Winning Crew Chiefs Of The Daytona 500: The Men Who Turn The Wrenches

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While the drivers and owners of the winning Daytona 500 cars might receive most of the glory of a victory in “The Great American Race,” it’s the crew chiefs who are the unsung heroes.

Whether it’s calculating fuel mileage, deciding on late-race adjustments, making last-minute repairs or building and preparing the car in the months leading up to the race, the crew chief is the critical piece of the winning Daytona 500 combination.

As the 50th running of the Daytona 500 approaches, 30 different crew chiefs have put race cars in Gatorade Victory Lane as winners of the Daytona 500. Leading the way is Dale Inman, who engineered five of Richard Petty’s record seven Daytona 500 victories.

Following Inman is Leonard Wood of the Wood Brothers, who has four victories as crew chief with four different drivers – Tiny Lund, Cale Yarborough, A.J. Foyt and David Pearson – and Waddell Wilson and Tony Glover are tied at three victories each.

Here’s a quick look at the some of the Daytona 500 winning crew chiefs as the 50th running of the Daytona 500 approaches on Sunday, Feb. 17:

Ray Fox, 1960 Daytona 500 winning crew chief

Ray Fox said building a car in seven days couldn’t be done. But after owner John Masoni doubled the price, Fox found a way and won the 1960 Daytona 500 with driver Junior Johnson.

Masoni, owner of the Daytona Beach Kennel Club located outside of Turn 1 of Daytona International Speedway, asked Fox if he could put together a race car for him to enter in the 1960 Daytona 500.

“I said it was impossible,” Fox said. “He (Masoni) said whatever you charge, I’ll double it. So he doubled it and I built it.

“I got a bunch of people in, good mechanics that I knew to help me with the car and we built it. With a little small engine, 348 cubic inch engine, the Pontiacs had bigger engines and we still outran them.”

Fox also landed Johnson to drive the No. 27 Chevrolet.

“I was taking care of Junior’s liquor cars and that’s how I met him and I asked him to drive it,” Fox said.

Gary Nelson, 1982 and 1986 Daytona 500 winning crew chief

Success as a crew chief found Gary Nelson quickly.

In his first race as a crew chief, he won the 1982 Daytona 500 with DiGard Racing and driver Bobby Allison. In his first race as crew chief with Hendrick Motorsports, Nelson won the 1986 Daytona 500 with Geoff Bodine.

“For me to think back at the effort that the team put in to win that first Daytona 500 with Bobby Allison, it was to me a turning point in my career,” Nelson said. “It was where I started sweeping floors in Southern California to local short tracks and learning to race and working on the car side of that all the way to being the crew chief standing in the winner’s circle in the Daytona 500 was to me the top of what I could dream of ever happening.

“Winning again to me made sure in my mind that it wasn’t an accident. All of that stuff was a product of that work. I’m very proud of that.”
Nelson says preparing for the Daytona 500 as a crew chief consumed his life.

“That’s all I would think about,” Nelson said. “It’s hard to imagine. But think of Christmas morning and you open the packages with the family and then you leave and go to work. And New Year’s Eve at midnight, everybody celebrates and at 12:30, I’m back at the shop.

“I worked about from the time I would wake up until I couldn’t stay awake any longer every day, seven days a week from the end of the racing season to the Daytona 500. Even when we got to the track, we would take stuff back to the motel. We would fly or drive back to North Carolina or whatever. We were always 24 hours a day, seven days a week thinking the Daytona 500.”

Waddell Wilson, 1980, 1983 and 1984 Daytona 500 winning crew chief

Waddell Wilson is one of the masters of horsepower in the history of the Daytona 500.

When working for Holman-Moody, he was the engine tuner and jackman on Fred Lorenzen’s 1965 Daytona 500 win and built the winning Daytona 500 motor for Mario Andretti in 1967.

With owner L.G. DeWitt, he built the winning motor for Benny Parsons’ 1975 Daytona 500 win with used parts.

“I wasn’t the crew chief but I built the engines and was on the crew,” Wilson said. “That was an engine I built out of used parts. I cannot believe that engine would have run 20 laps let alone 200. We qualified with it, we practiced with it and we ran the 125 with it. That was the biggest surprise of all the wins.”

