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.
Brown has known the Wares for almost 30 years, previously racing in the Truck Series at Martinsville for RWR but also fielding short track cars for them as well. He says their two families would do anything for each other.
“I think that’s why Rick and Lisa wanted to do this for me,” Brown said. “This is a small family team just like our Modified team. Rick and Lisa don’t have any other businesses. They have a race team and one that I’ve gotten to be a part of over the years.
“It makes it extra rewarding to get to do this together and I’m very thankful for them asking me to do it.”
And all told, this is the best possible circumstance for Brown to make his Cup Series debut. It’s not just because it’s a track in which he has almost 30 years of experience but also the fact that the flat bullring doesn’t require a ton of engineering.
“If I were to do this at Kansas or Dover, you need sim time and all the aerodynamics and engineering to make it go fast,” Brown said. “Here, aero does not matter. We have to get the car to turn and it needs drive off the corner.
“I couldn’t think of a better place to make my first Cup Series start.”
Despite the reputation of those who race at Bowman Gray, Brown also has a reputation as one of the cleanest racers at the Stadium, one who has won a lot of races even after being inverted to the middle of the pack on twin feature nights.
With that said, this is the ultra-rough and tumble Cup Series, where previous Clashes at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum featured no shortage of bump-and-runs and even dump-and-runs.
Is Brown willing to go there?
“I’m not that kind of racer,” Brown said. “Listen, if it’s the last lap of a heat race and I need a spot to advance, I’m going to move a guy off the bottom. I don’t think there is anyone in the field that wouldn’t feel that way.
“But if it’s the last lap, racing for the win, I’m not going bump someone to win. I want to represent our community with pride. I realize that the eyes of the racing world are going to be on me, a lot of extra media attention because I race here every week, and I don’t want them to think that’s who we are.
“Because we’re not.
“A lot of people just share the clips of guys getting mad at each other but they don’t share the highlights of a 12-lap side-by-side battle for the win. That’s who we are and that’s who I am. There is so much great racing at Bowman Gray Stadium that no one ever talks about and that’s a shame.”
At the same time, Brown says there is nothing wrong with the passion shown by his peers either.
“We’re only racing for hundreds of dollars, really, but we pour everything into our cars, and when you get wronged racing door-to-door, we like to show that too.”
On February 1-2, Brown is going to be both an ambassador for the weekly racer but also one that will be rewarded for his decades of service to the highest levels of the sport.
“I just hope to have a good showing and make the show,” Brown said. “I hope we can win. I don’t race anything without believing I can. I know the kind of car we’re going to have because I’m the only guy in the field that day that can say they built his own car.
“When we announced this, I got together with our guys and wanted to make sure that we all put our best into this car and we are. I’m just excited that I get to race with these guys that I work with every week in a car that we put together ourselves.
“That’s going to be special too.”
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.