The Dale Jr. Download - 557 - Gary Nelson Part 1: The King of Innovation

Episode Date: July 10, 2024

Dale Earnhardt Jr. sits down with longtime NASCAR crew chief Gary Nelson, who worked with legendary drivers like Ricky Rudd, Bobby Allison, and Geoff Bodine. In the first installment of this conversation, Gary dives into the intriguing world of NASCAR innovation.If you raced in the 70s with a 100% legal car, you’d be out of business, and Nelson is here to prove it. He shares stories of finding ways around NASCAR’s scales, new innovations in aerodynamics, and how many of his cars looked a little “too good” to the inspectors. Nelson also dives into the early days of his career, discussing his relationship with Robert Gee, learning moments with Darrell Waltrip, and how he was directly responsible for Dale Earnhardt’s first win at Bristol.Dale Jr and Gary also break down his give-and-take relationship with Bobby Allison, and what it took for the two of them to finally find success. It’s a conversation so good we had to break it into two parts.  Check out Dirty Mo Media on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DirtyMoMedia  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey everybody, it's Dale Jr. back again for another episode of the Dale Jr. Download, and this is the ally guest segment. And today we have Gary Nelson. He's a crew chief, a winning crew chief in NASCAR. He also was the technical director in NASCAR for almost a decade. And now winning races in the EMSA series for many, many years. What a light this guy's had. Been wanting to get him here for a long time.

Let's get it started. The following is a production of Dirty Mo Media. Hey, everybody. Dale Jr., Dale Jr., Dale Jr., back again for another episode of the Dale Jr. Download, ally guest segment today, Gary Nelson. He's a crew chief, a winning crew chief. He also was the technical director in NASCAR for almost a decade.

So you've brought all the way around to why I've been reluctant to come here. If I tell you this story from a guy who was there and the folklore story is different, the viewers will have to decide which one is correct. All right, everybody. Another episode of the Dale Jr. Download, and this is our guest segment presented by Ally. Thank you, Ally, for everything you do here for the Dale Junior Download. Thank you for bringing us these amazing guest segments every single week.

Ally, congratulations on your win at Chicago with Alex Bowman. They do so many great things in this sport, including supporting us here at DirtyMode Media, and we're thankful for that. and they bring us a great ally today, Gary Nelson. He has been very hard to talk into coming onto the show. I'll ask him about that when he sits down, but he comes across to me as somebody who's not really that excited about telling the stories of the past or talking about himself.

He just doesn't need to do it. I follow him on social media. He's out riding on his bike all the time, on his Harley, just kind of living life, still going to the races every now and then with the MSA series and have. great success there over the years. And, you know, as badly as we want to talk to him about his career as a crew chief in NASCAR and as the head technical director or head NASCAR official for years, it's just not been

something he's excited to do. But I finally ran into him and got him face to face and said, hey, I promise, I'll take care of you, man. I'm not going to put you in a bad spot. and he couldn't say no. So he's here and I want to get him in the room, get this started, so let's go. It's been a while, huh?

I know it. So pop them headphones on if you don't mind. Dude. So I, so Gary Nelson, thank you for being here. Yes, sir. It's a pleasure to be here. Yeah. I have wanted you to come on this show for so, so long.

And I was nervous, you know, you're our guy to get. hold of. You're spending a lot of your life these days traveling. You get on your bike and you'll just go ride. Yes, sir. You'll post a little bit on social media, so I kind of know where you're at and what you're up to. And I know that, you know, you're doing things these days on your terms. Yes, very much. I'm enjoying that. And I was worried, you know, you were, you're hard to track down, hard to, hard to get a commitment out of to come on to the show. And you seemed a bit, not that, I guess not that excited apprehensive right why so most of my career you know has been followed publicly throughout you know from the early days in NASCAR and the stories seem to grow and change over

time right and I was at the beginning of so many of them and if I come on and start correcting what other people have said that I've done and get the story straight, it kind of puts that other person in a... Bad spot. Yeah, his memory and mine may be different, but I was a guy that did it. So I think I remember it pretty well.

Well, look, I can appreciate that. I'm glad that I finally was able to get in front of you and say, hey, I promise you, we'll take care of you. Yeah, you tricked me, you know. Yes, I did. I was talking to a very important person at General Motors and Jeff Gordon at a social event in Amelia Island. And I couldn't say no to you in front of them. Yeah, I know I got you in a good spot.

And so I'm worried, like, man, I wonder what he will be willing to share with us because I knew you were apprehensive. You come walking in with this radio. And you set the tone right from the start. So this radio, this looks exactly like a radio. From the 70s. From the 70s, right? And so it is 25 pounds. It feels like it's more than that, but I might just be weak.

But it's got the knobs on the top and everything. And so you would obviously have this in the car to go over the scales and everything. Allegedly. Where did this come from? Obviously made in the shop. So the, the, the, The days in the 70s, they did not weigh the cars after the race. All you had to do was get over the scale before the race.

And same with ride heights, same with about everything. Once you took the checkered flag, you drove your truck on the hauler. And occasionally, well, late in the 70s, they started tearing down an engine. But that was all they would do. Yeah. And so do you know what car this came, what shop this was in, what car this might have been in? Yeah, I know pretty well. Well. Do you want to let me know? Was it where you worked?

Allegedly it came out of a shop where I worked. Yes, sir. From the 70s. I've been moving it around since the 70s. And you hung on to this. Yeah, I was kind of proud of it. Yeah. Did you make this? Let's say some people I know and I and I came up with it. Came together and that was a result. Man. All right. So let's dive into it, man. The, you know, and I want to say, like, Darrell, so Darrell, you know, has a lot of people that have come on on our show. And we talk about innovation. I call it innovation. Yeah. And I've drove some cars with some innovation. And we've told a lot of great stories on this show. One of my favorites was Darrell Waltrip, Dick Beatty

Walk and Darrell Walter, but it might have been before Dick Beatty, but one of the the technical directors walking Darrell out onto the track and saying, Darrell, look at all this lead shot. I wonder where this is coming from. And they had, you know, they had something that would plug the jackstab on the, on his, on his car. I think it was Junior Johnson's Mountain Dew car in 81. They plugged the jackstob, filled the whole frame rail with shot,

and then plugged the jackstab up with something that would eventually melt out of the car in the heat of the race, and it would just empty the shot onto the track. And so, and he, I had heard that story in like, you know, whispers for so many years as a young kid, right? And then, you know, a teenager thinking, no way they did that. That's just a rumor. That's just a wise tale. And Darrell came on and was, you know, at his age and his years, he's like, oh, yeah, yeah, we did that. And then they had the car on the jackstands going through technical inspection trying to find what it is that makes

Darrell's car is so good that year. And the jack is under the jackstob hiding the hole. And so they could never find it because they couldn't see it. So, so smart. So you've brought all the way around to why I've been reluctant to come here. Yeah. So if I tell you this story from a guy who was there and the folklore story is different, the viewers will have, or the listeners will have to,

decide which one is correct. Yeah. So memories change over time. Sure. But I don't want to cause any, any, yeah, with different stories of the, different versions of the same story. Sure.

Well, I think people, go ahead. Well, I'll go ahead and tell you, in those days, in the 70s, in NASCAR racing, officiating was not much. And if you raced in the 70s with a 100% rulebook legal race car, you didn't race for long because you would be out of business. Yeah. So I came here, or I came NASCAR racing in 76. Darrell Waltrip was a driver, Dygard racing.

And we, we, we, we, Daryl was a hell of a driver. I mean, great guy. Yeah. But when we ran full weight, full height, full everything, we didn't run very well. Right. And it doesn't take a rocket scientist to look around and see one guy's front of his car scraping on the ground, and ours is up to the four-inch rule. Yeah. So to me, my efforts were, number one, we got to stay in business.

We had a sponsor and owners, and yeah, we had to win. You know, the pressure is always on in this business to perform. So we had to come up with ways to be competitive against other cards. And so some of my reluctance is people's heroes now I'm kind of discussing their methods at the same time. And I don't think that's a good position for me to be in. but I'm really pushing that the officials were not very good in those days. And so we ended up with finding ways to get over the scales because once you got over the scale, it was whatever you could do, right?

