Scrapbook: NASCAR’ Top Cop

NASCAR Winston Cup Director Gary Nelson, 45, the host of Scrapbook this month, is a former leading crewchief who switched to NASCAR as chief technical inspector in 1991. In a 15-year career as a crewchief, Nelson scored 18 victories and won the '83 championship before becoming NASCAR's chief cop. Most of Nelson's memories occurred when he was crewchief for Bobby Allison and now-defunct DiGard Racing in 1982 and 1983. In deference to his current position, he refrains from telling stories about rules bending--by himself and others. Nelson, a native of Redlands, California, resides near Concord, North Carolina, with his wife, Christine, and three sons, Zachery, 10; William, 5; and John, about 20 months.

How Sweet the Smell

Bobby Allison and our DiGard team won a lot of races (14 in two seasons), and we had a lot of fun too. Activity in the NASCAR Winston Cup garage was and is a routine of sameness most of the time, just another day at the office for crews. One day, Bobby, who loved pranks, and I decided to break the routine and add levity. We bought a bottle of castor oil and, with our car’s engine running, put a few drops on the exhaust pipes. We waited until the engines were running in most of the other cars. When castor oil burns, it has a pleasant, sweet smell that is like nothing else. The scent wafted throughout the garage.

Puzzled crewmembers suspected an illegal fuel additive in one or more of the cars. That got the NASCAR officials involved. They ran around and sniffed the cars that had their engines fired and took fuel samples. But nobody figured it out. Bobby and I stood back and watched the whole thing unfold, and it was downright comical. Much later I confessed.

Unsuitable

A couple of days before celebrating our championship at the 󈨗 Winston Cup Awards banquet in New York, Bobby showed up in a suit that looked like it came from a thrift store. The next evening he was to be a guest at a dinner at the White House and then return for the awards banquet. We gave him a hard time over the suit, emphasizing that he couldn’t wear it to the White House. Judy, his wife, suggested he rent a tuxedo. We thought that was an excellent idea, so all of us rented tuxedos and wore them to the banquet, sympathizing with Bobby, whose shoes were a couple of sizes too small. We believe we established the precedent for mandatory tuxedos at the occasion. The irony is that the formal dress code began with a cheap suit.

In Your Face!

Bobby and I were at Darlington for a Southern 500. Typical of September, it was oppressively hot. NASCAR officials were very concerned about whether the grilles in the race cars were production items. There must have been a mandate to check everybody’s grille. Every time we turned around there was an inspector with his nose stuck in our grille area. Bobby says, "We’ll fix ’em." He bought a long hose and a squirt can, commonly used to squirt oil, and filled it with water. We ran the hose from the backside of the grille to the rear of the car, where we could stand, pull a plunger, and squirt water out of the can on the other end. When the next official, well known in the garage for snooping around and giving teams a hard time, stuck his head to the grille, Bobby shot water in his face. Needless to say, we got in a little trouble.

Land or Else

One of my most vivid memories, which I am delighted to be here to tell, came after Bobby got me interested in flying airplanes. By 1984, I had a private pilot’s license with a single-engine rating. I was renting planes and flying to races, mixing a hobby with my vocation. One cloudy night after a race at Dover, mechanic Jim Long, engine specialist John Wilson, and I headed home to North Carolina in a single-engine Piper Arrow. We had just gotten above the clouds at 10,000 feet when the alternator quit charging, and there was no backup. We were running on the battery, and I knew it wouldn’t last very long.

We were over Patuxent Bay near Maryland, and the nearest airport was at the Patuxent Naval Test Center, a top-secret installation. I called on the radio and explained to a controller that I had electrical problems and was going to make an emergency landing at the naval base. The controller said emphatically that civilian aircraft was restricted. I said I had to land and to tell them to get ready. The controller transferred me to the Patuxent control tower. The controller there said, "Sorry." I repeated that I would be coming in shortly and that this might be the last transmission from me before the battery gave out.

We descended through the clouds, and my radio quit transmitting when we were over the base, but I could still hear. They cleared me to land and turned on the runway lights. We breathed a huge sigh of relief. As soon as we hit the ground, the whole electrical system went out. It was real dark at the base, unlike a public airport. I got off the runway, and pretty soon fire trucks and military police with bomb-sniffing dogs surrounded the plane.

We were taken to what appeared to be a detention center for interrogation. Finally, the base commander appeared. Fortunately, indeed, he was a big racing fan, and we quickly made friends with him. He talked some sense into the people who were getting ready to throw us in the brig. We spent the night, and the next morning we were questioned again about the possibility that we had seen secret aircraft or equipment on the base. I found out later that it was the Stealth fighter they were concerned about. If I had seen anything, it was nothing more than a wing tip. But they had shut down the entire airport and all operations because of us. We charged the battery, flew to a nearby airport, and fixed the plane. That was the last time I have flown a single-engine plane at night.

Deeper In Trouble

I won’t use names or a date for this one at Richmond. I was the crewchief on a team and our car was awful. During a caution, our car owner radioed the spotter and asked where it appeared our car was getting beat? The spotter said it looked like the other cars were going deeper into the corners. I thought, oh, man, this isn’t what drivers like to hear, but I informed our driver. On the restart, our car went into Turn 1 and spun backward into the wall. The first voice I heard on the radio was the driver asking, "Was that deep enough?"

