Motorsports

He hitched a ride to NASCAR success

Athleticism helped Tampa's Chris Anderson be a top crew member.

By JOANNE KORTH, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published March 8, 2003

HAMPTON, Ga. -- Chris Anderson got started in NASCAR because he got stranded.

He needed a ride home.

He went on a journey.

Anderson, a 1989 graduate of Tampa Hillsborough High, had no idea a stranger's hospitality would lead to his spending Sunday afternoons scrambling around the front of a stock car lugging a 28-pound jack. Or to three Winston Cup championships.

"I just fell in love with it," he said.

Anderson, 32, was a member of Jeff Gordon's pit crew for titles in 1997, '98 and 2001. Last season, the soft-spoken jackman moved within the Hendrick Motorsports organization to anchor Jimmie Johnson's first-year crew.

"Chris does a great job," said Johnson, the clean-cut Californian who won three races and finished fifth in the standings as a rookie. "He was the perfect guy to bring in to help a young team get started because he has a lot of experience. He leads by example."

Anderson went to Appalachian State in North Carolina on a football scholarship. Occasionally, racing legend Junior Johnson, no relation to Jimmie, invited the Mountaineers to his nearby race shop/chicken farm for dinner. Some were guests of Johnson, still a Winston Cup owner in the early 1990s, for races at now-defunct North Wilkesboro (N.C.) Speedway.

One got carried away.

"A friend of mine from the football team took his Mustang out on the track about an hour before the race and basically got expelled from the racetrack," Anderson said. "That was my ride home."

After the race, Anderson got a ride to campus from a member of Johnson's crew.

"That's pretty nice of someone to take you back home," he said.

Anderson graduated in 1994 with a teaching degree and coached football at a high school near Charlotte, N.C. Still interested in racing, he knocked on the doors of a few race teams looking for work.

His timing was good.

For years, the only way to get into racing was to spend your youth under the hood of a car. Anderson spent his playing football as a next-door-neighbor to the Gruden family. Anderson's only experience as a mechanic was fixing the lawn mower.

But NASCAR teams were waking up to the possibility of hiring athletes as pit crew members. At nearly 6 feet 2, 230 pounds, Anderson had strength, speed, agility and a future. The people at Hendrick Motorsports handed him a gas can. And a catch can. And a tire. And a jack.

Anderson mastered every position. After a year of fill-in work on a variety of pit crews in the Winston Cup and Busch Grand National series, he became a full-time member of Gordon's crew, the Rainbow Warriors, in 1997.

"When I first started I thought it was cool because, back then, there weren't as many weekends, not as many things going on," Anderson said. "There will be a time that I'll have to make a decision where to put my efforts."

That's because Anderson has a full-time job.

Ten months a year he teaches science, social studies, health and physical education to seventh and eighth graders at Locust Elementary near Charlotte.

During the school year, he goes to Hendrick Motorsports three days a week to practice pit stops and work out.

On race day, Anderson crawls out of bed at about 5 a.m., gets on the Hendrick Motorsports 22-seat private plane with other pit crew members and flies to the track. After a long day at the track, he flies home Sunday night.

A 22-hour day is not unusual.

When Anderson started in 1997, there were 32 points races. Now there are 36. And though racing has provided many exciting opportunities -- he met his fiancee, Pamela Ward, through racing -- he knows there will come a time when he has to decide.

But he could stand another title.

Johnson, 27, was the first rookie to lead the standings and was a championship contender until the final two weeks of the season. After three events this year, he is third in points with two top-10 finishes.

Had Sterling Marlin not spun Johnson on the last lap last Sunday at Las Vegas, Johnson would have been the points leader going into Sunday's Bass Pro Shops MBNA 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

Anderson sees potential.

"We have all the ingredients in place to win a championship," Anderson said. "This year, next year, it will come. It's just a matter of time. Our goal is to get a championship."

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