And so Buckshot came, it was my idea. I found a way. There was one race car we had, we called it Bertha. Robert G, your grandfather, did all the bodywork on it, and that was one of the most successful cars to race in those days. So Darrell, he was a driver, Buddy Parrott was a crew chief, and I was the chief mechanic, or I think they'd call it car chief now. Came in one night, didn't tell anybody, found a way to,

first went to the gun shop and bought a bunch of bags of buckshed, shot, found a way to take the battery sat on top of the frame rail. You could take the battery out, drill a hole in the frame, pour 50 pounds of buckshot in, and then where the jack post was, it was just a little short piece of tubing that during pit stops, you would jack the car up on her. Cut that out inside that tubing, so now there's a hole up into the frame. put a little plug there, ran a bolt up, and put, you know, it kept it tight for all the

practice and just for the race, loosen it, and I had, you know, had counted the threads of the bolt, and you turn it three turns, and the plug will fall out. So, so, yeah, but I really believe we were just keeping even with people doing other things. Maybe they were doing buckshot as well, I don't know. So how would the bolt eventually? come out? The bolt was about the I think the frame rail was maybe four inches. The bolt was about three and a half inches and the plug was up maybe a half inch. So it's a half inch bolt and you tighten it and it would just so that it was inside the tube for the jackpost and it would bottom out against the end of the threads and it would be tight but you could loosen it just before the race

and the driver would just reach to his left side, put his fingers on the bolt. He could turn it. Turn it, three turns. Yes. Also, the driver controlled it. Yes, sir. And then that would drop the, that would open up the plug. The plug would fall out on the pace lap.

And the buckshot, the buckshot didn't melt. It just rolled. I thought there was something, the plug would melt. I thought there was something in the jackpost that would just melt away and allow the buckshot to leave. That's how all the stories change over time. Right, right, right. you know, I'm just, I made that up in my head probably. So we were at Bristol. After doing it, maybe, I don't know if it was, I think it was the night, yeah, it was the night race at Bristol,

so it was August. We had only started doing that on the short tracks when we ran Bertha. And that car, apparently Darrell turned it, you know, a half a turn less than he should have. So the buckshot didn't come out until our first pit stop. on pit road when they let the jack down during the first pit stop, then the plug came out and the buckshot started pouring out on pit road. And our guys were just panicking, but you can't see it because it's the color of the asphalt. And so our guys were panicking to sweep it up. And I said, stop, stop, guys, you're sweeping up a dry pit road.

Just one guy, go with a road. room and but unfortunately the the trail went through junior Johnson's pit who was the next and so somebody on that team turned us in well they said it was so it was you eventually got discovered well they didn't all they said was we saw buckshot coming out of the car when it went through the pits and so somehow Dave Marcus got his story got Somehow he got put into the story. Oh, but he had nothing to do with it. And so we have scanners, you know,

listening to the officials. And the officials says, hey, we got a report that 88 car is dropping buckshot, which we finally found the guy doing it. When this race is over, get officials all the way around the car, circle him, don't let anybody touch the car. We're going to find out if he's,

the one doing it because there was stories about finding buckshot around the different tracks. And we knew our days were numbered on it anyway. And so I was the car chief at the time, and the official's name was Chip Warren. He walked up to me and he said, you know, all the people were back, got Daryl out of the car, got him away from it. And the officials said, all right, Gary, jack up this car, because I want to get under there and I'm going to find him. out where this buckshot's coming from. I thought for sure we were caught. We were going to be in a lot of trouble.

And when he said jack it up, I put the jack right under the place where the buckshot was coming from, jacked it up, and slipped some jack stands under there, but left the jack there. And he crawled all around under the car, couldn't find it. And he came away from him and said, it must not be them. Wow. And that's that. That's the actual story. Stop doing it.

Yeah. Yeah, that was the last time we ever did it. And that is the story, 100%. And the official's name was... Chip Warren was... Chip Warren, did he not own a little bait-and-tackle shop on Brawley School Road called Country Corner or something like that? Sounds familiar.

A long time ago. Sounds very familiar. I believe you're right, yeah. Do you... This is a very, very fuzzy memory of mine, and this will cut this out of the show if it's not true, but did you ride with Dad? and me when I was a very little boy during a snowstorm. It snowed a lot one night.

I believe so. And we went riding and Dad's truck in the middle of the night. Yeah, he'd like to, he was. And we ran into Daryl Cruz and his band of loggers and rode. There were like 15 four-wheel drive trucks going all down through Raleigh School and Lake Norman, way back before it was developed. Yeah. Taring up everything.

That was fun. With your dad. Yeah, that was always fun. I don't have a big memory of it. I don't either. I just remember a couple rides with your dad over time. So I'll try to try to do the best I can on my memory is also very fuzzy about it. But I never got asked to do anything.

I felt like I never got asked to go anywhere with dad, right? I begged him to take me everywhere he went, right? And he was always going to Mamaw's to work on his bush cars at his little two car garage next to Mamaw's house. every day of the week. And I'm like, Dad, Dad, please take me. Please take me. Especially in this summer. Well, I don't know what it was, but it snowed, which was not too rare back in the day.

We had a pretty good snow. Let's say it was six inches. This is 1982, maybe. And Lake Norman and Broly School and all that was barely developed. There was all the original, you know, there was nothing out there. Yeah, it was just trees. Yes. And so it felt like it was midnight.

And dad had his four-wheel drive square-bodied Chevrolet truck. Single cab. I rode in that many times. Single cab. He's like, come on. I'm like, ooh, I get to go. I must be eight years old. Maybe.

I remember you. Barely could see over the dash. Yeah. And you were. I'm pretty sure, yeah. And there was, and I think at one point someone else even got in the truck. I don't remember, I don't remember you specifically on that ride. Yeah.

So, it's fuzzy. I was there and we go, I'm like, I didn't know, I didn't know you and dad were friendly, right? I mean, I knew, I was barely old enough to even know what was going on at the racetrack and everything. But so you're there and I'm like, for all my, for most. of my life, I thought, man, was he there? Was I thinking? Did you dream that? So it was you, Dad, and eventually it's one point

in the trip. So we ride down the road and as soon as we get out of the driveway, dad's just weaving all over the road off in the ditch and into fields and just being crazy, having fun, spinning around. And all the way

down our road and then we're heading out toward Brawley School to ride through there, I guess, and just kind of cruise around. We met Daryl Cruz. Daryl Cruz, and I'm saying this for the listeners, I know you're maybe aware of Daryl. He worked on race cars,

owned dirt cars, also was a logger. And he owned a logging business, and he had about, you know, several employees. They all drove big, giant, square-bodied trucks. Everybody did. And so we meet them,

and we pull up, And dad pulls up, Darrell's facing the opposite direction, and they had a conversation. And Darrell's like, what are y'all doing? Dad's like, we're out messing around. He's like, all right, well, we just all go mess around together. And so for the rest of the night, it was like 15 trucks in a line just going crazy. Going through parking lots. Running over mailboxes. Somebody broke a wheel off at one point.

I remember dad shining his headlights on this one square-bodied, it was a truck that had a white camper top on it. and he had white wheels, and the wheel left rear tire was broken off, like it broke the axle. Yeah, I don't remember that. I do. I may have said, this is too crazy.

I'm going to get it. You might have. Yeah. I remember Rick Boss, who was dad's first employee, was in a truck with somebody, and they spun and teared a telephone pole. Just big dent in the door,

no big deal. But Rick said, I'm getting the hell out of this truck and got in. in our truck. And so for the last like couple hours, it might have been four of us in that front seat together. And maybe you ended up getting in

another truck at one point. Yeah, that had to be what, 76? No, no, no, no. This is like 81, 82. Oh, okay. Yeah. I may... You were there. Okay. I promise you, I'm putting you there. Yeah. Maybe we had a few Bud lights on that. Oh, I'm sure. Yeah.

But I just, and dude, Daddy must drove... Daddy and all them guys must have run around for hours till 2, 3 in the morning. I went on a few of those rides with your dad. Really? That was something. We did, got rained out of Wilkesboro one time, piled in a van, and just went to his lake house. And it was quite a trip that day. Yeah.

Traffic was not a problem. You're riding with your dad was always a treat. Yeah. I can tell you one other story about your dad. Yeah. But we were at Rockingham for a test. There was a lot of teams testing. And in those days, Alan Kowicki was sponsored by Quincy Steakhouse.

So your dad comes driving. I'm just working with a different team, but I'm walking across the driveway from the garage to the haulers. And your dad drives up in a van. He's, hey, it's lunchtime. Let's go get some lunch. I said, sure. And so I jumped in, and we drive a little further. And there's Alan Kowick.

He's standing in between his car and the hauler. and he's wearing Quincy's Steakhouse driver's suit. Yeah. Right. Your dad says to Alan, he says, hey, Alan, jump in. We've got to talk to you. Alan jumps in, closes his door. Off he goes.

Just doesn't give him a chance to get out. Drives out the tunnel down the road. Alan's sitting there with his Quincy's driver's suit on. Takes us to Quincy's Steakhouse for once down in Rocketham. Yeah. And Alan had to sit there through the lunch wearing his driver's suit with all of the customers. Waring about. Yeah, like you watch on a television commercial, the race driver is always wearing the driver's suit out in the public.