Check the RPM

Testing in the 󈨔s was nothing like today. Few teams tested and usually with only one car. In 1983, we took two DiGard cars to Riverside, California, for a three-day test. Robert Yates, the engine builder then, had engines he wanted to compare. It was easy to compare the cars with Allison’s lap times in each. To compare the engines, we used a straightaway on the backstretch that was about a mile long. Bobby drove one car, and I drove the other, and we had a drag race of sorts to determine which engine performed better. I beat Bobby by about 10 car lengths to the end of the straight. (My driving experience consisted of dirt roads near my hometown.) So we figured I had the better engine. Bobby was puzzled and asked to switch cars. I beat him again with the car he was driving. Bobby and Yates were baffled. In those days, our rpm limit was 7,800, and that’s what Bobby was turning. What I didn’t tell them was that I was turning 8,200.

Saved by Rain

Winning the 󈨗 championship is one of my fondest memories. Darrell Waltrip had left DiGard to drive for Junior Johnson in 1981 after buying out the remainder of his contract. Allison became our driver in 1982. In 1981, Bobby, driving for Ranier Racing, had finished Second to Waltrip in points.

A fierce rivalry developed between Waltrip's team and ours. In 1982, Waltrip won a dozen races to Bobby's eight and beat us by 72 points for the championship. In 1983, we were obsessed to win the title and to beat Waltrip, whetting the rivalry. The title chase came down to Bobby and Waltrip at the final race at Riverside. We had flat tires, one of which put us back in 27th place, and all sorts of early trouble with our car. We overcame that and got back into the top 10. As rain began to fall, our car's engine began to sputter.

If Bobby had had to race full bore for the full distance, I'm sure the engine would have blown, and we would have lost the championship to Waltrip for a third straight year. But the rain saved us, enabling Bobby to sputter around under caution. The race ended under yellow. Bobby finished Ninth and we beat Waltrip, who finished Sixth, for the crown by 47 points. It was a sweet victory, especially for Bobby given that it was his first and only championship. Not incidentally, a red-haired Huck Finn named Bill Elliott won the race that day, his first in Winston Cup.

On the Pole

We were at Bristol for the night race in 1991. Our driver, Kyle Petty, had broken his leg in a crash at Talladega, and Bobby Hillin, who was pinch-hitting, got into an early wreck. The car’s frame was bent, but we wanted to get back into the race as quick as possible. One of my techniques to repair a frame at the track was to get a wrecker, a tow truck, and a chain and pull the frame apart. Two tow trucks I saw were on call and wouldn’t help. Well, there was a big farm tractor there, and a post that held the Union 76 sign was nearby. I chained the car to the post and "borrowed" the tractor to attempt to pull the frame apart. The tractor driver, who had been in the restroom, came running to us in a huff, wanting to know what the heck was going on. The frame didn’t budge, but the post bent, and we almost brought down the 76 sign before we decided that technique wasn’t a good idea. We wound up cutting off a section of frame and welding it back in place.

More Gatorade

In 1982, we were at the Daytona 500 with Bobby. Two-way pit-driver radio communication was marginal at best to that point. But we had the latest model radios used for the first time at that race. Finally, I was convinced we would understand exactly what the others said. As the race wore on, however, communication progressively deteriorated to the point that I had to guess what Bobby was telling me and I couldn’t talk to him at all. One message was to give him water instead of Gatorade on pit stops. All I could make out was Gatorade. So we kept giving him Gatorade on every stop.

What had happened is that Bobby was aware that the microphone inside his open-face helmet had gotten clogged with sticky Gatorade from a spill or his saliva and he wanted water to rinse it. He made all sorts of hand and arm gestures to the pit crewman handing him drinks on a pole, but the crewman didn't understand. The crewman came to me and said he thought Bobby was trying to tell him something. I replied, "Well, you're probably not giving him enough Gatorade. He keeps saying Gatorade on the radio. Give him some more."

He never got the water, but he won the race in spite of the flap and without his Buick's rear bumper, which was knocked off on the fourth lap. Miscommunications happened frequently in those days, like on wedge in (for a loose car) and wedge out (for a pushing car). Radios weren't really clear and reliable until the mid-'80s. We could talk to a man on the moon but not to our driver 100 yards away.

Respect, Not Friends

People have asked why I switched--some say defected--to NASCAR. Dick Beaty (retired Winston Cup director) had tried to hire me years before I made the decision. It became a Catch-22 for me. I didn’t want to make Dick Beaty mad, but, at the same time, I wasn’t interested in going to the other side of the fence.

Then, after a couple of setbacks, I started thinking that NASCAR would be the last to go out of business, that there might be a future for me. I didn't see any opportunities on the horizon with teams. I had started with each of the three owners I had worked for--Bill Gardner, Rick Hendrick, and Felix Sabates--with the idea to retire there. It became apparent that a long-term plan would be best at NASCAR. As soon as I made the commitment, it hit me that I was a cop, and all my friendships and person-to-person relationships in the garage would never be the same.

I set a goal to earn respect, not friends. I think I have done that, but it's a daily thing. I can lose all my respect with one wrong move and ruin eight years of effort. I have to earn respect every day, and that's the tough part for me. A nurse told me years ago, while I was at a hospital for treatment of injuries received racing a motorcycle, that as long as I treated the bike with respect I'd be fine. But as soon as I thought I had it mastered, I'd be in trouble. I have applied that wisdom to everything in my life.