Ray Evernham Tells The Stories Of His NASCAR Hall Of Fame Career

To say that Ray Evernham has had a varied career might just be the understatement of all time. While he is best known to many NASCAR fans as the genius crew chief at Hendrick Motorsports who helped guide Jeff Gordon to three NASCAR Cup Series titles, the New Jersey native has a resume that is so much more.

In the nearly 50 years Evernham has been involved in motorsports, he’s tried his hand at racing himself until an on-track accident in 1991 ended his dream of racing in IndyCar, then worked for Roger Penske in the International Race of Champions series and after leaving Hendrick was even his own team owner.

Throughout his journey Evernham has witnessed a great deal, and at 66 is finally taking some time to share the stories he’s been a part of along the way with the rest of us.

“I’ve been racing, it’ll be 50 years next year,” Evernham said. “And I feel like been very fortunate, the Forrest Gump of Motorsport, if you will, to have crossed paths with large parts of our history. And along the way, I’ve had a lot of help from a lot of people that didn’t get to make the journey with me.

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“I wanted to tell my story, tell the path that I’ve taken, and let those people know that hey, they came for this ride with me, and that everyone you meet along the way is important and that you continue to evolve.”

But the stories aren’t just for those who have worked alongside him.

“I wanted the people close to me… my children my family to understand exactly what I was thinking in those times,” he said. “And how, looking back on it, maybe they’ll understand, maybe they won’t, but I felt like we have a good story to tell.”

It began in New Jersey and his love of racing, starting at an early age.

“I really never wanted to do anything but race cars,” he said. “And I was lucky enough to have an uncle and a friend that, that got me going on it.

“My dad was a semi-pro athlete. My dad was a fantastic athlete,” he added chuckling. “You know, I was certainly a big disappointed to him when I was like, ‘yeah, I don’t really like that football and baseball stuff. I want to drive cars’.”

Many of Evernham’s stories are in a new book called “Trophies and Scars.”

“It’s called trophies and scars because it’s, you know, it’s not always easy,” he said. “I’ve got plenty of trophies, but I also got plenty of scars from getting those trophies or from the trophies that I didn’t get.

“I think people will find that I’m open and honest about my upbringing and the fact that I probably didn’t put enough effort into my own driving career early, you know, a little bit too much partying at the Jersey Shore.”

The stories include those about his family, he has been married twice and has two children, one from each marriage. And the controversies he faced while racing at Hendrick, and how he almost single handily brought Dodge back into the sport. There are stories around the pivotal times in his life, his son battling cancer, how abruptly quitting one team led to a chance encounter that ended with him at the pinnacle of NASCAR, and his first meeting with Jeff Gordon, who at that point was too young to rent his own car so had to have his mom bring him to the meeting.

In the book Evernham writes:

I used to carry a carbon fiber briefcase, because everyone seemed to have one in those days. I noticed Jeff had one, too. As we sat for our meeting, we both opened our briefcases to get a pad and paper. My briefcase had my notepads and books and my notes for Charlotte Motor Speedway, things like that. In Jeff’s briefcase? He had a Nintendo Game Boy, some gum, a stock car magazine, and peanuts. It was kind of funny.

Evernham was inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame in 2018. Having been around the sport since 1990, he has not only changed NASCAR he’s seen a great deal of change as well.

“I think it’s changed just like every other sport, right?” he said. “It goes through cycles,” adding that TV and the money it brings has been a huge factor.

“If you played baseball or football in the early sixties and seventies, it’s much different than it is today. You know, the way it’s regulated, the way it has to be run, TV and money drive a big part of that.”

But technology has also determined the direction.

“I say to everybody, you know, it’s not so much what we’re doing it’s the tools that have been developed for us to do what we do are incredible,” he said. “The way we measure stuff, the way we build stuff at the speed we build it, and the accuracy we build it, it brings that competition closer and closer. But it also raises the price of playing the game.”

“You know the machine will always be part of it, but I hope in the end that the winner or losers are still determined by the human being, by the talent of the people that either built the car, calling the race, or sitting in that seat driving the car.”

These days Evernham spends much of his time talking to Fortune 500 companies sharing the knowledge he’s gained about leadership lessons he’s learned. He also consults but is still near the sport that brought him so much success. So, what would he change about NASCAR?

“Oh, wow. You know it’s easier for me to tell you what, I wouldn’t change,” he said laughing. “What I wouldn’t change is the direction that they’ve taken in safety, the safety of the cars, and the things that they’ve done there…since we lost Dale Earnhardt in 2001, NASCAR’s probably become the safest form of racing on the planet. That part of it is amazing. They take that very seriously.

“But, you know, if you said to me, all right, well, what do you really want to change? You know, I’m going to answer your question and say, look, I would look at taking some of this technology that’s so great and all of these all this super technology and tools that we have, and try and figure out a way to stop these big multi-car wrecks because of the pushing and the blocking that goes on. You know, maybe there’s sensors on the cars that slow it down, or I don’t know.

“I like racing and, and I don’t really care to see 14 or 15 of my potential winning drivers taken out because somebody makes a push at the wrong time, or somebody makes a block, you know that’s probably the part of the newest style of racing I don’t enjoy.”

Trophies and Scars will be available in March.