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Linell Racing is easy to find on social too. Check them out at Facebook, X, Instagram, and TikTok to see the latest diecast releases. All right, man, well, let's dive into your career. How did you get introduced to motorsports? my first introduction was probably in my seven eight years old at my family's house on Sunday afternoon there was races I grew up in Southern California on Sunday afternoon Channel 5 KTLA I believe in Southern California had local dirt track races it was I think Ascot and Gardina Speedway and so we would watch them as a family

you know, in front of the TV. One day my dad said, hey, me and my two brothers, let's go to the races today. So we drove down there, I believe it was Ascot and watched the, it was kind of modified in those days,

and I thought that was just the greatest thing. But after that, no more racing, just watching on TV. And, you know, there would be something on wide world sports every once in a while on the news of, you know, something happening. But not really a lot of coverage in California

of the Southern stock car racing, but I was a big fan of it. Got up to about, I don't know, 14 years old, got a dirt bike, and there was some canyons between where I lived in Redlands, California, and Riverside, California. So we'd ride dirt bikes. We found ways through the hills and the,

the hills and the canyons and end up at Riverside Raceway. And there was a spot over by Turn 8 where you could lift up the fence and crawl under it and walk down to turn 6 and have a great view of the races. So that was something we would do is now I got more and more interested in it. At the house, I'd help my dad always working on things. He's always building engines or working on family cars or relatives cars. and I was always in the garage with him. And my little thing was, as a young guy, I wanted to have the next wrench ready for him.

So when he turned around, it was in his hand. And he taught me to fix things, not take off a bad part and put on a part. He said, that's just a parts changer. He said, you need to understand why you're taking that part off and why it's not working and try to fix it yourself. So we would, instead of changing a water pump, We would press out the bearings and the seals and fix the water pump,

not just go buy another one and throw that one away. And we did that with everything. And he taught me how to do those things. So fast forward, you know, I'm maybe 15, 16 years old. And I'm at a friend's house, and I hear an engine running, a stock car engine, a 57 Chevy out behind this friend's house. There was a barn like on the next property. and this guy Ivan Baldwin was running an engine out there. And I walked up and, you know, me and my friends,

we didn't look too automotive in those days. Ivan had, in those days, you grease your hair like Fonzie. Yeah. And our hair was not that way. My hair was maybe fairly long. And so we were kind of didn't fit well. But I asked enough questions, I think, where he realized that I may have a little mechanical aptitude.

So he asked me, he said, hey, I'm going to the races this weekend. I've got this 57 Chevy that I just bought. It was a street car without an engine in it. And he said, I need the body off of that chassis. If you guys want to do it, you can make some money.

Man, I was all about that. He left me the key to his shop. Me and a buddy of mine, we got in there and took the body off over the weekend. And he came back. He was very impressed that some you know, 15, 16-year-old kids could do that and gave me a job right then. So then I was in, I just got in, somewhere in there, I got my driver's license,

went to high school for the first day of 10th grade when the school, you know, the fall came. And I left and worked on a race car some more. He was in there working. I went over there. After a couple weeks, I said, you know, I really need to get back to school. So I went back to the high school. I didn't remember my locker, what my locker was, what the combination was, or what classes I was supposed to be in. So my second day of high school, I graduated.

Oh, crap. Went back to work on race cars. So you didn't finish high school? It barely started, yeah. Two days. Damn. And I went back working on race cars. car and that was 50 bucks a week and I had my I had my driver's license I could travel I could

work out some you know live with some friends and eventually got my own place and and I was all racing we'd work hours and hours of probably the first real week went to a track called orange show speedway in southern California and hit the pit gate at the end of the pit gate and the frame, just diamond, or Z, Z the frame. We had to race the next week. So Monday night, all night, Tuesday night, all night, Wednesday night, all night. We're building this car back.

And finally I told Ivan, I said, man, I just need to get back to school. I'm not cut out for this stuff. And he told me right then, he said, just stick with me through this one and we'll have it made after this. And I tell people that story still today when we're working late or all night. You never get through it.

But you have to just keep pushing and keep pushing. And so Ivan became a champion. We won a lot of races on the West Coast. I mean, racing three nights a week, three days. We'd race Friday night, Saturday night, and Sunday afternoon. Friday night was Irwindale Speedway. Saturday night was Orange Show Speedway. and Sunday afternoon was we would pick wherever we could go to get the most money.

So it might be Las Vegas or it might be El Cajon down near San Diego or it might be Stagas or it might be Bakersfield. We would just run somewhere. A lot of times the promoter would pay us to come beat their local guy that's been winning all the time. And so we made a lot of money. We made enough money to do all of that, support ourselves and keep racing. So every track champion got an invitation to go to Daytona. And so that got me started going to Daytona to run the sportsman race.

Yep. The 300. The 300 on Saturday. What was the first year, do you remember going to Daytona? 70, 70 or 71. Damn. Yeah. Damn.

Yeah. That must have been insane. Had you ever been to the East Coast to see a NASCAR event? No. No. I'd never been on an airplane. I'd never been out of the state, maybe just to Nevada to race.

Sometimes, we might have gone to Phoenix a few times. So you take your car, the car y'all are racing out there to? Well, this is a, so we raced a 60, let me get to make sure I got the years right, a 68 chevel. We bought a 68 chevel, but you had to have, in those years, you had to have a car within two years of,

being new in NASCAR in the Cup series and after that it could be in the in the uh sportsman series so the tail lights were different between a 68 and a 69 and not much else so we built up a cheval like that and we could go back and forth from a 68 to 69 so we would run it as we ran it that year in riverside in the cup race oh we entered the cup race with the 69 Cheval. Yeah. And we took that same car, put it on a trailer, and went to Daytona in February. The Riverside races were in January.

Went to Daytona in February with the tail lights now down on the, below the, you know, just between the bumper and a quarter panel on the 68. And we race it as a sportsman car then. And the officials came around. Somebody didn't like that. And so they brought Bobby Allison. and over and said, Bobby, you know a lot about Chevelles, because Chavelles weren't a popular car in those days. And they looked underneath the inside the trunk and said, is that really a 68 or is that a 69?

And Bobby said, some came that way and some came the other way. And so we got, we ended up racing both, both divisions within a month of each other. Damn. And got some recognition for that. but yeah they would the NASCAR weekly tracks were a big deal in those days I mean I was a NASCAR member and well the first year when I worked with Ivan I think it was $4 for a pit pass but if you didn't have a NASCAR license it was $5 and if you didn't have white pants on it was $6. Oh gosh. Yeah so I remember the first time going to the race track. everybody was supposed to wear white pants. I never knew why or how, but we all had to wear white pants. I haven't bought me any white pants for the first few races or a NASCAR membership,

but then it wasn't long. I became a NASCAR member and got some white pants. And we went to all those. There are videos back in the 60s and where everybody in the pits is wearing white pants. Oh, I was there. I was one of them. And you're like, why is that a thing? I guess it was just, I always thought it was, uh, that was just the style back then.

No, it was $1 fine. It was cheaper to pay five bucks for a new pair of pants than to go to five races, you know. Yeah. So you, um, you ended up working through 76 with, with Baldwin. Through 76, yes, sir. And so, um, you know, you're going to Daytona, your race, you know, you're at the Riverside races. So you're starting to, you're starting to, you're starting to ming. and be around the NASCAR Cup, Eastern NASCAR Cup circus?

Yes. What was your, I mean, how do you end up deciding to make this move? Well, so after the year with where we did the cup car in Riverside, then we just started doing strictly the 300 or the Saturday race at Riverside and at Daytona as well. But it was just me and Ivan and maybe a couple friends, so we had to do pit stops. So the DiGuard crew was near us, so I met David if somehow. I don't remember how.

And David, I said, David, if you guys could pit crew our car on Saturday, we'll pay you. Yeah, yeah. So he brings the pit crew over, and I get to know him a little more each race there. I think we race January there, June there, and then I think we raced Ontario in the fall in November, all companion races with the cup and the sportsman or what you would call it Xfinity. And so we got closer and closer each event, and finally David said, it looks like you're really, you know, well, you're a good guy. Why don't you move to Daytona and come to work with us?

Because that's where the Dygard shop was. DiGuard was on Ventris Boulevard right across almost from the Speedway. Yeah. So I told Ivan, I said, yeah, it's been great, but I got to take this opportunity. And I went and that was a big move for me. It's huge. Yeah. Yeah, I sold it.

I didn't have a lot, but sold everything and showed up there. I don't know. Maybe I had a couple thousand dollars in my pocket. Got off the airplane. David picked me up at the airport, took me to the race shop, and we started wet sanding a car that day. Damn. Yeah.

And I said, you know, I need to go find a place to live, and I need to get a car. What'd you do? So David let me stay at his apartment with his family for a couple nights and found an apartment, got the car wet sanded and done, and then stopped at a car dealer, bought a used car, 600 bucks or something. So I was running low on money, but I had a house. I still see the house in Daytona that we rented. Yeah, it was me and three other guys rented it.

