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Top Tier Officials, Short-Track Souls
Former champions help oversee the sport they loveNASCAR’s massive Research & Development Center in Concord, N.C., is, among other things, home to the administrative leadership of NASCAR’s three national series.
Some of former championship winning drivers include:
• NASCAR Competition Administrator Jerry Cook, 67, who resides in the Charlotte area, a six-time NASCAR Modified national champion who is enshrined in the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in Talladega, Ala., the National Motorsports Press Association Hall of Fame in Darlington, S.C., and a member of NASCAR’s 50 Greatest Drivers as selected during NASCAR’s 50th Anniversary celebration in 1998, who won 342 NASCAR-sanctioned races and many others.
• NASCAR Assistant Competition Administrator Randy Hedger, 58, who resides in the Charlotte area, is a two-time (1987-88) NASCAR Modified track champion at the old Shangri-La Speedway (also known as Tioga Speedway), a .375-mile paved oval in Owego, N.Y. Hedger’s 25-year NASCAR Modified career centered around Shangri-La, but he also competed at tracks such as Spencer Speedway in Williamson, N.Y., Fulton (N.Y.) Speedway, Chemung (N.Y.) Speedrome, Lancaster (N.Y.) Speedway and Oswego (N.Y.) Speedway. Hedger also made 50 NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour starts. (Cook and Hedger have duties that include rule book writing, chassis certification, parts approval and penalty notice administration, among other responsibilities).
• Chad Little, 47, who resides in the Charlotte area, is the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour Director. Little was the 1986 NASCAR K&N Pro Series West Rookie of the Year and 1987 champion. He has six NASCAR Nationwide Series wins and finished second in the series championship standings in 1995. He also made 217 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series starts with a best series points finish of 15th in 1998. He stopped racing in 2001. He became NASCAR’s director of racing development in Mexico in 2007, and became the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour Director in 2008.
• While a championship title eluded Brett Bodine, 51, who resides in the Charlotte area, he won races in the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour, the NASCAR Nationwide Series and NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, in which his best points race finishes were 12th (1984), second (1986) and 12th (1990). Today, Bodine is the director of competition at the NASCAR R&D Center in Concord, N.C. He is also the driver of the official pace car for all NASCAR Sprint Cup Series events.
• NASCAR Managing Director of Competition John Darby, 55, who resides in the Charlotte area, won a NASCAR Late Model track championship at Rockford (Ill.) Speedway in 1977 as crew chief for driver Don Leach. Darby began his racing career in 1971 as a Street Stock owner at Rockford. He later became a Rockford track official, then began working his way up the NASCAR ladder as the director of NASCAR’s former All-Star Series for dirt Late Models. He’s been the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Director since 2002.
• Among other racers now working in the NASCAR R&D Center include shop foreman Mike Horton, a former pavement Super Late Model driver; senior fabricator John Krueger, who drove IMCA-type dirt Modifeds; and NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour driver Johnny Sutton, who works in the center’s shop.
Once A Driver, Always A Driver
Through the essence of their racing DNA, retired NASCAR Modified drivers Cook and Hedger will always consider themselves drivers. Cook climbed out of a race car for the last time in 1982, Hedger in 1996.
Both work in the NASCAR R&D Center in Concord, N.C., where research and development has become an automotive science. Cook and Hedger are NASCAR’s competition administrator and assistant competition administrator, respectively.
Cook is one of NASCAR Modified racing’s all-time greats. In the pre-tour days, drivers’ collected points toward the NASCAR Modified National championship in any NASCAR-sanctioned feature race at any NASCAR-sanctioned track. Cook’s amazing record over a 20-year span was 342 victories in 1,474 starts.
Despite a reputation for ruling competition with an iron fist, former NASCAR vice president of competition for all of NASCAR at the time, Bill Gazaway knew talent when he saw it, and he saw Cook as a piece of NASCAR’s future. He recruited Cook from the driver’s seat to the NASCAR payroll beginning in 1983 as a vital link between NASCAR Whelen All-American Series tracks and the sanctioning body. Later, Cook helped develop the modern era NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour which debuted in 1985, and then the NASCAR K&N Pro Series East, which was launched in 1987.
Twenty seven seasons since he climbed out of his race car at the end of the 1982 season and announced his retirement from driving, he still enjoys the thought of driving again … with a grain of reality.
“I still have the feeling I could get in a car and go out and win, and I’d just as soon leave it that way,” Cook said.
The very thought of driving a race car means Cook is feeling pretty chipper after undergoing major back surgery in 2008 to relieve debilitating pain. His recovery took a year, but today he feels better than he has in years.