As a crew chief, Wilson put his car on the pole for the Daytona 500 four straight years between 1979-82 and was aiming for a fifth straight in 1983 with Cale Yarborough.
During that 1983 qualifying session, Yarborough and Wilson were trying to become the first to post an official Daytona 500 qualifying lap at more than 200 mph. On his first lap, he hit 200.503 mph but on the second lap in Turn 3, the car flipped upside down, backed into the wall and then came back down on its wheels.

Wilson and the team opted to use a backup car, which was actually a former show car, so the lap was never official. The pole winning streak ended at four and Wilson and Yarborough would have to wait a year to officially break the 200 mph barrier.

Wilson remembers what Yarborough told him in the infield care center following the accident.

“He looked up at me like a whipped pup and said, ‘You’ve done everything right except you didn’t do one thing, you didn’t put the controls in there so I could fly it.’ ”
Wilson made his first trip to Gatorade Victory Lane as a winning Daytona 500 crew chief in 1980 with Buddy Baker and the dominating No. 28 silver and black Oldsmobile owned by Harry Ranier nicknamed “The Grey Ghost.” Wilson delivered Baker his first Daytona 500 on his 18th attempt and did it with a record average speed of 177.602, the fastest Daytona 500 in history.

“I worked through the holidays telling myself that I’m the only one doing this,” said Wilson, who added that he rebuilt the motor five times and spent an additional $10,000 on aerodynamic work for the car. “I was so determined to win the Daytona 500 and try to help Buddy win it. I was as happy for Buddy and Harry as I was for myself.”
Wilson would then go on to win back-to-back Daytona 500s with Yarborough in 1983 and 1984. Looking back on his successes in the Daytona 500, he can’t single out his favorite victory.

“1980 was a major, major win,” Wilson said. “That really helped more than anything. I needed to do that. Coming back with a show car basically in 1983 and winning and then in ‘84, were able to come back down and break 200 mph and make it official. Anytime you win Daytona, I don’t care what part you played on that race car, it’s special.”

Todd Parrott, 1996 and 2000 Daytona 500 winning crew chief

Todd Parrott joined his father Buddy as the first and only father-son crew chief combination to win the Daytona 500 when he won the 1996 edition of “The Great American Race” with Dale Jarrett.

In 2000, Parrott won his second Daytona 500 with Jarrett. The key to victory happened the day before the race when the No. 88 Ford fielded by Robert Yates Racing suffered significant damage in the final practice session.

The team flew in three fabricators overnight and didn’t get the work completed on the car until a few hours before the race.

“That’s the proudest moment I’ve ever had as a crew chief,” Parrott said. “The results, the reward we got that day. A lot of work and effort went into making that car look good when we rolled it out on the line for the 500.”

Parrott and his crew started a tradition following the 2000 Daytona 500 victory where Parrott, Jarrett and the crew put their autographs on the No. 88 car. It’s a ritual that every team now performs prior to the induction of the car inside The Daytona 500 Experience motorsports attraction.

Darian Grubb, 2006 Daytona 500 winning crew chief

When Darian Grubb traveled to Daytona International Speedway in 2006, he had no idea he would be raising the Cannonball Baker trophy as the winning crew chief.
Grubb served as the car chief on Jimmie Johnson’s No. 48 Lowe’s Home Improvement Chevrolet. But when Chad Knaus was sent home by NASCAR officials for rules violations in post Daytona 500 qualifying technical inspection on the first weekend of DIRECTV Speedweeks, Grubb was named interim crew chief.
Grubb led the team for the rest of Speedweeks and was atop the pit box when Johnson captured the 2006 Daytona 500.

“I honestly really wasn’t that nervous up until checkered flag fell,” Grubb said. “I just sat there and I just knew I had faith in all the rest of the team, the team that Chad built.”
For Grubb, the celebration in Gatorade Victory Lane was a blur.

“I was still in a daze,” Grubb said. “I honestly didn’t even know what I was doing there. They were hustling me around putting different hats on. They told me to hold the trophy. It was unreal. That’s where everybody wants to be but I was still in so much shock that I didn’t enjoy it as much as most people would.”

Tickets for the DIRECTV Speedweeks 2008 events, including the 50th running of the Daytona 500, are still available by calling 1-800-PITSHOP or by calling www.racetickets.com