Did they also work in the shop? Yeah, they were all guys in the shop. Your grandfather was there a lot. He stayed in a motel called the Scottish Inn down the street. And that's where I first met him. Robert G. What a character, Robert. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. What a character. So anyway, the four of us lived in this. It was kind of an apartment house thing with three bedrooms. So somebody always had the couch. But we kept score in Florida. I didn't ever see anything like this, but in Florida, there's bugs, right? Yeah.

And so one of the guys's name was Frog Fagan. And he lived there. He had come. They had hired him from Banjjjj. Joe, they'd hired me from California. They hired a couple other guys that, you know, we all just kind of started, David's trying to build this team. And Frog started a scoreboard on the wall in the kitchen with a Sharpie to,

who killed the most cockroaches. Yeah. You'd hear a palmetto bugs and whatever you want to call them, yeah. You'd hear a shoe hit the wall, and somebody got one, and they'd put a check mark. So that wasn't, those days were not the great. latest, you know, you look back and says good old days. I'm not too sure those were the good old days, but I have a lot of memories from it. All right. So you're working at Dygard on Daryl Waltrip's car. I guess Daryl's driving it that early. I wouldn't know. Daryl was the driver.

He was because Donnie had drove the car for a while. Daryl was driving for Budmore, but eventually would get the opportunity to drive for Dygard. Right. My days with that started. Daryl was already there and Donnie was gone. I haven't talked to Darrell, having read and studied and researched a ton, the Daigard team, when Donnie drove the car, it was a very young team, they were in Daytona, which, you know, these days sounds really unusual because everything's here in Charlotte, but Daytona was the headquarters for NASCAR, and so maybe it wasn't so unusual back then to be that far out of the the NASCAR bubble where, you know, parts and pieces and chassis builders and all that were

still up here in Concord, even back then. Yeah. Did it feel like you guys were outside of the bubble even being right across the street from Daytona? Definitely. One of the people that got hired that winter was Robert Yates. Yes. And so Robert came to Florida. Robert G.

came and they're the North Carolina guys. And all the good help was really, you know, transplanted. And, yeah, and temporary, and, you know, you can't really build a solid program around that. So Roberts, one of his first things was we got to move to North Carolina. So how long did it take by time you got there before you moved the team? We moved in March. So right away. I got there right at the first of the year, I believe, or just to the end of – so I end up just a few months.

And now I'm driving to North Carolina. And we've worked out of Robert G's shop over on Hudd's Beth Road. Right behind Robert's house? Right behind his house. Yes. Yeah. While we were getting a shop organized. That's like a damn one and a half two-bay shop.

Yeah. It's not very big. Yeah, we didn't have much. No kidding. We had a couple cars and kept one in a hauler. Well, we didn't even have a hauler. We had a truck with a trailer behind it. You always had to have a car there just to keep it out of the weather.

Yeah, and that was pretty temporary. We were there maybe four or five weeks while we got a shop organized over near the Charlotte Airport. And we ended up moving into that shop. And that was right near Holman and Moody in those days. And that was a pretty neat time. I thought Robert Yates was such a great guy to work with. But his vision, I'd never really worked with somebody. who looked past the next race.

And Robert was always looking, and he taught me this, always be planning for something to be better. Because if you've got a direction and you start going in that direction, you don't have to, you only need to adjust a little bit. You don't have to turn around and go back the other way. Do you remember Buddy Parrott? Yes, sir. Coming in, you know, there was like, I think in 1980,

Buddy Parrott was fired twice. David got fired he was the crew chief and I was still just barely above floor sweeper I was slowly working my way up I was not a top mechanic and

I could weld better and I could do a lot of things better but I just stayed quiet and let evolution take care of itself and so unfortunately I had a great time working with David but he got run off. A guy named Daryl Derringer was hired to kind of manage things. He was a great guy. I really

enjoyed him, but one of the first things he did was bring in Buddy Parr. And Buddy was a really, really good guy. I really enjoyed working with Buddy over there at Dygard. And we just kept building and building, and we got winning more and more. Daryl was an amazing driver. I mean, just, just, it's kind of difficult to work with. But Darrell and I never had any issues now. Other people around would struggle with Darrell. Yeah. But I think Darrell trusted me, and he knew that when I put the car together, it was going to be okay.

And so I only remember Buddy getting runoff once. Yeah, maybe it was just once. Yeah. He came and went a couple times, I thought, but I've never really spent a ton of time with Buddy. I know his sons very well. and I think that Buddy seems like a very easy-going kind of guy. Fun guy. Yeah.

His kids were, I guess, Todd and Brad are probably your age, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so I remember them the same way. A little bit older me, but they, I know that family well. I don't want to pretend to know Buddy better than I do, but I often wondered, so as we would learn, like, you know, Daryl gets into dispute with Bill, I think it's Bill Gardner. Yes.

Right. And then there's this at the 600, I believe, or one of the Charlotte races in 80, they have, Gardner parades out these, you know, these athletes that are going to replace Darrell Walchap or he's in the conversation of trying to. Yeah. You know, there's this sort of battle between Daryl wanting either out of his contract or getting a better contract, and Gardner's going, well, I'll just replace you with anybody. This one guy was a football player, and then the – it was crazy. It was very, very crazy. And so it just was interesting to me. I guess it's funny to me, a little bit humorous to me, how that was a great race team.

It was amazing team. It's like at certain times they couldn't get out of their own way. I spent all those years with my head under the hood. I really just tried to stay focused on the car, and there was a lot of things going on all the time. Butch Stevens came along. I hired him. Why do I know that name?

Yeah, BSR racing products. Okay, yeah. And he's a great guy. and so we had this buddy parrot the leader and Robert Yates the engine builder and and I was at some point I got elevated to chief car chief and and butch was all of those people Dan Ford was another one Ducky Newman a lot most of those people in that group went on to do big more things yeah but we just happened to be all together at that point and but Daryl and car owner were in contract. I guess there was not contracts in those days for drivers,

and Darrell had a pretty ironclad contract that he had signed, and so he ended up having to buy his way out of the contract. Exactly. And I was so aggravated because we were like 200 some points ahead of Richard Patty in the middle of 1979 season. We had won races, we were doing good. And I don't know what happened, but somehow we started doing worse and worse, and Richard did better and better. And we got to the last race of the year, I think we had a three-point lead going into the race.

And you know the name Jake Elder. Daryl always thought Jake had the answers. But Jake didn't work for us. So Buddy was the crew chief, and so Darrell kind of pushed, here's what we need on my car to win this championship. And we put things on the car that we had never, I was just the guy to here put this on. And we put the car together, but it was things that we had never even used. And we ran so bad in that race, we went straight back. and I believe Daryl needed that to learn how to be a champion.

Because we had the point lead based on winning races, and then we lost a championship based on trying to preserve our point lead, and then we killed our chances of the championship by saying, oh, man, we got to stop this slide. Let's put some new stuff on the car, and the car was worse than ever. Yeah. There was a race at Bristol, my dad. dad's first win.

79, yes. Yeah. There was, you know, Darrell was pretty competitive and led a lot of the race. Dad was, you know, obviously in the hunt, come down to a final pit stop. Yes, sir. What all, you feel responsible?

I see you diving into your little. Oh, well, these are my notes. I'm going to. So, Darrell, Bristol was his home. Yeah. He just dominated there. So similar to Nashville, where, you know, the fairgrounds where he grew up and cut his teeth. Yeah.

And see the similarities and why he would be good there. It's just an amazing driver, just so talented in those days. I just would, I was a fan watching the things he could do with a race car. And we got the lead at Bristol and we're doing fine. And I'm the rear tire changer. Buddy Parrott's a front tire changer. And we come down, comes down to last pit stop. and I fumbled the right rear tire change.

Oh. Get done with the pitch. We came in leading. We came out second behind your dad. Yeah. And he went on to win the race that day. So I'm somewhat responsible for your dad's first NASCAR Cup win. I know Daryl didn't love that last set of tires either.

I know just if that makes you feel any better. I did a big research project last year on the 1979 season. and know that Daryl had a lot of comments about how that last set of tires just didn't make the car feel quite as good. Is that right? Yeah, because I really took it badly. Yeah. Because we gave away that win. You know, to us, we were winning regular.

I mean, seven or eight and nine races a year, we could win. Yeah. And so, but this was the first one that I was responsible for us losing. Yeah. That race, when we did this project, we dove into trying to uncovering. as much as we could in terms of race broadcasts and there is there is a race that one race dad's very first win there there to our knowledge there is a race broadcast hiding somewhere maybe who knows where in some archives there's a broadcast of that race hiding somewhere that

doesn't see the light of day and there is no TV broadcast of it but there are there were some cameras, there is some, like, there's probably roughly around eight to ten minutes of footage of the cars circling the track and dad winning the race that is still out there today. In those days, we weren't televised. No, it was. It was a newspaper sport. Yes, it was. They had some radio, MRN, was just getting going.