Was it a racing injury that caused the back problems to erupt?
“Who knows,” Cook said. “In all my years of racing, I was never injured badly enough to need to go to the hospital in an ambulance.
“I wish I had a seat like the ones used in Modified racing today,” Cook added. “Today’s seats hold you in place. With the seats used during the time I was racing, you more or less held on.”
Cook has five Ridgeway Grandfather Clocks in his home, emblematic of five NASCAR Modified wins at Martinsvillle (Va.) Speedway.
”Those are the ultimate trophy,” Cook said of the clocks that are still presented to Martinsville winners. "The first one I won, we took home on our open trailer with the car. (Track founder, owner and president) Clay Earles threw a fit when he saw us loading up that clock. He offered to ship it to us. I told him it was our first one, and I wasn’t leaving Martinsville without it.”
“The first year I worked for NASCAR, I went to Watkins Glen for a Modified test session with Richie Evans and George Kent. They told me to give the track a try in one of their cars, but I wouldn’t. It was kind of the way it is for someone who is a recovering alcoholic. I couldn’t take another ‘drink.’”
“(Then) series sponsor Winston was having a special race of some kind and asked me to drive in it. (NASCAR President) Bill France asked me why I’d want to do that, and I had my answer. I didn’t want to.”
Cook’s wife, Sue, worked in a variety of NASCAR capacities, often as a registrar. The Cooks’ oldest son, David, is an electrical expert for NASCAR Sprint Cup Series cars assembled in the Red Bull Racing shops. Daughter Kristi is an executive assistant to former team owner Robert Yates, who continues work in other business interests. Kristi’s husband, Derek Jones, is an engineer for the NHRA Pro Stock KB Racing Team and drivers Jason Line and Greg Anderson. The Cooks’ oldest grandson, Justin, works for Michael Waltrip Racing as a machinist.
NASCAR Assistant Competition Administrator Randy Hedger in Victory Lane with his team at the old Shangri-La Speedway in Owego, N.Y. in 1995. That's his mom, Eloise holding the checkered flag. Wife Lynda is standing third from right with the team. Randy Hedger
Hedger enjoyed a 25-year career as a track championship winning driver and, like Cook and a lot of other drivers, he could compete in up to 70 races a year. He was such a fixture at Shangri-La Speedway that fans thought he was a local driver. The truth was that he actually lived about 100 miles away from the track in Morrisville, N.Y.
He was a strong competitor at Shangri-La. During a 10-year period, he won back-to-back NASCAR Modified championships in 1987 and 1988, and finished as runner-up in track points seven times.
“I raced for 25 years and I could race 70 times a year, and my wife, Lynda, never missed a race,” Hedger said. “I told her when it stopped being fun, I’d quit. When it stopped being fun, I got out of the car at the end of the 1996 season and told the crew we were done.
“After that, I took three or three-and-a-half years off and never went to a track,” Hedger said of his separation from a long and successful driving career.
“My son, Adam, was crewing for (NASCAR Modified driver) Bruce Driver, so I drove up to New Hampshire Motor Speedway for a race. While I was there, I ran into (then NASCAR Whelen Modified) Tour director Ed Cox and asked him if there were any openings at NASCAR for inspectors in the Cup Series. It was a 30-second conversation. The next day, Jerry called me to talk about it and (then-Vice President of Research and Development) Gary Nelson called the day after that. Hedger joined NASCAR as an official starting with the 2000 Daytona 500. And the Hedger’s son, Adam, now 31, is employed at Michael Waltrip Racing.
Does his very busy job fill the void of not climbing into a race car to compete?
“Nothing will ever beat taking the checkered flag,” Randy Hedger said.
“But I never thought I’d be able to make a living in racing and my wife and I wanted to get out of the cold Northeastern winters,” he reflected.
“This sport needs business people and engineers and all the rest to make it work today. And it still needs racers like Jerry and us to be involved who understand what it’s like to compete and take care of all the people’s concerns, whether they’re with a high-dollar team or an independent.”
NASCAR Vice President of Corporate Communications Jim Hunter backs up Hedger’s belief.
“Former competitors are in a unique position to make excellent NASCAR officials,” Hunter said. “They are very familiar with rules and the areas where rules might be interpreted in different ways. They bring something to officiating that all competitors respect: consistency. They also learn to be very good listeners.
“Former competitors also know when to say no as well as how to say no. They have to be diplomats, and lobbyists, which most of them were when they were racing.”
