty funny.
But no, we do (reminisce). A lot of us, when we go “back in the day,” (people say they) didn’t realize back in the day how good we had it. Well that’s a unique thing about that time, specifically when Dale was around, and even soon after he left ’02, ’03, ’04. We all knew how good we had it. We had so much fun at the time.
It’s a different mentality in the garage now. Not that it’s bad, but you’re worried about the future more now. Then, there was no concern about the future, you were there to enjoy every day and you got to enjoy every day. Dale Jr. and Michael Waltrip, Steve Park, Ron Hornaday, Kenny Wallace was there for a little while, Darrell Waltrip was there for a handful of races. They just made things so much fun that you enjoyed every day.
So when we go back in the day, it’s not like, “Man, I wish I had known how good we had it.” We all knew how good we had it. I still am very fortunate to our planes were parked very close to each other in the airport in North Carolina. So I see Dale. We don’t go to lunch every day, but I do see him. In fact, about a year ago, I actually flew his airplane out here with his main pilot, and there’s also been that relationship.
I’ve got a couple texts that I’ve saved on my phone that have come from Dale over time that just make me realize that he has always appreciated the people around him and fortunately I’ve been one of those people around him. He really has an appreciation level a lot like his dad. He’s not going to go on the mountaintops and scream your name, but behind closed doors, which is really cool, he does make it very known that you’re appreciated in the time that you’re around and helping.
I helped on that team when he was coming up on the Busch car in the 31 car. I was one of those crew members that was the extra guy. Wesley Sherrill, who’s now on the 18 over at Gibbs, there was a scab crew that was thrown together. Well I was one of those guys. It was really cool to be a part of that.
That’s really fascinating. I think one thing people might want to know also was you mentioned your mom was in an aviation accident in ’84, and that is what sucked you into it. If we can go back to that for a minute, why did that create sort of an interest in aviation? Was she in a plane that crashed, or what happened?
So the gentleman who she was dating at the time was actually a seaplane instructor from the factory, it was a Lake Amphibian. And a Lake Amphibian is a very unique looking airplane — if you saw one, it doesn’t sit on floats, it actually lands on the hull of the airplane. The engines are on top and it’s turned around backwards. It’s a unique airplane and one of the most fun airplanes I’ve ever flown.
They were flying, he was goofing around and they wrecked. Unfortunately when they wrecked, he was thrown out of the airplane and had no damage. Her seatbelt was very loose on her, as we tend to do in the airlines when anybody rides, they don’t put their seatbelt on tight. Well when they wrecked, she was bounced around and she ended up breaking her neck in two different spots.
From that point on, it intrigued me because I didn’t know about aviation or how to prevent her accident, or how it happened or what caused it and that drew me an interest in to making sure I was more educated on that subject and then I started taking flying lessons. It was that simple.
It was something that I never thought about. As a kid you grow up and you’re thinking of an airline pilot and doctor — they’re like right together (in terms of brainpower). Well now I understand it’s different. I’m not saying you don’t have to be smart, but at the time, I didn’t think I was smart enough to be an airline pilot or any pilot for that matter. So it drew me in realizing that I am capable of being a pilot and being good enough at it over a long term to excel in the industry to promote the aviation industry — which I’m a huge proponent of the industry.
I speak once a week just about the (aviation) industry, trying to promote the industry because it has such a bad rap. After Michigan, we were able to run a couple of friends down to Myrtle Beach for a couple of days, they thought it was the greatest thing in the world. Ran a bowling tournament last week in Syracuse, brought the truck driver of the 48 home, we bowled together. He had never been in a small airplane, thought it was the greatest thing in the world.
So every time I have a chance to introduce somebody to my industry, I want to be prepared mentally and educationally that I can promote the industry. That’s how it got me started. I’m like, “If this happened to my mom, I’ve got to be able to prevent this.” And the only way to prevent it was to be in the industry and educate myself and that’s how I started flying.
Do you think, given the modern day NASCAR, is there a path for somebody else to be a spotter/pilot?
It’s interesting because the industry itself relies on aviation. It has to to survive. As you know — you run the (commercial) airlines, extremely unreliable. You have to build in lots of cushion before and after trying to get home or trying to get to the racetrack. Race teams simply can’t do that.
So private aviation may be a luxurious way to travel, but it’s not a luxury — it’s a necessity. We have to use it, we have to have private aviation. So there’s always gonna be a spot for pilots in the NASCAR industry.
Conversely, there’s 40 race cars on the track on any given Sunday. Every one of those cars has to have a spotter. So there’s always going to be a need for a spotter.
But guys today, the relationship between a driver and a spotter is tighter than ever. When I got started and drivers came to a new race team, they just used whatever spotter that was, because the spotter worked for the race team. Now if Brad were to leave, like we saw Carl Edwards leave — we see drivers move, like Matt Kenseth, and when they move, they bring their spotter with them.
So it’s very important for somebody trying to get into the industry — the only way to get a job in the industry is to be in the garage. They’re not gonna call you at home and go, “Hey, we’re looking for a spotter.” It’s somebody that has to be at the racetrack.
The best way to do that is to be that voluntary crew guy and you get hired onto a full-time job. And that’s not starting at the Cup Series, that’s starting on the K&N side, starting on the ARCA side, starting at the Truck side, which is what I did originally working at the garage. I didn’t walk into the Cup garage and they said, “That guy looks like his head will fit a headset.” It didn’t work that way. You worked your way up, and that’s what’s really important.
Fortunately, I have a really cool job. I’m very aware of it. Flying and spotting are two really cool things. But it didn’t start there. As you’ve heard back in the 80s I flew cargo and charter and flight instructed — which I still do —those things that still keep me in the sport.
But you have to be in the garage. And once you’re there, then the opportunities exist, whether it’s a tire test and you’re gonna go try and spot because we don’t have a spotter for that, or even somebody being in the garage looking for some volunteer help. You have to be in the garage first in order to get a job in the garage. It doesn’t work any other way.
Race teams are always looking for help — not Hendrick, not Penske — but you can go down right now to StarCom, they’re looking for help. TriStar’s looking for help. Guaranteed if you show up wanting to push a car around the garage, they’re going to allow you to do it. Maybe pay you expenses and a little bit of per diem and you can get into the garage.
But definitely over on the Truck side, definitely over on the Xfinity side. People are looking for help. You’re not gonna go to work for Chad Knaus and Jimmie Johnson as your first job, and I think that’s what people tend to forget. Those opportunities exist, you just have to be open to moving around the country as I did and getting in the garage and pushing the race car around.
Sonoma Raceway president/general manager Steve Page at an event with Jeff Gordon in 2015. (Photo by Kelley L Cox/NASCAR via Getty Images)
Each week, I ask a member of the racing community to explain their career path and how they reached their current position. Up this week: Steve Page, president and general manager of Sonoma Raceway. This interview was recorded as a podcast, but is also transcribed for those who prefer to read.
Did you grow up around here? Did you grow up interested in racing or anything like that?
I did not. I grew up in Monterey, which is about 150 miles south of here. My father was an attorney on the Monterey Peninsula. And the only experience I had with motor racing before the day I interviewed for this job was I had been to Laguna Seca when I was very young to see a race. It was the Can-Am Series with Jim Hall and Mark Donohue. I didn’t know what I was seeing.
Then in high school, they used to hire high school kids to park cars there. That was my entire motorsports universe. I’d never been to a NASCAR race until I came here. I didn’t follow the sport, didn’t really know anything about it.
When you were growing up, what did you have aspirations of doing?
I bounced all over the place. My first real sporting event was when I was about seven years old. My dad took me to a Giants game at Candlestick Park, and Willie McCovey hit a three-run home run with two outs in the bottom of the ninth to beat the Pirates, and it pretty much set the hook on me. I grew up as a diehard Giants fan, and it became quickly evident when I played my one year of Little League that I was probably a better candidate for the front office. The only sport I actually played competitively was tennis; I was on the tennis team in high school.
But I’m not sure I had a specific career aspiration. I always had a certain attraction to events. There was a lot of rock music that happened on the Monterey Peninsula — the Monterey Pop Festival, I saw Bob Dylan for the first time when I was about 10 years old and used to get jobs ushering and working rock concerts at the fairgrounds. I think there was always a certain attraction to event activities, the event business.
But my career has just been a whole succession of happy accidents. If someone had told me I would be running a motor racing facility back when I was in high school or even in college, I would have told you they were nuts.
I graduated high school, I started off in college down in Santa Barbara — and had a great time. Got a letter from my dad at the end of my sophomore year that said, “If this is your idea of going to college, then you’re more than welcome to keep doing it, but you’re gonna pay for it yourself from now on.”
So you were having too good of a time.
I was having a wonderful time. But I was not on a good trajectory academically. So I used that as an excuse to drop out of school for almost two years.
Did a lot of traveling, eliminated a lot of potential career choices. I spent six months selling women’s shoes, I sold Buicks, I worked as a gardener. I traveled across the country with a friend in a van. We spent about three months getting across the country through the Southwest and the South and up the East Coast. He was one of my college buddies, and then he went back to go to school. I wasn’t ready to give up the road, so I hitchhiked up to Maine because I was running out of money and it was the potato harvest in northern Maine. I worked the potato harvest, and then hitchhiked back to California.
An ID photo from Steve Page’s younger days. (Courtesy Steve Page)
Wow! Hitchhiked all the way?
Maine to California. And the last guy that picked me up — it was right around Halloween — was driving a truck full of Christmas trees and hired me to drive Christmas trees back and forth from Oregon back to San Francisco, and I lived in a trailer on a Christmas tree lot and sold Christmas trees.