Back then, a lot of the races, that particular race was broadcast by a student, uh, student organized broadcast local that was like in App State or very, moon or somewhere. And so we believe that somewhere hiding in their archives may be the broadcast of that Bristol race. Possibly, but if there was a broadcast, the lighting would have been so terrible. Not a broadcast, I'm sorry, but the radio audio. Oh, the radio, yeah, yeah. Yeah. It may actually be hiding somewhere in the archives in App State.

Yeah. You stepped away from NASCAR in 1980. What in the world? That's the end of 79. Yeah. I was so frustrated. Good Lord. They fired Buddy Parrott right after the season. Yeah.

And I'm just thinking we had this great trend of winning races and gaining points and we had Richard Petty. Got a hell of the team. Yeah. Richard was in, he was a great driver and we were beating him. And to me, and Bobby Allison and Kale, and we're beating all these guys at their best. And all we needed was to just catch our breath. and go into the next year and take off. And I firmly believe we were going to be the champions in 1980.

Yeah. And they fired Daryl and Daryl and the Gardner's got together, fired Buddy. And I was pretty aggravated with that. And at the same time, maybe they would bring in a guy that I could really learn from mechanically, Buddy was more of a coach and a tire changer and athlete, but he was a good, great job as a crew chief, but I was hungry to learn more about what makes these cars go. And they brought in Jake, Elder, and I was still aggravated that he's the one that caused, I don't know if he caused it, but him and Daryl getting together to throw away our Ontario race.

So I just told Bill Gardner at, we went to Riverside, I think we won Riverside, and then we went to Daytona, and I told Bill, I said, I got an offer from a friend of mine. I think I'm going to go try it and see how it goes. And so I moved to State of Washington for a year, 1980. Yeah. Left NASCAR. So this is fascinating to me because if this is happening today, I can't imagine somebody going, and yeah, I'm going to leave this giant sport of NASCAR.

Yeah. This amazing opportunity that I have. But it's not, that wasn't what NASCAR was like in the late 70s and earlier. We weren't making any money. None of us were. It was a very blue collar, blue collar low paying job, but hard manual, hard manual labor. Hours. Crazy hours.

90, 100 hour, 80 hour a week would be a good one. Nasty all the time. Dirty. Dirty all the time. Yeah. Wet sanding cars was the thing I hated the most and did a lot of it. So what was in Washington State? Robert always painted them with lacquer. And wet sanding was the way you made the lacquer shine.

And Robert would not let you get away with skimping on the wet sanding. So, yeah, a friend of mine had a tow truck business in Tacoma, Washington. And he called me up and said, hey, why don't you come out here? I got this business I'm starting up. Why don't you, he actually had a body shop, and he wanted to start a tow truck business to help his body shop. I said, yeah, I'll give it a try. So I went out there for a year.

During that year, Daryl got out of his contract. Ricky Rudd came in 81 at the end of the year. And I was still, I was doing well, successful, built this business up. was finally making some money. And Robert was calling me on a regular basis, Robert Yates. Yeah. And Bill Gardner, and finally, they were the snowstorm in Tacoma, and I had to go out and work that thing with a tow truck on a freeway, and cars were just going by.

And I thought, you know, it ain't worth it. I miss getting trophies. We race for trophies all the time with Ivan. all the time with Darrell, it was about getting the trophy. And there was no reward for towing a car better than the next guy. You know, you just knew it yourself. So I came back in maybe March or so of 81. Cliff Champion was the crew chief then.

Ricky Rudd was the driver. And they just told me to hang around a little bit. And so I did. Yeah. And I tried to help where I could. I think we won maybe one pole that year. Yeah. And I don't think we won any races.

And then at the end of 81, Bobby Allison and I were talking at a racetrack one day. And Bobby was getting ready to leave his team. And so we started a conversation there. And Ricky wasn't happy and the team wasn't happy. So those things started to change. Yeah. So Ricky Rudd would go drive for Richard Childers, I believe. Yeah. Bobby was leaving Budmore's car at the end of 80 season. Right. Or 81 season, maybe. I, um, so Bobby becomes the driver in 1982 and you'd win the Daytona 500. That was my first race as a crew chief. Ever.

Well, I was in the first cup race as a chief. So I got us, you know, you built one hell of a race car for this race. Right. Now, when I see pictures of this car, we'll talk about bumper and all that stuff because everybody, everybody has their own ideas of that. That's another one of those stories. I know. I know. I'm probably going to agree with your side of it.

I was there. Yeah. I do want to say when I look at this when I there's some really great shots of these cars in this race coming around turn four there was always a great little spot in the wall where the cameraman

would give really good shots of the car's exiting turn four. You guys had when you look at your car and you look at the competition y'all had already y'all were ahead of the game in terms of aerodynamics You take in, you look at the right side of that car.

It is completely flat. Yep. There's no wheel, there's no bubbles. That was the best body ever. Yeah. And all the competition, they've got their damn quarter panels beat out and trying to clear tires and all that stuff. And y'all have that damn thing flat as a board. I'll tell you how we did it.

Yeah. So testing always happened in January in Daytona. It wasn't a big deal like it. is now. You would just privately rent the track. You'd go run a couple days, come home, and a couple other teams might be there, maybe not. You'd share the expenses. Now it's like everybody wants to go. But in those days, most of the teams couldn't afford it or couldn't get ready, whatever it was. So I didn't like those big fenders, you know, clearing the tires. The way to do bodywork in those days was you put the rear end housing on a jack in a center, put the tires on it,

and you would move it under the body and make sure it didn't touch any of the bodywork. Yeah. And I didn't think that was the right way. And so I went to the hardware store and bought this spray is called Great Stuff. It's like a spray foam. Yeah. And I sprayed the inside of all the fenders, of all four fenders. and we tested, and all it did was the tire didn't do any damage.

It just rubbed the foam away to the exact spot where the tire was running while the car was on the track. Right? You didn't have to sit in a shop and try to figure it out because you would always want to give it a little extra so you didn't burn the tire against the fender. So I had the exact location of where those tires, all four tires were based on rubbing against that foam. And I just thought of it when we were down there one day. Damn. Looking at these vendors, I said, why can't we push them in?

Well, they'll rub. And I said, well, let's find out. So we did that, came back to the shop, and we made templates from the frame to the foam. Exact shape, took off the body and then put a new body on right up against the templates. That's how you saw that car so flat. Holy shit. Yeah, because it looks different. It looks better or just completely different than the other car.

It was probably seven-eighths of a car compared to the other one. Yes, yes. And it does look smaller. And we did a few other things. Right. I know back in the day they did actually, you know, I know Daryl, there's a car of Daryl's that Junior Johnson built. It might be a couple, this might be a couple, you know, 84, 85 that's narrow. They'd shortened, they narrowed the entire car because there wasn't an overall template width-wise.

You just ran one across the hood down the back, down the top of the car, like the spine of the car. Right. I think we started that with that car. Yeah, that car was a little bit. In 82. Yeah. We built, when we left the test in January and came back in February, we had that body. I guess I'm curious as to what, how you were, how did you understand that was the direction you needed to go? Was there wind tunnel testing even back then? Because I don't think there would be, how else were you learning? Yeah, there was. GM had just built a wind tunnel at the, GM Tech Center in Moore in Michigan. And I begged and everybody I knew at GM to give us a shot in the wind tunnel. And we put, they said they wanted us to run a Chevy and we were running a Chevy

Monte Carlo on the short tracks, but we wanted to run the Buick on the big tracks. And they said, well, we'll go to the wind tunnel and take your Chevy and take your Buick. And if the Buick's if the Buick and if the Chevy's better than the Buick please race the Chevy so it was me and Bobby Allison we just met and it was maybe December something like that

and so we don't know a lot about aerodynamics at all so we put the Buick in and they turn on the fan and if you know the wind tunnel there's like four load cells under each tire four scales essentially and they would measure the force that the car

is being pushed back and they call that drag and they measure the force of cars being pushed down is down force. And so those scales would measure it with a given amount of wind, maybe 150 mile an hour wind. So we took the Buick out, we got all the numbers off of it, took it out, put the Chevy Monte Carlo in, and what you do is you lock the brakes on both cars, turn on the fan, and you read those scales. The Monte Carlo started skidding back on the pads. It had more drag. I didn't even. I didn't even. I didn't even need any scales or anything to figure that out. So I told the GM guys, I said, we'd love to run the Chevy, but...

