It's a Thursday night in late August, and Chad Call, Rock Harris, and Derrick Mathis are at a racetrack-not an unusual situation considering their occupations as mechanics for teams that compete in Winston Cup. But this isn't Daytona or Darlington or Bristol. Harris, Mathis, and Call are at Friendship Speedway, a 41/410-mile asphalt oval in tiny Elkin, North Carolina, just 80 miles or so north of Charlotte, the epicenter of Winston Cup competition.
What has lured the three to Friendship Speedway on a hot, humid Thursday evening has nothing to do with their day jobs as mechanics in NASCAR's top division-and yet it has everything to do with their day jobs.
The three stoke their competitive fires by competing as drivers on short tracks around Charlotte. They're not alone among those who work in the top levels of the sport, either. Although many team members work countless hours building cars that compete in NASCAR's top divisions, a number of them head home after work to turn wrenches on their own race cars. In fact, many say they wouldn't be working on a NASCAR team if they had not started out racing on their own, and most say they used the experience and knowledge gained from Saturday night short track racing to build a career.
Mathis, a fabricator who works for Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates, got his first job in Winston Cup at the age of 24 when he began working with Junior Johnson and Associates in his native Wilkes County, North Carolina. He had been working in a machine shop and racing go-carts as a hobby when a former Johnson crew chief offered him a job.
Mathis now competes in the four-cylinder Semi-Modified division at Friendship Speedway, but doesn't get the chance to race for the championship because his Winston Cup job requires him to go to the four restrictor-plate races each season at Daytona and Talladega. Call, who also competes at Friendship Speedway, is a teammate of Mathis' at Chip Ganassi Racing.
Top ResourcesMathis and others in the sport say their jobs have enhanced their own cars more than they ever imagined.
"It has helped me a lot," Mathis says. "I get a lot of ideas at work I can take home and apply to my race car. Being able to work on a Winston Cup team gives me the chance to see all the things that go into those cars that a normal Friday- and Saturday-night racer wouldn't get the chance to see. I'm kind of lucky because I get to see and hear about a lot of stuff that I can try on my own car.
"Being able to work for a Winston Cup team is a big advantage for somebody like myself because of all the resources they have, especially with it being a three-car team. I'd say it's like saving a month of going to the track and testing, because I've got a pretty good idea of what will and won't work."