Over three decades of sacrifice to NASCAR pays off for short track legend Tim Brown

Over three decades of sacrifice to NASCAR pays off for short track legend Tim Brown

 

Tim Brown has devoted the entirety of his adult life to the NASCAR Cup Series and now that investment is giving something back to one of the good ole boys of grassroots motorsports.

The 53-year-old is most known to racing diehards as the winningest driver in the history of Bowman Gray Stadium with his 12 Tour Type Modified championships and 101 victories but fewer know that he has worked in a variety of Cup Series shops for 35 years.

Monday through Friday has been devoted to building Cup Series cars for the likes of Roush Fenway, Michael Waltrip and Rick Ware over the year with Saturdays devoted to racing at the Winston-Salem quarter mile. He first started working on Cup cars as a high schoolers for Cale Yarborough.

It’s not lost on Brown that it has come to the great sacrifice of a traditional family life but now his tenure will be celebrated on the greatest stage in Stock Car racing as it simultaneously returns to the track he has dominated for almost three decades

This deal was put together over the summer but Brown has been around long enough that he knows how quickly they can fall apart too.

“I teared up when I saw the release,” Brown told Sportsnaut by phone on Tuesday. “I have sacrificed my whole life to racing. I gave up on being a Cup Series driver some 15-20 years ago. But Rick and Lisa (Ware), Tommy (Baldwin competition director) thought enough of me to make this happen, and I’m really grateful and I’m just going to try to enjoy the opportunity.

“I get to share this with my wife and kids and it makes all the work I’ve put in mean a little more when we get there. I couldn’t have done this without their support, tolerating my effort and dedication, and we’re all going to get to make a Cup start together. I just want to be respectable.”

Brown says Rick called him with the idea as soon as the rumors started floating around about NASCAR taking the Clash to the Stadium.

“He said ‘we’re going to put you in a car’ and I told him, ‘thank you and that’s exciting’ but I also said what are the chances,” Brown said.

He said he never told his brother, Jonathan, or his wife about the idea because he didn’t want to jinx. But then NASCAR made the date official and Rick Ware Racing worked to make it reality