Started New Job at Hendrick Motorsports October 1993
Hendrick MotorsportsCharlotte, North Carolina
Recently retired but with all the changes soon coming to NASCAR it now appears maybe not for long!I began my racing career in the mid to late seventies after being completely smitten, captivated, and ruined for life by experiencing my first Daytona 500 on the inside as a spectator in 1973. I say began in the mid to late seventies because it was actually a paying job. The pay was $100 per week which was good for a beginner racing job in those days though far below what you could earn at any regular job on the outside back then. The only job I could land in the very early days before that was as a volunteer helper on one of the smaller Independent teams for no pay. Your pay was you got to be there and watch the race. You kept that job if you were a hard worker and didn't complain about the long hours. I had to live out of my car and sleep at night on a side street for many a night back then. Soon after I got my first paying job I moved into a rundown motel room with broken windows where you could stay by paying by the week. My first room was really decrepit, an old TV that didn't work right, dingy furniture and stopped up plumbing that you had to be careful running the water much or it would overflow onto the floor. Life got a lot better when you were at the track because you could take a shower in the bathroom-dressing room in the NASCAR garage area which everybody used including the drivers back then. The car was always towed in on an open trailer with a thick canvas cover over the car.When we pulled in to the garage area NASCAR already had all the car numbers written on the floor in crayon at the entrance to each stall and we would slowly drive through looking out for our number. The very first thing we did is pull the cover off and push the car in to our assigned stall space where we would find the usual rickety looking but sturdy wooden work bench that looked 50 years old. Then the trailers were always moved out of the way but the truck always stayed right across from your garage stall on the other side of the driveway. If it was one of the early races on the schedule it would always be freezing cold early in the morning so we all built fires in nearby 55 gallon trash barrels. We all had the requisite plug-in kerosene rocket heaters but their priority was for pointing at the car to help warm up the engine before you started it. Then you would discover your first challenge of the day was to troubleshoot why you had no electricity in the beat up socket at your stall.NASCAR and the track owner's lowest priority was always garage electricity so we usually had to go looking for the problem or steal it by unplugging one of the other teams on both sides of us and tap in to theirs if they were lucky enough to have it. By the time we had our cars on four jack stands with the hoods up, wheels off and rocket heaters blazing away air hoses from nitrogen bottles and extension cords would be all over the place and the air was thick with the scent of spent kerosene smoke.Every member on your team would be hustling as fast as he could to get ready for the first round of NASCAR inspectors to come by and scrutinize each car. This always included an inspector underneath on a creeper with a flashlight. One of the ways you could sometimes gain an early advantage in those days was by taping a couple of hundred dollar bills to the bottom of your bell housing or oil pan. Stuff you might be worried about under there could sometimes pass inspection a lot faster that way.
Greg Gore 