It won't stay on these pads. It's got to have more drag than that Buick. I don't know what your numbers are telling you, but my eyes are telling me that it's the same amount of wind, push that car back. Yeah. And so that's when we went to work on the Monte Carlo SS with a slope nose. That was the first beginning, that was the beginning of it. We told him, we'll run a Buick until you guys.

can come up with a better car. So then we started working on that in the background. But yeah, we went to Daytona. You're going to ask me about the bumper next. So there's some, I forget what, I guess, I think it was Joe Milliken lost control or something. No, well, yeah, we caused a wreck in turn four at Daytona. But so to back up, we had this beautiful. car. I was really proud of it. And I believe Robert did to paint, but he didn't do the metal work.

Another guy did the metal work. But it was beautiful. We get to Daytona, and soon as we arrive, they asked me, we didn't have cell phones in those days or anything. They asked me to step into the office, the NASCAR office. It's my first time. I've never been a crew chief. I've always been a, you know, I always had a crew chief. So they said my mother had passed away that night, the night before. And I'd driven down, not knowing, you know, get there to sign in. She lived in California, so I said, I'm sorry, guys, but I got to go. And I flew to California.

That may have been on a Tuesday or Wednesday or something. And we had the funeral, I think on Friday, and on Saturday, I believe, I flew back to Daytona. we ran the Bush clash, which was really my first race as a crew chief. I think we won it, but I don't remember. I think we did win it. Is this your Daytona 500 car? Yeah, same car. And while I was gone, the guys took it through inspection.

And Joe Gazzaway, the inspector, he saw that the car looks so good. this is what your one of the things your grandfather always had against NASCAR was if you bring too good a looking car they're going to find something and so they wanted the crew to lower the bumper on the rear the rear bumper. Had you raised it?

Probably. Yeah. But it looked right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's no measurement or template or anything. He just looked at it when I want you to put that down a little bit. Yeah. And so the crew did that and I get back off the plane and I say how's there, you know, we had this problem in inspection, they made us move the bumper. We moved it. And that was that. I looked and I said,

you guys did an okay job. I didn't crawl under and look at how they did it. It turns out they just put pop rivets on it, riveted it back to the bodywork and dropped it down an inch or whatever. Satisfied the officials. And I had no idea that they didn't weld brackets on it. They just riveted it to the sheet metal. And as we go on with the the Bush clash, and then the 125s, I think we, I don't remember that well, I think we were second or third or something, and then when the 500 started, we just took off. Yeah. And I think the race is 200 laps, and I think we let 160 of them. Yeah. Just gone. Yeah. And during the race, the, Bobby was passing Kale for the lead on the inside, and Kail bumped the back,

quarter panel and the bumper fell off. It was not intentional. It was not. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So that bumper comes off and that's, and Joe Milliken ran over it. And then one of the crew chiefs, Cale's crew chief at the time, you know, saw what we were doing.

And he just, they interviewed him and he said, yeah, they meant for that bumper to come off. That was his conspiracy theory. And I never have been able to. to get that true story out. That kicked the ball down the hill. Yeah. So I appreciate you having me on here for that one story because it's been so this so changed over the years.

I wouldn't think that you would intentionally plan for the bumper to come flying off the car. If I was there, I would have welded the bumper off. Because of how dangerous that situation would be. Yes, definitely. You wouldn't do. You're not that, you know, you're not that type of person. I have more compassion for my friends. For sure.

And so unfortunate. But at the same time, I mean, you know, knowing now what I know about bumpers coming off race cars, it certainly didn't hurt things. And, I mean, it was a fast race car either way. We were taking a lead when that happened. Yeah. Well, you go win the race. Daytona 500.

It's a great story. But it was one hell of a race car that you built that you brought to the racetrack. You win nine races, finished second to Darrow, and the points. Yeah, that was a tough one. Yeah. So Bobby was new, and I had, working with Ricky Rudd the year prior, I had met this engineer, his name was Paul Giltenan, great guy, great engineer. And no, people weren't using engineers in those days.

But he taught me a few things, and it gave me a lot of knowledge about, okay, you got four wheels, you want them to carry their share of the load, and you want them to agree on where they're going. Sounds pretty simple, right? But we were doing heavy springs, light spring. The springs are what pushes the tire to the ground. If one tire is not carrying its share of the load, the other three are going to give up sooner. So Paul taught me these things.

We go to Daytona with that kind of thinking, and we win the race. Well, the next week, Bobby calls me up and says, hey, that was great. Here's the setup I want you to put under for, for Richmond, the next race. And I said, well, Bobby, I think that, you know, we got some other thing.

No, no, that's what I want, that setup. So in those days, so Bobby had driven for 21 years in the cup race, cup racing, and he had 21 car owners. Yeah. And I was the 20, or our team was the 22nd. Yeah. So I knew that he was pretty hard-headed. Yes.

But he was one hell of a race car driver, unbelievable's talent behind the wheel. But he wanted to engineer the car as well. And so we went all the way to, well, we went to Martinsville, which is probably April, late April, and barely on the lead lap any of these races. It's just terrible, just terrible running. after just dominating Daytona. And we get to Martin'sville and Bobby says, I know the problem.

We need power steering on this car. We don't have, the casters wrong. And if we put the castor right, it's too hard to steer. So we need power steering. It makes sense to me. So me and Bobby, we just qualify there, I think, on a Thursday. After qualifying, we went to a junkyard, local junkyard. Bobby, we found a Cheval.

And Bobby said, that steering box. and that steering pump, power steering pump, will be perfect. I said, yeah, it looks good. He says, well, let's get it off. I said, whoa, whoa, wait, we're at Martinsville. We're not going to re-engineer a steering system and the whole suspension between now and the race. Give me a little time.

So I knew some friends in California that were racing sprint cars with power steering. And so that week I called, and I said, guy's name was Tom Lee in Southern California. I said, Tom, you guys run power steering on your sprint cars, correct? He said, yeah. I said, can you help me? He said, yeah, I'll send you some stuff.

He made a steering pump, power steering pump, and a steering box. And the next race was Nashville Fairgrounds. And Bobby called me up with the setup and said, you got the power steering? I said, yep. He said, okay, put, I think it was like 10 or 12 degrees of cap. in both front tires. And we get to the track, and we got lap probably three or four times. It was terrible.

And this is also a side story on that Nashville race. Bobby, in those days, you didn't have a guy to hand the driver water. You had to do it with a pole. You had a cup of water on a pole. And when it came time for the race, you just looked around and found somebody that, hey, when the car comes in, put a cup of water on there and stick it in the window net. And this guy was so nervous, he just get to the car and drop it or shake it or what. Bobby didn't get a drink of water the whole race.

Oh, no. Yeah. And so Bobby says to me, and we're running terrible anyway, but cars are dropping out. And in those days, four or five on the lead lap was, so I said, Bobby, we're just finally getting a little progress here. we can't pit. He said, I have to come back to, it was under yellow, he said, I have to come back to the pits for water. And I said, Bobby,

let me think about this. So, this kid, his name was Joe McGinnis, he's the athletic young guy. I said, take these cups of water to the back straight away and run down the back straight away, and Bobby's going to pull over and you're going to hand him some water

during the race under yellow. The lighting and those days was so bad there was no TV there was no replays there was not could you imagine somebody doing that today so so anyway we we that got bought we got him a couple water he drank it finished the race we were terrible and um we get home and i called bobby and i said bobby the next race is dover here's what i'm suggesting we won Daytona you you had just showed up and did it's the didn't have any, as soon as you got in the car, it was good. You drove it, you won the race.

Since then, you've been engineering the car, and we haven't done really anything. When we get to Dover, I want to, I want you to just show up like you did at Daytona, sit in a car and drive. How did he feel about that? Well, he was pretty frustrated, too, because his power steering didn't work out at Nashville. Yeah. And he had thought that was going to get us over the edge. And, you know, that kind of thinking is pretty prevalent in racing where we're getting beat by the basics, but we're going to do a trick to fix all of that. Yeah. That's normal in racing. And that's against my DNA. I want to fix the basics.

So I told them, I said, just do like you did in Daytona. Show up. Don't ask any questions. Drive the car and see what you think. And so I got a hold of my friend Paul. And I said, Paul, I need a good setup for Dover. And he's an engineer, a good engineer. And Bobby comes, gets in the car. I think we won that race by four laps, maybe, with power steering. But I said the caster, you know, logical, maybe three on the left and four on the right, something like that.

Where everybody else had negative caster. on the left and positive on the right with the manual steering. So we just dominated that race. But it wasn't just, it wasn't the power steering so much as the setting, you know, the spring rates and the weight positioning and all the things we did in those days got the bump steer right. And Bobby then we went on and he said, you got it. You got it, Gary.

Yeah. And so we started, we were then winning. So I think we won. seven or eight more that year, but we gave away the first, the whole spring. Yeah, the third of the season at least. And so that's why we finished second and points that year. I think we won more races than Darrell, but he killed us at all those other tracks. Well, you'd come back in 83 to win Bobby's championship. Yeah. You know, that was seven victories that year. Bobby was an incredible race car driver. I know that you would agree. But to your point, very demanding, high, you know,

high standards was, you know, I always was curious. And I, you know, it was probably a different time and things weren't what you, what you would assume. But he had, you know, he's, when he first, one of his very first opportunities was driving for junior, right is, right before junior would eventually take ownership of his car from Richard Howard. The Coca-Cola car, yeah. And then Cal wins three championships in this car. Kel wins tons of races driving junior's cars. That could have been Bobby Allison.