And at that point I had actually somehow managed — I don’t know how with the grades I had — to get accepted to (Cal) Berkeley and transferred there. So I spent a couple quarters at Berkeley, then went and spent the summer traveling in Europe. I went back (to the U.S.) in the fall of ’76.
My family had always been involved in politics, Democratic politics, and a local attorney and someone who was very well known, Leon Panetta, was running for Congress for his first time. I did some work on his campaign. He got elected and took office in January. So I was a couple quarters from graduating, but went to do a three-month internship with Leon’s office right as he was taking office.
As the internship was winding up, the guy who was our press secretary got accepted to go get his Master’s at Columbia Journalism School, so the job opened up and I was like, “What the heck?” I had taken one journalism class in college; I was just phenomenally unqualified for the job. Somehow being in the right place in the right time, I ended up in that job and spent three years on Capitol Hill as Leon’s press secretary.
So what was being a press secretary on Capitol Hill like? I can’t even imagine the demands you had to deal with.
It was a very stimulating environment. It was a much better, more collegial environment in D.C. — this was in the late 70s — than it is now.
People would actually work together?
Yeah, and Leon was a guy everybody loved. We were Democrats, and when you’re on the staff, you’re all in. But Leon had some of his best friends and would go out with dinner and play basketball with right-wing Republicans. At the staff level, you’re like, “How could you hang out with those guys?” But Leon was just one of these guys who crossed party lines. Everybody loved him. Bright, funny, articulate, swears like a sailor — he still does — and just had this warm personality people gravitated to. So he was a freshman and I was there in his second term, but just one of the really highly respected people in that world and continued to be through his career.
I was in my early 20s; I think I was 22 when I got the job. It was a super stimulating environment. D.C., Capitol Hill, you work late nights, work long hours — but at the point in my life, you could do that. You went out and partied hard at night and you rolled back in the next day and you did it again.
So I did that for three years and finally realized I was two quarters away from a college degree, and really ought to go and finish it up. And at that point, after three years on Capitol Hill, I realized that was not the world I wanted to spend my career in. So I moved back to California, finished up my last couple quarters at Cal. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do but I had a friend in the real estate business, so I got my license and kind of worked with him for six months at a time when the real estate interest rates were about 22 percent. So there was not a lot of real estate changing hands. I realized that just in order to feed myself I had to get a night job as a bartender. So I could see real estate was also not going to be my future.
So you’re just crossing things off the list, going through and eliminating careers.
That was a long list, including everything I did in high school in restaurants and washing dishes. I sold Fuller brushes door to door in high school. If I actually filled out a full resume, it would take a pretty big piece of paper.
You did even bartending, you said?
I bartended in college and supplemented the money I wasn’t making in real estate. I worked in a bar in San Francisco.
In October, right at the end of baseball season, Charlie Finley sold the A’s to the Haas family, the family that owns Levi Strauss. And over the years, I had sent letters, resumes to the Giants. At a certain point, my dream job was to work for the San Francisco Giants. I don’t know if I kept all the rejection notices, but they were not interested.
But the Haas family bought the A’s. Finley had run the organization into the ground. I think their attendance in 1980 was 350,000 for the season. Team was horrible. But they had this young rookie, Rickey Henderson, and they had a lot of good pitchers and Billy Martin was the manager.
So I went and showed up with my resume at the Oakland A’s offices, it happened to be there the day their new VP of the business side of the operations, Andy Dolich, was waking in the door with his briefcase and his suitcase, having moved there from the East Coast to take over the job. So I found out he was the guy and bugged him. I drove him crazy.
In person?
In person, on the phone, any way I could. And they finally hired me to sell season tickets door to door. At the time there was all this excitement about the team. They had a total of 75 season ticket accounts. You could actually sell someone a season ticket in the first row over the dugout.
So a bunch of us went out and did that and a few of us got hired full time. I ended up spending 11 absolutely wonderful years in that organization, moving up (the ladder). I started off running the season and group ticket sales operation, moved into special events, ran the All Star game in ’87 — I just did a lot of community-oriented stuff in Oakland and worked for probably the most amazing owners you could ever hope to have in the sports franchise. They were totally committed to the community, saw themselves as the stewards of the community asset; they made their fortune selling Levi Strauss blue jeans, and this was something that they did.
And they ultimately sold it for more than they bought it for, but their first focus was, “How can we use this as a resource to elevate the community?” It was just such an inspirational group of people to work for. Walter Haas is just probably one of the finest human beings I’ve ever met. And so I was there for 11 years, 11 great years.
Well there’s a picture on the wall we can talk about. Although there’s an interesting story behind that. Since this is not a visual medium, that is a six-foot long picture of the Oakland A’s and the San Francisco Giants lined up on the baselines for the player introductions for Game 3 of the World Series. A friend of mine had that and I got it replicated and put up on the wall.
And everyone that comes in looks at the pictures, say, “OK, I was right there when the earthquake hit” or “I was over here.” And about six years ago, (former A’s manager) Tony La Russa was our grand marshal, and I had him in here on Sunday morning before we went down for the pre-race ceremony. I said, “Tony, look at that picture, that’s from the earthquake game.” And he says, “No it’s not.” I said, “What are you talking about? Look, Game 3, World Series.” He said, “We never made it out for player introductions before the earthquake — that’s 10 days later when we played Game 3.” I said, “Tony, you just screwed up a story I’ve been telling for 10 years.”
Anyway, I was there for all three World Series — ’88, ’89, ’90. Those teams were amazing. We were the center of the universe. It was such an incredible experience to go through.
Yeah, I remember those teams well. Those were my teams growing up. I was 8, 9, 10 years old at that time. I remember I cried when the Dodgers, I think it was in ’88, when Kirk Gibson hit that home run.
I was sitting right there over the right field bullpen watching Jose Canseco not even move his feet, just craning his neck to watch it go over. It was very mixed emotions because it was heartbreaking because we had that game in the bag. I mean, Canseco hit that grand slam in the first inning, we were up 4-0, Stew (Dave Stewart) was pitching a beautiful game.
I sat there saying, “We’re losing this game, but I’m now seeing what will be one of the great moments in the history of sports.” And unfortunately I have to watch it over and over again, because I don’t know how many times a year it shows up back on TV. Gibson pumping his arm as he goes around. The little fat guy (Tommy Lasorda) running out of the dugout with his arms in the air. I still have nightmares about that.
So how in the world do you go from part of the whole Bash Brothers Era to getting involved in racing?
Well, another right place, right time situation. I was with the A’s for 11 years. I had sort of reached a point where there wasn’t a next move for me in the organization. I had a family at that point, needed to figure out where to advance my career and it wasn’t going to be there.
I was recruited, interviewing, spent the better part of two years at different places around the country looking at different jobs. I actually interviewed with George Bush when he was the owner of the Texas Rangers. They didn’t hire me, so I didn’t vote for him.
But Cleveland, Long Island — a long list of different organizations. But I always figured team sports was what I knew, sso I figured that’s where I would stay.
One day Andy Dolich, who was my boss, said, “I just got a call from this guy who owns a racetrack up in Sonoma — Sears Point Raceway — and they’re looking for a president.” And my first reaction was, “I don’t know anything about car racing.” And my second reaction was, “Wow, Sonoma.”
We actually had friends in Sonoma and spent a lot of time up here. And I always thought, “Well, this is some place that would be great to live when when I retire. But there’s clearly not a job in professional sports that would allow us to live here.” And so I said, “Maybe I need to listen to this bell that’s going off in my head.”
I came up and saw this place in the state that it was in at the time — which was very, very rough. It was a really run-down facility. Readers cannot see that picture (on the wall showing how Sonoma used to look), but I keep that there to remind myself of what this place looked like when I came to work here — no infrastructure, run-down, a few metal buildings. It was just a really terrific strip of asphalt that was fun to drive on and nothing else.
And so the owner at the time assured me he had plans to invest a lot of money and turn it into something. I thought, “I don’t know if I’ll like the job, but living in Sonoma, raising my family there, it’s worth a shot.” So I signed on, I came here in the fall of 1991.
1991! You’ve been here that long? Wow.
Yes. But as it turned out, I didn’t have a good relationship with the owner at the time. He did not have the money to invest in the facilities, so it just became a real dead end. We weren’t making improvements, it was just not turning into what it was described to me to be. And I was starting to look around at other opportunities when all of a sudden, Mr. Bruton Smith steps in, buys the track and one of the best of the days of my life is when Speedway Motorsports bought this facility. It was at a time when there was a big wave of consolidation in the industry, and Bruton was someone who believed in building the premier facilities in the sport.
So I was given the immediate mission to turn this place into something special. Of course, this being Northern California, we had to spend four years in the environmental process to get the permission to remodel an existing racetrack. But once we got those entitlements in the year 2000, we went out and we spent over $100 million of Bruton’s money to turn this into what you see out the window now. And it’s probably one of the most gratifying things I’ve ever been involved in.
Steve Page (third from left) poses with Bruton Smith and other Speedway Motorsports track executives in 2009. (Photo by Jason Smith/Getty Images for NASCAR)
Wow. No wonder you like to sit in here and look out at it.
We have a lot of people on the staff who have been here through for nearly two decades and went through that process. It is something that, when you consider that little farmhouse down by the entrance, which is where we used to work, that and a couple of double-wide trailers where the PR and the marketing department worked, it has been a pretty dramatic change. It’s something we all take a great deal of pride in.
I always ask people about career path for others who would like to follow. It sounds like your career path would be quite difficult to replicate. But I’m sure you do get people all the time who do ask you, “Hey, I’d love to get involved in racing on the track side of things.” If somebody’s reading this, how would you recommend they go about getting a start these days?
You’ve got to be persistent. Probably the most important thing is to be open to opportunities that don’t look like exactly what you were looking for, because that’s kind of where I’ve ended up along the way. You’re not going to find your dream job the first job you walk into.
Talk to lots of people, and everybody you talk to, ask them to give you three names of other people you can talk to. Build a range of contacts of people in the industry.
And don’t go to people asking for a job, go to people and ask them how they got in their job. Develop relationships. You never know who you’re going to hit it off with, who you’re going to impress. And you might click with someone who doesn’t have something available today, but three months from now they might, or they might have a friend who does.
Build a network, so that when that oddball opportunity pops out of nowhere, you are exposed to it. And be flexible. Like I said, I’d never been to a NASCAR race when this job came up and I said, “Well, maybe I can figure it out.” So I did.
That’s fantastic advice, actually. Thanks for sharing that.
You just have to expand your vision as to what an opportunity can turn into, because frequently what it is when you get there may not be what it can become, or it may open other doors along the way.
John McMullin Jr. is in charge of victory lane proceedings at many NASCAR races, including the 2017 championship race at Homestead. (Photo courtesy of John McMullin Jr.)
Each week, I ask a member of the racing community to explain how they reached their current position. This week, NASCAR Director of Industry Operations John McMullin Jr. — known to most as “Johnny Mac” — sheds some light on his career path in the sport.
Can you first tell us what your role is now for NASCAR and what you do on a given race weekend?
This is my 13th season with NASCAR. I’m the Director of Industry Operations for NASCAR. Basically, “Operations” is a very broad title. I’d say 80 percent of our workload is at the event, working with our tracks, our broadcast partners, our race teams, our partners, their sponsors — everything that goes into a race weekend logistically.
Some of the bigger assets at the track that we’re in charge of are the drivers meetings — the whole production of it, the introduction list (of VIPs), the layout, the video you see — and pace car rides. One of the more visible assets we control is running victory lane every single weekend for all three series — just the whole run of show and keeping everything going in a timely manner. So that’s obviously one of the more visible things that our job is. But we wear a lot of different hats.
Appropriate for the guy who is in charge of the hat dance.
There you go. Very appropriate . So yeah, we handle a lot of requests. I can’t even think of all the different things I’ve asked to do, help out with during the race weekend. But Dave Finley (managing director of NASCAR series marketing) who was my first boss, I always steal his line: He said we were “E to E” — everything to everyone at the track. If you needed something, you’d probably start with the Ops team first and you’d probably get it handled.
For those who are reading this and might be like, “Wow, that’s an interesting job. I wonder how he got there,” how did your career path get started? Did you have any racing roots growing up?
I did. I actually grew up in the sport. I grew up in Daytona Beach. My father was the president and general manager of MRN all through the 80s and then into the late 90s. So I grew up right in the midst of it.
And then my mom, she’s been at NASCAR for almost 37 years now. She was Bill France Jr.’s executive assistant for 26 of those years until he passed in 2007. She’s still with the company. So I grew up in it.
I was a fan. Never had any aspirations of going to work or being a driver one day, even though I enjoyed it. I played baseball. But when my A-ball career was done, I needed a job in my mid-to-late 20s.
I started at the very bottom as a runner for FOX at the 2002 Daytona 500, filling water coolers, picking up cigarette butts in the compound, driving people around and just kinda worked my way up with NBC. Did some utility work, and then Steve Stone hired me at what was then NASCAR Images.
I worked on the very first SPEED Stage show in 2004, the inaugural season of the SPEED Stage. I did audio and some other things around the stage, and met Rutledge Wood — who was our DJ in between shows. So to watch his career path is quite funny, since we kind of started around the same time.
But I started eying a job in NASCAR and Dave Finley’s Operations group was something that I really liked what they did. They were very visible, and I started talking to him and was fortunate enough that my mom worked for Bill France Jr. And when he had an opening, I had the opportunity and in January 2006, that’s when I started.
John McMullin Jr. with Rob Gronkowski in victory lane at the 2017 Daytona 500. McMullin manages the flow and procedures of victory lane at the tracks. (Courtesy John McMullin Jr.).
Let’s back up for a minute. So growing up in Daytona Beach, especially with both your parents being involved in the sport, I assume you went to races and things like that when you were little. Did you ever have a consideration for working in it, or it just wasn’t on your radar at all?
I was so caught up in stick and ball sports growing up. But I enjoyed it. Obviously twice a year when NASCAR was racing in Daytona, I was there, I was a huge fan. I got amazing access as a kid, and the old MRN offices were in the actual infield in Daytona — this was years before they moved to Charlotte — and I spent a lot of time running around the old garage area, even when there was nothing going on, and enjoyed it.
But growing up in Daytona, it’s not like the Charlotte area where you have the opportunity to run go karts and stuff. So I was more of a baseball player. But still loved the sport.
So you mentioned baseball. How far did you go in your career? What did you play?
I played college ball at North Florida Community College. Was not a good student. It wasn’t that I wasn’t smart, but I was very lazy with my classwork — and I paid for it. I had several scholarship offers to D1 schools that I couldn’t take advantage of. Baseball is tough, they only get about 12 or 13 (scholarships) — at least back then — so once they saw you didn’t have the grades, they passed and they moved on unless you were a first-round draft pick.
So I had to go the community college route, did that, and like I said, I wasn’t much of a school guy. I had the opportunity to sign with an independent league team in A-ball out of Springfield, Illinois, and played with them. So I got a taste of what the minor league baseball life was like until I blew my arm out. That’s when I needed a real job.
So you mentioned that you sort of worked your way up through the broadcast side of it, and then got a chance on the operations side. So once you get that foot in the door with NASCAR and you start doing things, what is the path like to evolve to this point? Obviously, it sounds like you’re asked to do all sorts of things, many miscellaneous things that might not be in your job description.
Going back to when I started in TV with FOX, the SPEED channel and NBC, I did other sports (as well). I was on the Thursday Night Football crew with Doc Punch; I was a stage manager for a couple seasons. So I wanted to be in TV.
I grew up in high school doing PA announcing at the basketball and football games. I liked the radio side growing up around MRN and learned that the TV thing is pretty cutthroat, and I didn’t have the prettiness to be in front of the camera. And I learned real quick how the TV world is. It’s tough. Everybody’s kind of gunning for each other, even people who are your friends. It’s a tough world, so I kind of learned real quick that maybe that wasn’t for me.
I fell in love with being around NASCAR, being around the track every weekend, being in the mix — whether it was on pit road holding an RF pointer for “Stoley” (David Stolen) or “Goat” (Brad Hutton) who are still running cameras these days, being around the crew guys, being in victory lane with the drivers. So that’s when I saw that Ops job.
Now being the director and having hired three or four different people, I honestly look for those ex-college athletes. I think it lends a lot to what we do — the workload of being able to balance school, practice, games, that kind of stuff. And then just being able to stay level and calm in pressure-packed situations — which we have a lot of through television and radio, being that our schedules are minute-by-minute, down-to-the-second schedules. Or running a pre-race or running a victory lane, all eyes are on you and people are looking for answers. Being able to stay even-keeled, I think that athletic background really lends to what we do. So I think maybe that kind of was my connection that drew me into Ops.
As part of John McMullin’s job, he manages pace car rides for VIP visitors — like Peyton Manning, shown here. (Courtesy of John McMullin Jr.)
I was going to ask you about that because most of the time I see you, it’s in victory lane. It’s the Daytona 500, it’s absolute chaos. You’re the center of the storm and you’re directing it. You’re saying, “This is what needs to happen next.” How long did it take you to evolve your skills to where you have that command where people are listening to you and are able to direct things like a conductor of a crazy orchestra?
Yeah. Victory lane is by far, of all the duties we have in Ops, it’s the one that takes you the longest to learn. Like you said, it’s controlling the chaos. These guys fight hard every single week to get to victory lane, so when they get there, they’re excited. But there’s also a run of show, whether it’s broadcast and sponsor elements and things the track needs. So sometimes the drivers are a little distracted. So that is a hard part to learn. It took a couple of years to master, but it’s all just two things: One, the confidence and knowing what to do, and Two, I was blessed with a very loud voice — which people comment on all the time.
But you know how crazy these scenes are. You have to be loud, and when you’re loud, they listen. If you’re soft-spoken or you’re not too confident in what you’re saying, they’re not going to pay attention to you. They’re going to be more interested in cracking back their beer or spraying their water. So that part is a lot of fun, being there. I get to be there most weekends. And just after years of doing the job, the drivers being familiar with you, the crews, their familiarity helps you out a lot. It just takes time.
I’ll mention Brad (Keselowski). Brad is always one that gets on me. He’s like, “Hey man, I just won. Let me relax and enjoy this. Stop trying to make me do the next thing.” So we’ve had a lot of give and take with each other there. But if they don’t know you or they haven’t seen you around a long time, it’s kind of hard to get them to do what you want them to do right then. So that’s definitely been perfected over the years, and I still enjoy it.
I feel like Brad has that reputation for being one of those people who takes a bit of a longer time to get through all his photos and go to the media center. Tony Stewart, it seemed like he used to completely do his own thing. I don’t know how you would wrangle some of these guys. Would you have to like yell at people in your situation?
You know, there’s a fine line. You want to let them enjoy the moment, obviously someone like Tony, now when (Kevin) Harvick wins or one of his drivers wins, they wanna talk. They want to download what just happened and they want to talk to their crew chiefs. So you kind of pick and choose your moments when to interrupt them, give them a few minutes, but then you kind of step in as politely as possible and they’re usually all pretty good about it. And that’s another thing that takes time, too, just knowing when to step in and when not to step in.
That sounds like a fine art. Where should somebody get their start if they are interested in eventually working up to where you are today?
I think definitely a marketing background at school. I wouldn’t even say communications is a bad thing to have, too, just because we’re the face of NASCAR at the track a lot dealing with people — whether it’ll be a driver, a race fan, a CEO of a Fortune 500 company, or a celebrity or an athlete. I mean, we’re usually kind of right there in the mix.
It still makes me laugh after 13 years that NASCAR classifies our account executive operations job as an entry-level position, because I’d be hard-pressed to find an entry-level job that allows you to not only be face-to-face with the brass of NASCAR, but our drivers and you mentioned the celebrities and athletes (who come to races as VIPs).
There’s a lot of perks to our job that might not see a lot of the financial success right away, but there’s a lot of fun things we can do. You’re in front of a lot of important people throughout the industry, and if you’re good at what you do, our track record in Ops speaks for itself of everybody that’s went on (to move up the ladder) — whether it’s mostly in this industry or outside this sport. They all got their start in Ops.
Definitely having a passion for events (helps) and obviously crowds can’t bother you, things like that. But I think marketing is a big thing for sure. Like I mentioned, someone who’s an athlete is someone I’ve always looked at because of the calmness effect there that you can bring to the job and not be too high, not be too low.
Yeah, that’s super interesting. And by the way, what are your parents’ names?
My mom is Geri McMullin and then John McMullin Sr. — so I’m a Jr. He’s still freelance with productions; anytime the K&N Series is on TV, he acts as the TV liaison — the bridge between race control and the broadcast. Karen Masencup did it a couple years after my father, but he was actually the first TV liaison and he was the one talking to — whether it be to Barry Landis (from FOX) or Sam Flood (from NBC) in the production trailer about what’s going on competition-wise up in race control. You know, why this caution was thrown or what are they thinking (with a call). So he’s still involved in the sport.
My mom, like I said, 37 years, that’s a long time. She’s seen a lot. She can write a really good book if she wanted to; she would never do it. But I’m just very blessed to grow up in the sport and have the opportunity that the Frances gave me — a washed-up pitcher who didn’t have a college degree.
And let me make that clear, you’re not getting hired by NASCAR unless you have a college degree. I was very, very fortunate to grow up around Bill France Jr., and I still appreciate and am thankful for the opportunity he gave me many years ago. I always told him, “I’m a lifer in this sport until you guys get rid of me,” so I’ve never forgotten that.
Each week, I ask someone in the racing industry about their career path and journey to where they are now. This interview is recorded as a podcast, but is also transcribed for those who prefer to read instead of listen. Up next: Bob Pockrass, motorsports writer for ESPN.com.
Bob, how did this start for you? Did you grow up as a motorsports fan?
I grew up in Indianapolis, or moved there when I was 10, so I was a little bit of a stick and ball fan until I was 10. But when you live in Indianapolis, you become a race fan. The Indy 500 is part of the culture of the city more than any other place I’ve ever been. I think I moved there in 1979, and I’m pretty sure I went to the Indy 500 in 1980 or ’81. My dad was like, “Well, we gotta get tickets.” I don’t think he was happy with the amount of people and parking and traffic, and I didn’t go again until I was in high school.
My older brother lived about a mile from the racetrack. And so every Indy 500, I’d go and sleep over at my brother’s house and we’d walk to the (track) and the pay the general admission which was like $20 bucks or $25 bucks and stand in Turn 1 and get sunburned and watch the Indy 500.
Do you remember any of those races?
No. I think what I just remember most is how fast the cars are. To this day, NASCAR goes to Indy, which — look, I can watch them race any type of car at Indy and I’d probably love it. But 220 (mph) in the corner is still a lot different than 160.
So once you’re in Indiana, you end up eventually going to Indiana University. When you’re at IU, were you going to college with the intent of, “I want to be a sportswriter?”
I went to Indiana thinking I wanted to own my own business, and I was a business major when I got there. I started taking classes and in one of your first accounting classes, they said, “You gotta pay the peons something,” pretty much is the way the professor put it. I realized that they were more training you to work in corporate America rather than maybe owning your own business.
What kind of business did you imagine yourself owning?
I really had no idea. But I just thought I’d really like to run a business.
I’d worked for the school newspaper, and my older brother was working for the Indianapolis News, afternoon paper. There used to be papers that were published in the afternoon. So I always had a little bit of a journalism bug and my second semester of my freshman year, I started working at the school newspaper just doing news stories.
What really caught me was I did a story on a crop walk, which was one of those walks for hunger, and I did a story that it was going to happen and then I went to the walk. Two people came to the registration table with a copy of the article to register to walk and donate money. The power of the press, right? And I thought that was the coolest thing.
Obviously, IU Bloomington was a huge sports place, Bobby Knight and everything, and I just thought, “I’d like to cover sports.” So that’s when I started covering sports, like my sophomore year in college and I changed my major and that was that.
So when you’re at the school paper there and Bobby Knight was the basketball coach at IU, did you have any run-ins with him or anything like that? Was he as difficult as everybody said?
Well, I did end a press conference once. Probably my junior year or senior year, I was working for UPI (wire service). I would go there and send like five or six graphs and send quotes. They were doing a national story on how bad free throw shooting was.
Indiana was really struggling at the free throw line, and after one of the games, and I think Knight had just gotten the stat sheet handed to him because he looked at something and he just had this look on his face. It was my turn to ask a question, and this is the year they had four or five freshmen, and I said, “Coach, usually the downtime in practice is when you shoot free throws” — because the few practices we got to go to, they would run through plays and the rest of the time, they’d shoot free throws. So I said, “Did you just have less time to practice free throws because you have so many freshmen that you’ve had to do so much teaching in practice?”
The answer was something like, “Maybe we haven’t practiced an f’in free throw since f’in October 15. F this!” and walked out. And then all the other writers then pat you on the back because it was like, “Hey, it happens to everybody,” kind of thing. By that time I covered a lot of games for the school paper and stuff, so it wasn’t a surprise that Bob Knight got angry. But Indiana basketball at the time, there’s just so much going on, it’s such a great experience.
I’m impressed you were already doing wire service stuff in college, that had to be a good start for you.
On that note, (NBC NASCAR writer) Dustin Long and I were both there (at Indiana) at the same time, and we had a friend of ours who was working for UPI and we also ran quotes during Indy 500 weekends. So that’s how you start getting experience; that was my experience was running quotes and getting quotes for UPI on qualifying weekends and big practice days and race day.
So you would literally go get a quote and come back up and send it?
You’d just give it to the guy. (The writers) were there.
So the writer is sitting there and you’re just feeding him like, “Here’s what they said?”
Yeah, pretty much.
What was your first step out of college then?
My first job after college was at the Daytona Beach News-Journal.
So you got hired there right out of school?
My senior year, and I did not have a newspaper internship. I was close, but I didn’t get it. I did an internship at the Children’s Museum in Indianapolis in their PR department doing writing and stuff for them and everything.
I spent one summer in summer school, and then after my senior year, the entire month of May, I worked for the Marion, Indiana paper and Gannett News Service. It was kind of my first mini job out of college. But it was just for the month of May. They contracted me to do all their Indy 500 stuff, their Indy 500 special section. A friend who had been at the school paper who was the sports editor of that paper said, “Can you work for us in the month of May?” And my stuff went over the Gannett wires and everything. So it was pretty cool.
And then I was without a job. I probably sent out about 250 to 300 resumes and packets to every newspaper.
Wait — 250 to 300!?
That’s what I would estimate. And every rejection letter, I put on my bedroom door or on my wall. Every rejection letter I got. And back then people were nice, they actually sent rejection letters.
So you’re using it as motivation?
Yeah, trying to say, “Hey, keep plugging away.” And out of the blue, I got a phone call from the Daytona Beach News-Journal. They had an opening for a sports writer in their DeLand office. And one of the former writers from Indiana had worked there a few years earlier, and he told me it was a good place, so I went down and interviewed and got the job and put stuff in my car and drove to Daytona Beach.
My NASCAR knowledge was about pretty much limited to Days of Thunder, and I started working for the Daytona Beach newspaper covering pretty much two high schools for their regional edition and regional sections.
So you’re in DeLand, which is about 20 miles away?
Yeah, about 20, 25 miles west of Daytona.
And you’re covering high schools and small colleges?
Yeah. When it first started, it was pretty much two high schools and then any other general assignment. And as people got laid off, frankly, I ended up taking on more responsibilities — a lot of Stetson University there, some other college coverage. Eventually I got to do Florida State football on the weekends — home games and select road games. So it kind of grew. And obviously, I did a lot of local racing and then when (NASCAR) stuff was at Daytona, I would do stuff there.
What were some of the crazier high school sports you covered back when you were at the Daytona paper?
Well at Daytona, I covered everything, all sports. It’s a big weightlifting area, so high school weightlifting was a big deal there.
So you’re going down and you’re like, “I’m going to the girl’s high school weightlifting meet?”
I spent 12 years there, and during that time, they actually started girl’s high school weightlifting. I covered some high school rodeo. I covered big Little League games. I covered a lot of American Legion baseball. There was one time, covered an American Legion baseball game in the morning and World Cup soccer in Orlando at night. I don’t know if anyone else can say that. So that was one of the coolest things, obviously — World Cup in Orlando in ’94.
Bob Pockrass has covered a variety of sports at times in his career, including World Cup soccer. (Courtesy Bob Pockrass)
But as part of the general assignment stuff you’re doing, aside from your main high school duties, you were getting some NASCAR exposure?
Oh yeah. I was doing a lot of short tracks. Volusia County Speedway had an asphalt track at the time. Covered a Busch Series race and the track started coming apart during the race because it was July. They were doing it at the same time as the July 4th race at Daytona at that time, and the cars were so heavy at the time and the heat tore up the track. It was crazy. I want to say Steve Grissom won that race.
But yeah, I did that and then did a ton of stuff at Daytona really helping out the writers there. Eventually, as the sport grew and the coverage for the paper grew, they needed somebody who knew the sport to kind of handle assignment and everything. But the main writer there, Godwin Kelly, we needed him to concentrate on writing and not worry about who was doing what. So for a lot of that time, I would become the point person during the week and be giving out assignments to other writers. When crazy news happened, I was the connection to the news desk and everything to kind of help organize things.
So at some point during that, are you thinking to yourself, “You know what, I really want to be a NASCAR writer full time?” Or did you have a certain sport in mind? Surely you didn’t go there planning to stay there 12 years, I’m assuming.
No, I don’t think anybody expects to stay there 12 years. The thing at Daytona is that, there are a lot of people that didn’t leave their jobs. I was in the DeLand office for 12 years, and some people love it, but when you’re a young kid, you’re looking around. I was always thinking I’d cover some sort of college or pro sports and maybe some racing.
I applied for a ton of jobs, did a ton of interviews, didn’t get jobs. There was one day I want to say in ’95 or ’96 where I got three phone calls from sports editors on my answering machine at home about jobs, and none of them came through.
How many places do you think rejected you over the course of 12 years?
(Laughs)
A lot, like seriously?
Yeah. You would get to a point where every year, year and half, you would just send blindly to papers and everything.
And you had interviews as a result?
I probably had seven or eight interviews, and at least one place I think I had two interviews.
So were you getting discouraged at that point? Like, “Oh my gosh, I’m never gonna get out of Daytona?”
Yeah, I think you get discouraged, but you know, when I was at Indiana, we would always joke, “You’re never gonna cover a beat like this for another 10 years.” You just kind of assume that it’s gonna take time to grow and you’re gonna have to cover a lot of different things, which you’re thankful for because it gives you a good perspective.
But I think what kept me going is, I loved journalism. I loved telling stories, I loved writing about the people. And so the goal wasn’t to write about a specific sport per se, the goal was to have a bigger impact on more people — and hopefully either stay in Daytona and have a beat that was more prominent, or go somewhere else and be on one of their more prominent beats. Because the coolest thing was to sit in a restaurant and hear somebody else talk about a story you wrote. To me, that’s what excites me. I think that’s the coolest thing.
Bob Pockrass stands with Kenny Bruce and Mike Hembree in the NASCAR garage in 2010. (Photo: NASCAR PR)
How did you eventually find your next step then?
So NASCAR Scene magazine, which was a weekly magazine, had an opening for their Busch Series writer. Godwin Kelly, the main writer in Daytona, had done some stringing for them, and I knew all the people from what was then Winston Cup Scene magazine because they sat across from me in the media center in Daytona and they all knew me. They didn’t know me well, but they knew who I was and they knew how I approached my job. At first I was like, “I don’t know if I want to go to a magazine. Write just once a week?” Like for me, that was (not enough). But Godwin said, “You really should apply,” and I applied and they were interested and they hired me.
So after 12 years in Daytona, I moved to Charlotte to go work the Busch Series beat for them. If I was covering the (Busch) race and if there was a Cup race that weekend, I’d often stay for the Cup race and helped with Cup coverage.
So once you got that opportunity at NASCAR Scene, did you feel like you elevated your journalism game or did anything differently once you had this opportunity? Or have you been this way all along where you covered high schools and stuff the same way?
I think I covered it mostly the same way. The intensity in some areas might be a little bit different, but I always tried to learn as much as I could. I used to, on a Saturday morning, if I wasn’t covering college football in Florida, I would drive like an hour-and-a-half loop and go buy all the newspapers. I drove up close to Jacksonville because our teams played near Jacksonville, then drove out towards Ocala and then to Orlando and pick up newspapers so that I could read the stories about the teams they were covering. There was no Internet back then, or free Internet, to learn about that stuff, so I always had that kind of intense outlook.
I think Winston Cup Scene/NASCAR Scene magazine was a pretty intense magazine, too. They really blanketed the sport, but I think I’ve always gone about the job the same way. Working in Daytona, when you’re the one beat writer at Stetson University and stuff happens, you write about it, and so you learned that there’s nobody else to ask questions, right? So you had to ask the tough questions, you had to ask the easy questions. You did everything, and I think it allowed me to maybe work more independently, if that makes sense.
So you’re at Scene, and you start being quite prominent on the beat. Then we lost our magazine job and they kept the website, SceneDaily.com. How long were you at Scene and at SceneDaily.com in total?
I guess eight or nine years, because I got there in September 2003 or October 2003, and then the last year of the magazine was 2009. Is that right?
Yeah, it shut down in January 2010.
And then I think the website lasted two or three more years and then got folded into the Sporting News, and that’s how I got part of the Sporting News.
And then were you just along for the ride at that point, or were you looking at possibly doing something else? Were you happy to be where you were and still be working at what became Sporting News?
I think I was happy. That time in journalism, and still, you just don’t know what’s going to happen day to day, so you’re always kind of keeping your eye out on things and trying to figure out what your next step would be if something happened. Thankfully for me, nothing happened as far as getting laid off. But yeah, you looked at other things — occasionally you apply for something maybe just to see what the interest might be. But I enjoy covering this, so it wasn’t something I was like, “Oh gosh, I gotta get out because there’s gonna be no room for me.” I’m gonna play the musical chairs and as long as I have a place to sit, I’m gonna do it.
Bob Pockrass and Jenna Fryer listen to a news conference in 2010. (Photo: NASCAR PR)
So there came a time where Nate Ryan left USA Today and there was an opening. I was there at the time, and I really wanted you to come work with me at USA Today, and ESPN had an opportunity around the same time and you ended up going to ESPN. I guess it worked out for you.
Yeah, it did. Again, maybe right place, right time, but the editor then of ESPN.com, the motorsports editor (K. Lee Davis), he came to about seven or eight races a year. And so he had watched me work and read my work, so I didn’t have to convince him really to hire me, I don’t think. He knew everybody in here, and he knew all the people that wanted that job. So I think it shows that you gotta go about your job the way you think you should go about it and just remember that people are always watching.
If you’re a journalist, you should be going about your job knowing that people are reading, and you have a responsibility to your readers. But if you do have that thought in your mind about “How do I move up?” I think it’s more just people watch and people read and they know how you go about things.
It’s not such a mystery to me as far as why would ESPN hire you because everybody already knows what a hard worker you are. I guess it’s more of a mystery to me as to why you are such a hard worker. You said earlier you were like this even when you’re covering high schools. So Bob, what drives you to be as dedicated as you are and be as hard working as you are?
Well, a couple things. First off, people’s discretionary time and their discretionary income is pretty limited, and so if you can have an impact on what people decide to do with their free time and what they decide to do with the money they’ve allocated to not spend on food and clothes and kids, that’s huge. If somebody reads something I write and decides that they’re going to go to a race, well, you know, that’s a pretty big responsibility. Or if they read it and they decide they’re going to go watch the NBA, that can be the role, too. It’s not the goal necessarily, but the goal is to let people know about what’s going on in their sport they’re a fan of or that they’re interested in and then make a decision on whether they want to watch or buy this person’s T-shirt or go to a race. That, to me, is the driving force.
And the other thing is, I like to try to break down myths and I like to be able to explain things that you can’t see on TV and help people understand it. So that takes work, right? That’s why I like the legal stuff, because you’re less likely to lie in the legal stuff; the contracts are there for you to understand. So that’s why I like it; I like it because I want people to be able to know as much as they can about what they’re seeing on Sundays and during the week.
If somebody’s out there and they want to be the next Bob Pockrass, what’s the path? What would you tell them?
That’s a great question because I’ve always said go find work for a place that has racing or that has a big track. Even if you’re not covering racing, if there’s a short track there you can cover and then maybe they’ll let you go cover the race that’s an hour away or two hours away. I think you need to learn that you need to kind of have that well-rounded experience and just like I did and just like you did, right? You worked in Rocky Mount and then you went to San Bernardino, right? And how did NASCAR Scene know you? You did some freelance work, but we’d seen you work, and that’s the way we got jobs.
Now, I would also suggest any place where you can get strong editing and have people who really can help teach you along the way is a big deal, but you know, right now it’s hard. You had Jay Pennell on earlier, and that was a guy who moved to the area, he worked for one website and then another website, and people saw it, and he ended up at FOX Sports. And so that would be a path where 10 years ago, I’d be like, “No way can somebody get to FOX Sports through there. They’re gonna hire somebody from a newspaper who’s been covering the beat.”
But the industry has evolved, so I think there’s many ways to do it. I’d still maybe lean toward being as well-rounded as you can. The experiences I’ve had covering high schools and the relationships and the controversies and all that stuff is incredibly valuable.
Each week, I ask a member of the racing community to share their career path in a feature called “How I Got Here.” These interviews are recorded as a podcast but are also transcribed for those who prefer to listen. Up next: NASCAR official Rickie Kyle.
Can you tell me what your job right now with NASCAR entails? What do you do on a weekend?
On a weekend, starting on Friday morning, we do inspection on all the series that are racing that weekend. I’m in the safety department and we do all the safety on the cars and Trucks, Xfinity and Monster Cup.
So you’re going around and you’re basically checking to make sure that they’re compliant with the safety rules and things like that?
Yes. All their seatbelts and helmets and HANS devices, we have to double-check that every week to make sure the dates are not (expired), so their HANS and helmets and seatbelts are in compliance with the SFI rules, and of course with our NASCAR rulebook.
Interesting. So how long have you been working for NASCAR?
I’ve been with NASCAR 20 years as of this year.
Twenty years. Oh my gosh, wow. So I am very ignorant about this and don’t even know where people start being NASCAR officials. Did you grow up as somebody who was interested in cars?
No, I’m not mechanically inclined. I can change oil and spark plugs, but anything past that, no. I wasn’t a NASCAR fan. In grade school, I had friends who went to Rockingham every year and would bring back a Richard Petty STP sticker, I remember that. And I just wasn’t a big race fan.
One year in ’96, I started working as a security guard at Rockingham Speedway. For two years, I just kinda sat on the golf cart, because my job was to put out fires during the race — because if the tower saw smoke, they would think it was a wreck. So our job was to ride on the golf cart with two shovels and put out fires.
I thought you were using it as a metaphor at first, but you were literally putting out fires.
Putting out fires for people who were cooking or burning campfires during the race. And so I started doing that, and me and my friend were sitting on the golf cart one day and I was watching the NASCAR officials, what they were doing. And I told him, I said, “I could do that job.” And he said, “Well go get a job, and then help me get one.” This was in ’97, I think.
So I went home and my plan was to send a resume to NASCAR every month until they called me or said stop sending them. My sister helped me with my resume, I got it typed up, I sent the first one in.
We had a race in Rockingham that fall, so I went there and worked the race. After the race, I went in the garage — because I’m in a security guard uniform so I can go in — and I said, “How do I get a job for NASCAR?” And I asked several officials. I bet you four of them told me, “See Gary Nelson (who was Cup Series director at the time).” And four of them told me something off the wall, like you’ve gotta have some automotive engineering degree, you’ve gotta have a college degree.
But I went and found Gary Nelson, and he was standing in the garage. I didn’t know who he was, and I said, “Who is Gary Nelson?” And they said, “That guy there.” I walked over and I said, “Mr. Nelson, my name is Rickie Kyle, I’m very interested in being a NASCAR official.” He kind of looked at me up and down, he said, “OK, what do you do now?”
At that time I was a machinist for Ingersoll Rand Corporation in Southern Pines, North Carolina. He said, “Oh wow. Can you read micrometers, calipers, and blueprints?” I said, “Yes sir, I do that every day. I went to school to work there after I got out of the military,” and I’d been there 18 years at that time.
So Gary Nelson said, “Wow, give me your name and number.” So I gave it to him, he stuck it in his suit jacket and he said, “I’ll get back with you. Go over to the media center and get a schedule and mark all the races you can drive your car to every time you work that’s within eight hours of your house.” I lived in Southern Pines, North Carolina, and back then it was 16 races within eight hours of where I lived. So I checked all of them off and I remember when I was checking them off, it started raining, and I was standing under an awning in front of the media center. And I’m checking them off, my hands were shaking, I’m like, “I got to talk to Gary Nelson from NASCAR.”
And so I went over and I said, “Gary Nelson wants this,” so one of the officials took it because they were in tear down. He walked over, he said, “This is from that security guard,” and (Nelson waved it) and stuck it in his pocket.
A month later — April 1st, 1998 — I got home from work. I had two jobs, and I was changing to go to my second job, and Gary Nelson called me at home himself and I answered the phone, I said, “Hello?” He’s like, “Is this Rickie Kyle?” I said, “Yes it is.” He said, “This is Gary Nelson from NASCAR. I’m calling to see if you still want to be a NASCAR official.”
Just like that. No red tape, no interview, no resume, no nothing. Just sight. And so I said, “Yeah, I do.” He said, “You be in Martinsville, Virginia, Friday night and meet Marlon Wright at the Best Western hotel on 220 in Martinsville, Virginia, and he’ll take it from there.” So I went up that Friday night, met Marlon, he gave me that paperwork. I remember going in my room, and the guy I was rooming with, he had his NASCAR official hat, his NASCAR shirt laying there. I was like, “I can’t believe I’m gonna be wearing this.”
So the next morning I went to the track. There was no black people working with NASCAR. I mean, I’d seen a few in there working in the track, but no officials. There were none. And they had hired me and another black official from Memphis named Tyrone Carpenter. We both started the same weekend. And he worked for FedEx in Memphis.
So I went in, and my father always said, “Keep your mouth shut, be where you’re supposed to be, and do what you’re supposed to do.” I did that ever since high school, basic training through the military, never had a problem. Did my (military) tour, got out, worked at Ingersoll Rand for 18 years, and then Gary Nelson calls me up. And I said, “Now I’ve gotta do this same thing again.”
So I went in the garage and guys were kind of looking at me. Everyone was very nice, I had no problems. When I told my mother NASCAR wants me to come work part time, she was like, “Ain’t that the sport were everybody has a beard and some teeth missing and drinking beer?” (Laughs) I said, “That’s the fans, Mama, that’s not (the officials).” She said, “You be careful,” I said, “OK.”
So I went in the garage and they introduce me and I’m standing in the trailer. All of a sudden this big shadow, it was wide, it was like, “Who’s that?” I turned around and it’s this huge man standing there and I’m like, “Who…?” And this man says, “How you doing?” It’s Mike Helton. And I said, “I’m good sir, how you doing?” He said, “Welcome aboard,” I said, “Thank you.”
They gave me my shirts and they interviewed me, riding in the pace car Gary Nelson and Buster (Auton) around Martinsville Speedway. And that was my interview. Gary said, “Who’s your favorite driver?” I said, “I don’t know any drivers.” He said, “Well, do you like to watch the race?” I said, “If I want to go to sleep on Sunday, I’ll turn it on.” He said, “You just answered the two most important questions right.”
Being hired as somebody that knows nothing about any job, their mind is open to learn everything there is. So I just came in and I’m fresh. I didn’t know Turn 2 from Turn 4, and then I learned and I learned how to do it. And when they hired me (full-time), I was the first African-American to be hired by NASCAR as an official. I was the first African-American to go over the wall in a uniform and work a car as an official. And I was inducted into the Minority Hall of Fame by Wendell Scott’s wife at (North Carolina) A&T (State University) in 2003.
That’s so cool.
NASCAR got me a ring that says, “Bridging the gap in motorsports.” I got a glass plaque that Mary Scott presented to me, and so I had to tell that story there. I went to a black tie dinner with my wife and daughter.
Ever since then, this place and this job, I have never had a problem with anybody — crew, driver, fan. When a fan sees “Official” on your shirt, they’re more enthused about meeting an official than what color you are. I have never been (subjected to) any racial remarks or anything that I’ve ever heard myself. And if you respect people, they respect you.
For 20 years, it’s just been a smooth ride for me and I get the most respect. People say, “What do you do?” And I say, “I’m a NASCAR official.” And their eyes get big and they’re like, “Really?” Like in my town, it’s a small town, and I can’t go in the grocery store, the pharmacy, the bank (without people whispering) “That’s the guy that works for NASCAR.” And some mornings when I have to go to Charlotte for teardown, I stop at the convenience store, get something to drink on the way up, and it’s a bunch of guys standing around. And everybody knows me, and a lot of times I’ve had NASCAR vehicles that I’ve driven over the years, and they’d see me come in in the morning, and they’re staring at me. I’m like, “I’m just a human like you, I have a job, a regular 8-to-5 job. That’s all.” “But you’re on TV!” I said, “Yeah, you gotta be careful so you’re scratching and digging when the camera is on you.” (Laughs)
So how did your job evolve over the years? You mentioned when you started, it was a part-time thing. At what point did it become your actual career and your job, and how have your duties changed over that time?
Well for the first two years, I was part-time. And they put me right off the bat in the engine department because I could read micrometers and calipers and blueprints. So they hired me and I went straight to engines, and I did all the paperwork and typed in everything on a laptop, and they taught me how to do that. And I did that for 10 years, worked in the engine department.
Then I left the engine department and I went to the weights and measurements department, and I worked there two years. And I left weights and measurements when an opening came up for safety and I got in safety. So I’ve been working there.
But my duties, outside of doing safety on Friday, I do all the lineups for qualifying; I line all the vehicles up on pit road. I line up everything for all the races because I’m ex-military and I’m all about “dress right, dress,” — everything’s gotta be exact. The crews, I’ll be out there, they’ll say, “Oh Lord, here comes Rickie with his tape measure.” I mean, I can eyeball vehicles and put them exactly where they need to be.
They need to be a certain space apart, a certain angle?
Certain angle, space apart and you’ve gotta do it by sight. And over the years for 20 years, I’ve lined up vehicles. I think about three years ago, NASCAR appointed me lead over pit road, so I’m over all the pit roads and lining up vehicles. So they say, “Hey Rickie, we’re not gonna line them up Le Mans, we’re gonna line them up nose to tail,” or “We’re gonna line them up in the pit box, we’re gonna line them up Le Mans style.” They can call me and I change it and do it right then.
At Bristol Motor Speedway, we had cars all between trucks and everywhere for qualifying because we couldn’t get them all on pit road because the pit road was so short. And one day I said, “I’ve got an idea, John” — John Darby was the director. I said, “Can we try my idea?” He said, “Do you think it will work? Let’s try it.”
I got all 43 cars on the front pit road backed in at an angle, and I remember Mike Helton and Robin Pemberton coming out and taking pictures of it because the way it looked. They said, “We have never seen seen Bristol look this neat and clean and everybody’s on pit road.” There used to be people between trucks and we had to stick officials back there to watch them watch the cars because you can’t see them. So I came up with that idea.
Then I came up with the steps — if you park nose to tail, it’s 10 steps (between cars). That’s eight for the car, two for the generator. If you park Le Mans (a grid), I can park five steps between each car, six steps, or seven steps. If they say, “We need room,” I do seven. If they say, “We’ve gotta be tight,” I do five. And so I got that implemented out there.
The teams come to me, and they say, “Rickie, that was too tight. When we come back, we need more room to make that turn to get our generators out.” I say OK, so we go back and I’ll do something different. And they come up and they acknowledge it and they’d come up and say, “Hey, that was good, Rickie, you did it like that.”
I mean, all the teams and the crews and the crew chiefs and the drivers, it’s amazing that you know these guys that are on TV and they walk up to you and know your name. Tony Stewart was trying to sign my uniform at Dover last week, I’m like, “Get away from me! I’ve got one, don’t write on it!” He’s got a Sharpie trying to write on my uniform before the race. And Dale Jr. invited me to his house to see his treehouse. I’m like, “What? Do you have a Tarzan rope or something?” He’s like, “No, get my number from the PR girl and you call me.” I’m like, “I’m gonna call Dale Jr. to come to your house? Yeah, OK.” (Laughs)
So you mentioned you were in the military. You were in the Army?
I was in the Army. I went in the Army fresh out of high school, I graduated, two weeks later I was in basic training. My father was ex-military, he was in the 82nd (Airborne Division), he was in 21 years, retired and then he was the first black to be a deputy and a police officer in our town. I wear my hair the same way he did 40 years ago (close-cropped), me and my brother, because my father was ex-military. He said, “You’re not gonna grow an Afro and walk about here with plaits in your head. You’re gonna keep a haircut.” And he was always strict on us; we always shaved.
Being in the military, I got Soldier of the Month for being the best dressed soldier in the military. Out of 260 troops, twice while I was in the six years, I got the Soldier of the Month award. I finished my three years active duty, I went into the reserves, I did six years in the reserves, and that was when I was working at Ingersoll Rand also.
So when Gary Nelson hired me, he said, “Now you can’t work all these jobs. You won’t be able to, because you’re gonna be traveling.” I said, “I just have to sacrifice then and make it work.” And over the years it has worked.
It’s been 20 years of meeting people. I am so close to these people, if something happens to them, it’s like a family member, like somebody dies. We had this girl that got in a wreck in Charlotte and she was my partner, her name was Brienne (Davis). She was going to a birthday party on 77 in Charlotte and got in a wreck. She had an old ’69 short-bed truck she fixed up herself, and didn’t have seatbelts in it. And she flipped and got thrown out and she was brain dead. And so Mike Helton came up to me at Phoenix the next weekend and said, “Rickie, don’t worry, she’s better off where she’s at.” And I just started crying uncontrollably. And my wife was like, “Why are you crying over another woman?” And I said, “She’s like my family. We were close.” She was about my daughter’s age. I’m like, “We worked together, we are together all the time. Any of these people I work with, I’m very close to them.” And being here at NASCAR is like a family. Everybody’s just great. We get along, we party together, we hang out, we go play golf, we’re all the time together. And I spend more time with these guys here than I do with my family.
They asked us in a meeting two years ago at our official conference, they said, “Raise your hand if you’re proud to say you work for NASCAR.” And you know, half the people didn’t put their hand up, because they’re afraid you’re gonna be labeled as an ass-kisser or brown-noser for raising your hand and being honest. I said, “I still get teary-eyed saying I work for NASCAR. When cars go by at Talladega and the hair is standing up on your neck, when you’re down in pit box 1, you love what you do.” You know what it feels like to be in love with something, because that feeling, like when you hear somebody sing and it sounds so good, you can feel it. You can feel that feeling, and that’s the feeling I get for working pit road and being here.
I love getting up and going to work no matter where we are every week, I never dread coming to work. I’ve never called in and took off sick because I love what I do. And the director told me one time, he said, “You know what Mr. Kyle? You were meant to do this job.”
I never was one that (grew up) wanting to be a NASCAR official. I never heard of a NASCAR official until I was working in Rockingham in the ‘90s. The way I got to the track down there was from work, a bunch of guys was going to the time trials, and I didn’t drink. And they say, “Rickie, take off half a day and come with us to time trials at 1:00 and drive for us so we can drink beer.” I said, “Oh, OK.” So we took off and bought a bunch of Bojangles chicken and a bunch of beer and we went to the track. And we were sitting in the bleachers and watching the cars practice, and every time this black car went by, everybody stood up, put their hand up. Even someone that was drunk passed out, when the black car went by, they’d open their eyes and stand up and do that. I’m like, “What’s so great about that black car that everybody stands up?” He said, “That’s the man right there. He will put the nose of that race car anywhere and he ain’t afraid of nothing.” And that’s how I got to know who Dale Earnhardt was. And I got to meet Dale Earnhardt. I got to work with him a couple of years before he got killed. I was there the night he got killed, and I have never seen so many grown men cry in my life.
You mentioned that it’s kind of a family. What if somebody’s listening to this and they’re like, “I would love to do that, that sounds like a great job.” How would you recommend they get their start these days?
NASCAR wants you to have some type of track knowledge. Like we just hired a girl out of Alabama. She went to college and she’s 26, and I’ve noticed her at Talladega. She worked pit road in security, her and her dad. Her dad’s 6′ 4″ and she’s 6′ 3″. She played basketball. I watched on pit road when lining up cars, how she controlled the crowd — even though they’d be nasty, she’s be polite and she knew how to handle them. I said, “She’d make a good official.”
So a year ago, I told her, “You should apply for a job. Go to NASCAR.com and apply and send your resume in.” She didn’t do it. So the next year we came back and I’m like, “Did you send it?” She said, “No, I just felt like I couldn’t get a job.” So me and my supervisor, David Green, talked to Chad Little, who did the interviews, and we talked to Chad and we took him out and we introduced her to him, and he said, “Send me your resume to my email.” And she sent it in, and ball started rolling, now she’s sitting over there in our office.
And in hiring her, just being there on the track and having that track knowledge, she has picked up everything. I told them, “You hire people that’s got a fresh mind to this instead of somebody who’s worked at a dirt track all their life and they’ve got that in their head.” She has picked up everything we showed her, she picked it up the first time. We’ve got guys that’s been here five years and can’t park a race car as good as she does, and she’s been here less than a month. Because she never knew it, and when you tell her something, that sticks in there. So I told them, I said, “You keep hiring these guys that’s got all this experience, but it’s like what they told us when I tried to be a highway patrol back in the 80’s — they said they want to hire guys with no experience so we can train them to be highway patrol.”
When people come from lower series, they’re all ready to jump and fight or yell at somebody, and now they get to this level and get this (“Official” name) on the shirt, their head is just big. And my father always said, “Don’t let a job make your head get too big. Stay humble, do your job, be nice, treat people the way you want to be treated.” I tell them, “I’ve been here 20 years, I know. You’ve gotta treat these teams and drivers right. You’ve gotta be nice, you’ve gotta be polite. Gary Nelson always said, “We’re not here to bust their ass every time they do something wrong.” He said, “It’s our job as officials to help these guys, teach them how to do it right and teach them if they do it right, it’s gonna work out for you.” It’s respect.
Motor Racing Outreach chaplain Nick Terry speaks at a chapel service. (Courtesy of Nick Terry)
Each week, I ask a member of the motorsports community to shed some light on their career path and journey to how they reached their current position. Up next: Nick Terry, chaplain for Motor Racing Outreach.
Can you start by telling us a little bit about what you do for MRO?
I’m one of the chaplains for Motor Racing Outreach. MRO is in its 30th season of being out here with the NASCAR community, and so I serve as chaplain over the course of 24 weekends for my schedule. Billy (Mauldin), who’s one of the other folks from MRO, does the other 14. So one of us is always out here. I serve as chaplain out here through the whole entire race weekend for those weekends that I’m covering.
That’s a lot of time on the road and a lot of time involved with the NASCAR community. And you were involved in the NASCAR community before you came into this role. But how did it all start for you? Were you interested in NASCAR growing up?
Actually, I was not. I had never even been to a race or been around racing in any capacity. I graduated high school in 1997 and I went to high school with Shane Hmiel, who was into racing. I knew Shane from school, so in 1999, I decided to go and watch him race one weekend at Caraway Speedway in Asheboro. And as soon as I got there and saw what was happening, I was like, my first response was like, “How have I never experienced this?” Like, “This is awesome. Cars, racing, people yelling at the cars, people are into it and there’s just so much happening.” I couldn’t believe I’d lived my whole life never experiencing racing in any capacity.
And so I fell in love with it that night, and immediately was hooked and I was kind of in a season of life where I wasn’t sure which direction I wanted to go. So with that newfound passion for racing, that kind of planted something in my heart for something I felt like I wanted to do further on from there.
What was going to be your path if you had never gone to the race that night?
That’s a good question. I have no idea. That’s what I was trying to answer in that season of life myself.
So once you got into it, how did you actually break into doing it for a career?
I didn’t know anybody in the racing community at all other than just going to school with Shane. I knew absolutely nobody. So I enrolled at Forsyth Tech Community College in Winston-Salem and took their race car technology program. Bill Wilder was the instructor of that program, and he’s raced Modified cars for years. So I enrolled in school there and really just went in and gave it everything I had. Wanted to learn and soak up as much as I could, and so graduated from there, was very successful, graduated at the top of my class and so I did that and I also helped Bill with his race cars after school and in the evenings. And then I went with him to the racetrack on the weekends. So that was kind of the foundation that gave me some skills to kind of get started.
So prior to that point in enrolling, you didn’t have any technical knowledge or anything like that?
None at all.
So completely learning on the go, hands-on kind of thing? That had to be difficult to pick that up.
It was challenging. And to this day, race cars are much easier for me to work on than street cars.
So how did it evolve from there?
One piece of the puzzle I don’t want to leave out before I move on to that is while I was in school, after I’d help Bill, I also got a part-time job for a small race team called Taylor Motorsports. And out of that team, Clay Campbell, the president of Martinsville Speedway, raced a Limited Late Model, and so I actually ended up crew-chiefing his Limited Late Model car and we won the championship that year.
So I’d go to school during the day, and then work a part-time job somewhere else, and then work a part-time job taking care of his race car, setting it up, bringing it to the racetrack every week, and then spotting for him. And so that was a definitely an important piece to my story.
So you’re in college and crew-chiefing for the president of Martinsville Speedway? That’s pretty cool.
We had some good times. I remember one time, he flew in on a helicopter to the race at Caraway. I’m like, “What is going on here? Who am I to be living this experience?”
So once you got done with school, obviously there’s a lot of race teams, a lot of different options. How did you go from there?
Bill Wilder got me an interview set up at RCR and (former vice president of competition) Bobby Hutchens was the one that interviewed me. They didn’t have a lot of opportunities for entry level at that time, but one of the opportunities they had was to drive the pit practice car and to glue the lug nuts and set up the wheels and tires for the pit crews. And so they offered that to me and I said, “Absolutely, I’ll take it.”
So I took that job and then on the weekends, I was pitting for Toby Robertson, who is T. Wayne Robertson’s son. I pitted for him in the Hooters Pro Cup series and I’d drive to those races on Saturday night as a jackman and then I’d come back to RCR on Monday and get the pit practice stuff ready and set up for the teams.
The whole time, I’m driving the car into these world-class pit crews, and I’m just watching everything they do, everything the jackman does from out the side windows as I sit in the car, picking up bits and pieces about things that I thought that different ones did well, trying to create my own style. And then at the end of the day, I’d stay after work and I would just practice myself on the car.
So like the car would be sitting there that you had just driven and you’d just take the jack and just go around the side, run around?
I’d practice my runarounds, pulls, pulling the tires off and things like that.
How long from when you started doing that to when you actually started getting opportunities as a jackman on the NASCAR side?
I got hired there in 2002. In 2003, one of the guys for the Xfinity Series, or Busch Series at the time was not there for practice that day, so I just kind of raised my hand and said, “Hey, I can do this. I can fill in.” And David Smith was the pit coach who was on Dale Earnhardt’s team for a long time. Finally, I talked him into letting me practice with the team and they let me go and I could see that it was kind of the eyebrow raised, like, “Oh he really can do it.”
It was a 14-second pit stop, which felt really fast for me at the time. So I got to fill in for practice, and then he actually missed a race for a wedding, and so I filled in for him and ended up getting a full-time spot on one of the Xfinity teams for 2003 and also for 2004.
Who was the driver that you pitting for back then?
In 2003, it was Ron Hornaday in the AC Delco car, and 2004 was a split ride with Kevin Harvick and I believe it was Johnny Sauter.
So it was just a matter of once you have your foot in the door, just proving yourself and showing people that you can do it?
It was. It was all about timing, and you can’t even control it. Just being at the right place at the right time, and when the opportunity came, being ready. I also got that opportunity leading into the Cup Series, and so just taking advantage of the opportunity you get.
Was Harvick the only driver you ever worked for on the Cup side of things?
Nope. I worked for Harvick most of the time there, but also pitted Clint Bowyer a couple of years and also Casey Mears when he drove the 07.
So you’re going along your career as a jackman, it’s going smoothly, you’ve made it to Cup, you’re successful. How long total were you a jackman on the Cup side?
Race fans will remember this, but one of the races at Richmond (in 2003), Harvick got into an altercation with Ricky Rudd and there were some crew guys suspended the next week. And so I got to fill in for the Cup guys. That went really well. I filled in at Loudon, New Hampshire, and we were pitted between the 18 and the 24 that day and I just thought it was so cool.
But the pit stops went well, so that kind of created some fill-in opportunities for me. And then in 2005 was when I got a position full-time on the 29 for Harvick. I pitted full-time in the Cup Series from 2005 to the end of 2011.
At the end of 2011, I assume that’s when you start making the transition to the opportunity you have now. How can you explain how you go from pit crew member to chaplain? That’s gotta be a very unique transition, I imagine. What was going on in your life then, and how did that thought process come to be?
It actually happened a long time before 2011. In 2007, we won the Daytona 500 and it was just an incredible weekend and such a special moment. After that, even as special as it was, I began to have a new passion for other things. Really, that passion was not so much for victories or the success within the sport, but I had really fallen in love with the people in the sport more than anything.
As a pit crew guy, you always know that that day will come eventually like, “What am I gonna do next? I’m getting older and slower, and everybody else is getting younger and faster. What am I gonna do next?”
And so the thing that I was really passionate about for me was ministry. I wanted to be in ministry full time, and that’s what my heart was passionate about. So I spent the last three years of my over the wall career preparing for that transition, preparing financially. I went to Liberty University online to get the degree I felt like I needed to do that.
Even within that, I didn’t plan for it to be with MRO, but MRO had been very close to me through the years — they had been my church because I spent 38 weekends on the road. And so I loved what they did, loved who they were, and so as I was kind of pursuing what was next for me, they were in a season where they were looking for somebody. So it just kind of came up.
I think the first time it ever came up, it was kind of in a joking way: “Hey, maybe I could do this.” And they were like, “Yeah, maybe you could do this.” And I don’t know if any of us thought that maybe it was actually a reality, because they never had a chaplain who could do an 11-second pit stop. They only had guys who had been pastors for 20-something years. So it was a completely different road for them and for me, both of us.
Making a change like that has got to be really tough, and you have to trust your gut that you get called toward a certain direction. Even though you said eventually you have to think about what comes next, how did you know that was what you wanted to do?
The one specific moment would have been actually flying home from the race after winning the 500. I remember it was the greatest feeling in the world after winning that race — it felt so good because I had gone from guy who knew nobody in racing to standing in victory lane in Daytona, pushing the car to the museum on Monday.
And you know, flying home that Monday, I just remember with my faith, I was praying and I just felt like in my prayer time that as I was praying, I was just thinking, “God, this is the greatest feeling in the world, and this must be what heaven feels like” — and it was as if God whispered in my ear: “Not even close to what I’ve prepared for you.”
And that became the moment for me where I’m like, “I think I’m gonna stop pursuing the racing and pursue the people and help people grow in their faith, help people to grow closer in their walk with God. But particularly these people here that I’ve fallen in love with the last 10 years of my life before doing that, and to help them with the culture, the challenges they face.”
Man, it’s tough to travel out here for 38 weeks a year. It’s tough on families, it’s a lot of pressure. There’s a lot on the line, there’s a lot of ups and a lot of downs. And I felt like the 10 years that I’ve spent out here doing that was just in preparation for this role. So I did know, and once I knew, I was completely committed to that process of what was next.
But it was uncomfortable. I remember the first time I walked in the garage as a chaplain, I was like, “This feels weird. I’ve been coming here for 10 years not in this role, so this one feels really odd.”
It sounds like what you’re saying is you sort of got to the top of the mountain after this long climb — or after you thought was the top — and then you just realized, “There’s so much more for me.” So after you make that transition, did you find that it was as fulfilling as you hoped right away?
I 100 percent feel this is what I’m supposed to be doing. And that doesn’t mean it’s always easy; it’s tough because people come here to race. They don’t always come for what MRO is doing. But yet when they need us, we’re here, and that’s what we do. We’re just here for people as they need us and as we can serve them and care for them in any capacity they need.
Obviously you had relationships in the garage, but how much did you have to do as far as meeting new people? Like when you’re going around to these drivers and their families, I mean, did you know a lot of them already?
It was a combination. I still am meeting new people out here every day, and I certainly did have to meet new people. I would say there’s a lot of people that still don’t know my story. They just know me as MRO chaplain and probably don’t even know that racing ever existed in my life. But a lot of them do, and so it was a combination for sure. There’s both.
But I look back and while I didn’t do it all perfect as a crew guy, I’m thankful that I tried to live my live even then that would be worthy of the calling that I have now. Not perfect; I certainly know what it feels like to lose it at Darlington on a frustrating night. But I think that goes a long way with people, because I’m like, “Hey, I know what it feels like. I know how difficult it is to control emotion. It’s an emotional sport, and I haven’t always controlled mine. So I’m certainly not telling you to do something that I’ve felt the difficulty in trying to do just as well as yourself.”
I’ve always tried to be honest with people that give me the opportunity to speak into their lives out here and hopefully be relatable.
If somebody is reading this and are like, “Wow, that is just a really cool thing. I have a deep faith, I would love to help people,” in the way you have — how do you recommend people get started on that path?
So we actually have an umbrella of MRO chaplains around the country who are serving at local short tracks. And so they do it under our training, it’s called the MROA (Motor Racing Outreach Association). So we have different chaplains serving around the country. Most of them work full-time jobs during the week and go and do that on the weekends at wherever their local track is. So that’s primarily one of the ways that people are kind of able to do what we do on a different level.
In the race community out here, with these three series, Trucks, Xfinity and Cup, there are people scattered all over the country, and a lot of times we utilize those folks. It’s a pretty tight-knit family. It’s a small world, really, when it comes to racing, whether it’d be someone at this dirt track up here, they know somebody in this community and vice versa. But yeah, there’s always opportunity.