Easily, yeah. And there was so many little moments in Bobby's career where the guy just was so cantankerous at times. We got along amazingly in 80, once we fixed the things in 82, all the way through 83 to the championship. We were just great relationship. Yeah. And I just had all kinds of admiration

for him behind the wheel driving. But then slowly, so if I missed, so my engineer that I couldn't bring him over because Bobby did not like the guy. No. Bobby did not want an engineer anywhere around. So I would call him and work remotely and And Bobby just did not like the guy. And I'm like, stuff works, right?

So I couldn't get that message. We couldn't get together on that. So at some point, Bobby said, the car is terrible. It has no power, won't run. He's getting on Robert Yates and getting on me that the car is handling terrible. And I believe we'd probably miss something on the setup. But so Bobby said, here's what we need to do. You could call it the motorhome lot set up where the drivers would gather.

There wasn't motorhomes in those days, so it was the motel pool. I heard this is what's good. Yeah. Let's put this in. You get the combination of everybody's, and you show up the next morning, and you got the magic. Yeah. So, and we just started going downhill. I wanted to bring the engineer and Bobby didn't want him.

And next thing I know, 84 is just tough. I think we only won a few races. At some point he broke his shoulder, I think, at Dover. And this was an interesting time because Butch Lindley came and drove at Martinsville for us. And that guy was just unbelievable. He was instantly the best driver to just sit in the car and go. That guy, I always respected that. His son, Marty, works here.

Yeah, I've heard that, yeah. I've always, you know, had a big respect and appreciation for Butch and Marty. So he drove your car when Bobby was injured. Yeah, Bobby was out with a broken shoulder. Y'all were supposed to win that race in the brakes or something. We were going to win. Yeah, what happened? And it's my fault.

No. What happened? I'd... So we had electric pumps in those days that pumped the oil from the rear end to the cooler and back to the rear end. And at Bartonsville, you run such a low gear that the rear end gets hot. Yeah. Very hot. So you have to really have a good cooler.

And myself, I took the impeller. out of the electric water pump, and I was gonna put a new one in race day morning. And when I opened the box for the new one, it had a different cover that was aluminum, where the one I took off was plastic. And I thought, oh, that'll be better. The aluminum, I'm glad they finally got a better,

well, the screws that came with the new one, the new filter, were shorter because the aluminum was thinner, but I didn't know it at the time. So I just used the original screws from the plastic one, put the filter in, tighten it up, they bottomed out in the holes, felt tight. You know, I didn't have a look at it

because it was behind the seat. I was working from above it. And, you know, I'm kneeling in the driver's seat with my arms around the headrest, trying to blindly putting this thing together. Yeah, but I feel. Oh, all four bolts are tight. everything's good.

We were lapping the second place car when the rear end went out. Damn it. Just gone. I mean, Butch, he taught me something unbelievable that day or that weekend that I'd still use today with my drivers. All the drivers I work with,

I tell them this story. I said, Butch wanted a car to be as loose as you could make it on entry. so it wouldn't push in the middle. He wanted to be on the curb at Martinsville in the middle of the corner. So if you're going north on the back straightaway and south on the front straightaway, when you're going east and west, he wanted to be going east and west.

He didn't want to be pushing, waiting for it to stop. So he was on the throttle so early. But to do that, he was off the throttle so early. And he said to Robert, he says, I think it was a 633 gear that he wanted to run. And Robert, no way. I'm not going to run. The Vowel's train will not last. We'd already tried that with Daryl earlier when we had to do an engine change during a race years earlier. But so Robert had experience. He wanted to run like a 580 gear and 600 would have been a shoving match to get that in. But a 633 was not on the table. No. And but which

Lynch Linley came to Robert and he said, how much RPM is by maximum? And Robert, I don't know what the number was, say 7,900. Butch said it will, this engine will not go above 7,900. Give me that gear. He did it. He would be coming off the throttle. He drove by the tack until it got to 7,900. But he jumped off the corner so fast.

And he got, it was easy to roll in. He didn't even use any brakes and just dominated, just passed everybody, gone, going away. And because the mechanic at the time, me put the filter in wrong, or put the bolts in, the bolts were longer because the manufacturer had changed the spec. Damn. And so we lost that race because of that. But But But Bush's whole career would have been 100% different if he could have won that race. what happens that eventually you're you're off of the 22 or you know the yeah i guess it's 22 at this point

the car owner yeah so so bobby's set on doing the setup and not wanting anything to do with the engineer yeah paul and the car owner's asked me hey if we don't start doing better we're out of business. I said, I'm trying, but I can't get anywhere with setting up the car. You know, Bobby's, you know, he's got his old book and that's what we're going to run. And you guys won all these races before. Why don't you run that stuff? I just can't get anywhere. And he said, tell you what, you take your engineer and your ideas and go run a different car. And so we put the car together over a few weeks' time. He called it the R&D car.

Yep. And went to Daytona. This was in the middle of the – this is in the middle of 1985. So somewhere in early 85, you get off of Bobby Allison's car as a crew chief. Yeah. Robin Pemberton comes in. Robin. Was Robin already there?

I hired Robin for that. reason. Bill Gardner wanted, he said, get a hire a crew chief and you do it. Ah, okay. Yeah. And, and you're like, great. I need some relief. Well, Paul in the meantime got frustrated too. The engineer, he went to work with the Elliot's. Yeah. The Elliot's never said much about it, but Paul was engineering Bill Elliott and they're doing really good. Dominating, yeah. Yeah. So, so I called Paul and I said, I said, Paul, he said, I've been kind of hanging around to Elliot's, but they're keeping me, you know, off to the sides. And I said, but Paul, I got a deal for you.

Come, come to me, come back, we'll do this at Daytona to see what happens. So that year, Bill Elliott was winning everything. Yes. Came to Daytona, and we got Greg Sachs who'd never won a race. and Paul and myself and one guy, he was this Australian guy he might have been New Zealand that had come to walking in the shop one day

with sandals on, driving an old van and shorts and long hair and said, hey, I'm looking for a job, mate. And so it was the three of us stayed day and night, worked on, he lived in the shop. He just set up a sleeping bag in the shop. We had a little building up there and welcome North Carolina.

Wow. That's way far away from the rest of the shop. Yeah. It was the cheapest place we could find. Yeah. We didn't have any budget. Yeah. So we just put this together.

We showed up Daytona. This car was the car that Cali Yarborough had won the Daytona 500 with a couple years before. I'm not sure. You're not 100% sure about this. I know it came out of Renier's shop, but I didn't know the history of it. And it had been a little, it had been handed through a few people and needed a little bit. Didn't the Sacks family own this car?

And maybe Greg, yeah. Greg, because Greg ran in the 500 earlier in the year, and I believe finished in the top 10. Yeah. And so, I don't know. Yeah. And they may have purchased this car from Rainier. And so when Greg come, you know, when this all comes together, this is your car.

This is how you get this car. Yep. And we worked on it and got all the settings the way my engineer wanted it. And he had a little bit of a chip on his shoulder towards Elliot because Elliot was just, oh, I don't know why. I just know that he was happy to come back and work with me. I'm the only one I think that embraced him publicly. Gotcha. That an engineer can help.

And so we go to Daytona with Sachs, who'd never won a race. Bill Elliott had either won or had trouble that year. He didn't have any second place finishes that year. And I think he left the field at Talladega earlier in the year. And we passed Elliott and beat him for the win and the Daytona 400 on July. I was there. It was hot. It was hot.

It was hot like most Daytona July races were back in the day. This was an upset. You know, and nobody knew much about Greg at the time. The team was a bit of a group of sort of outcasts in a sense. Yeah, no pit crew. Yeah. You showed up and didn't have pit crew equipment, had to gather all this stuff on site. You mentioned during the race, I watched some of this the other day,

and you mentioned during the race that you had a lot of, ideas on this car that were just ideas that you wanted to you had been wanting to try right right and that you were um they were ideas you couldn't try on bobby's car yep right because yes sir if you put them on bobby's car and they don't prevail then there's more there's more problems yeah it's hard if if a guy tells you he doesn't like ice cream and then you give him ice cream and he's not going to like it. Yeah. Right. So I knew it was a dead end trying to, trying to say, I got this engineer that knows what he's doing. Yeah. He's the smartest guy I've ever met on setting up race cars. Yeah. I want him to set up your car. It was just wasn't going to happen.

Yeah. So, you know, what was special about this car? What are some of the things that, you know, you guys feel like that you learned that you took to that, that race and were able to, you know, find performance. We tighten up the body. Even Wadill had done a good job on it, Greg, but it had been crinkled up and repaired, and so we'd tighten it up like we did before. We knew the

clearances for the tires, and aerodynamically, that was all we did to it. For the suspension, we moved a geometry to what we call roll couple, or what my engineer called roll couple.

We managed to figure out how to get the front and the back of the car to work together rather than independently. Even though you think of one long frame from the front to the back of the car, you need the tires to complement each other, not just the rear axle, the left and the right, but all four of them. And typically what you want to do is get tire temperatures. So Paul had taught me that you measured your tire temperature. on a tire, you get three temps. You add those up and divide by three.

There's your average temperature of that tire. You do the other one on that axle. Same way, you add those together, divide by two, and you've got your front axle temperature. And so you do that on the rear, and what you wanted was a couple degrees more front axle temp than rear. That was the whole, we changed things,

every practice to get those temperatures together, which told us all four tires are working. And when we started doing things like that, the left front was always way cooler, and the right front was way hotter. And you could get the average, but the average would come up at the expense of the right front tire. So we figured out, or Paul figured out,

that you'd really want to look at all four tires, but then you wanted to look at the front of the car and the back of the car. And so in those days, a Panhard bar was only, only bolted to the rear end in one spot, and on the frame it had maybe three holes. The rear pan hard bar. The rear that held a rear axle between the fenders on the car. It was a fixed mound on the rear in house, and it did not have an adjustment up and down. Right.

And on the chassis, you might have three options. Yeah, and everybody just said, make it a level. That's the way it goes. Yeah. And Paul came along and said, it's in the wrong place. So we went to work and made ways to move it. Yeah. Left side and right side.

Which is absolutely every car out there right now. This race shop has a full adjustment on the left and right side of rear panhard bar. You've got power steering and adjustable panhard bar and probably a pretty good bump steer. Sure. And you probably have a weight percentage a little more forward than you would have in the 70s and 80s. Yeah. So that was something relatively new on that car in terms of. of being able to, you know, move the roll center in the rear of the car.

That's what we did, yeah. We moved to front. I think we moved to front down and the rear up. Yeah. If I remember, right. And I didn't want, it was so simple. I didn't want to broadcast that, you know. Sure, yeah.

I know they asked you during the race, they interview you in Pitt Road. And they're like, well, you said, yeah, we've got some great ideas on this car. And the guy goes, well, what are they? And you go, you say, well, I don't really want to tell you that. Yeah. Like mid race. Which is, which is more of a mystique. And hey, if I told you it's so simple, nobody would believe it.

Right. Right. Some of the things we were doing. So, you know, Sacks ends up, there was a common misconception, I guess, might be the word, about two-car teams back then. Even when Skinner comes to drive for RCR in the 90s, dad was like, oh, no, I don't want a teammate. We don't need two-car. And Darrow Walship was the same way with, with, uh, jenner. Junior Johnson in the mid-80s. Bobby was out of it. Bobby's same thing. I mean, Dave Marcus

quits Austerlin in 79 to open the door, paved the way for Dad to drive full-time because he didn't believe in two cars for that operation. So, you know, Kayle was, or Bobby Allison was vocal that this, you know, this is a, this, this, this, R&D cars taken away from the focus that I need. Exactly. But even with all that going on, Bill Gardner decides to run Greg after the success of the Firecracker race. Greg's now in this number 77, team car. Yeah. Robin. So Robin's still the crew chief.

On Bobby? Yeah. Bobby starts his way out the door with the sponsor. There's a few weeks where Bobby's still with Gardner. and the 77 of Greg Sacks is still on the racetrack. I don't remember the time frame, or I don't remember how long that was, but I do remember that.

Where are you in all of this? After Daytona, what happens? I thought that that would fix everything. That was what my goal was. My long game was just. Was Bobby going to come there to the shop Monday and go, all right, I'll just drive this thing. You guys were right.

I was wrong. Yeah. I really think. thought it went exactly the opposite. Oh, wow. It was, you guys, and unfortunately, his engine broke in the race. Yes. And so that was a conspiracy in his mind. We win the race with, his teammate wins the race, and his engine breaks. And so when you add up all that in his mind, he was not going anywhere with this team. And does Gardner think that he's found this, oh man well i got this gregg sax guy he's a look at him right he won his first race we don't need this

bobby alison guy right is that so uh i don't know i can't speak for him sure that's that i was just i'm making an assumption there but this is insane uh how how this team this winning the championship guard you know it's the guy it's the die guard team that just cannot seem to like we could not get at any traction, we could have great runs and then second in points. We won with that one championship in 83. So where do you do after the

84 or 5-cracker 400? It's fuzzy between the I can tell you what I did right after the race. I had to drive to hauler home. And I got on I 95 just north of the LPGA exit.

The truck broke down. But first of all, there was a flat tire of the truck coming in. I had to fix that myself. Got that fixed. It was really hot that day. Got on the interstate and went a couple miles, stopped on the side of the road. A fuel pump went out on the truck. So I took the pump off and I went to smoke.

I got somebody to give me a ride over to Smokey's, Smokey Unix shop. Yeah. So Smokey, he really, his day job was working on things like that. Yeah. Yeah. So went into his shop, and we were friends anyway, and he fixed the pump for me, and we talked forever, and finally got the pump. You know, I wanted to stay and talk with him, but it'd been a long day. Yeah.

And went, put the pump on, drove home. And from there to my next step in my career, I don't have, it's kind of fuzzy. I don't know the timeline. I just know what started happening and where I went. All right. So this was a long interview. So we're going to cut it right here. There'll be two parts, part one and part two of the Gary Nelson interview.

This interview was everything I hoped it would be, but it did run really long. And I really didn't even get to everything that I had on my list. So I'm going to have to get Gary to come back. So there'll be a part three, maybe a part four. But part two will come out later this week. And so you'll get both parts this week. going to end part one right here. I got to tell you, you know, I was worried. I said it at the top of the show. I was worried about what Gary would be willing to tell us. I knew he was apprehensive

and nervous. He did a great job explaining exactly why. But man, he walks in with this big lead block that looks like a radio and it set the tone. I was like, we are going to have a hell of a time. This is going to be great. And he left. for us. It's our gift. It's his gift. The block of lead. I can't even pick it up. It's heavy. But anyways, Gary Nelson, man, is everything. I hoped it would be. You know, when we talk about innovation, this guy was at the leading edge of a lot of great ideas and incredible things that were

done to race cars in our sport. And also to his point, like I think there were some stories that sort of got blown out of proportion that weren't necessarily intentional, you know, cheats. The bumper flying off at Daytona, for example. You know, I've always felt like, yeah, I mean, it was okay that the bumper flew off because he lost a lot of drag that the bumper was creating.

That's why they had it raised up, probably as high as they could get it, before NASCAR made them move it down. But, you know, hey, they end up, you know, you know, you end up hearing some great stories. stories out of a guy like that and there's more to come in part two and again that'll come out later this week so I'm so thankful for him uh thankful for ally bringing us these guest segments every single week um man another banger I'm going to leave these notes right here at the desk because

we're going to get him back here soon uh to finish up but again thank you ally for bringing the guest segment to us every single week ally no matter what you're saving for whether it's race tickets a car a new home we're all better off with an ally Let's get to the white flag. All right, it's time for the white flag. Dropping last Sunday night, the tear down with Jeff Gluck and Jordan Bianchi. Monday, actions detrimental with Denny Hamlin and door bumper clear.

All of these guys, all of these shows to tear down, detrimental, door bumper clear, all covering the Chicago weekend, all great content. The Dirty Air Show that I have that came out yesterday, we had co-host T.J. Majors, if you didn't catch up on what we're talking about, me and T.J. at the table running things. That was fun. Dropping today's Speed Street with Connor Daly and Chase Holden. Connor's got some news about some truck racing.

Dropping tomorrow will be part two of the Gary Nelson interview. That'll take place of DJD reloaded this week. And then Dirty Mo Doe, hey, if you want to get the best bets for the upcoming race at Pocono, Steve Lattart, Tampa Tim, the professor, they're going to give you, their information on what to make in terms of the best bets coming up on this weekend's race. We got an Apple review from ST 915. Love the wide variety of guests. It sounds like Dale is chopping it up with some old friends.

I have to agree. And he also asks, will racing ever scan Memphis Raceway before it disappears? Will I racing, I'm sorry, ever scan Memphis Raceway before it disappears? before it disappears. That's a good question. I don't know. Memphis would be a good ad to the service. But anyhow, hey, great show. Again, the part two of the Gary Nelson interview will drop tomorrow

in place of DJD reloaded this week. And I hope you guys tune in to that one because it's just going to continue to be a great conversation. Check out Dirtymo Media on Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram.