More than 20 years ago, when Chris Gayle was scraping clay off cars and doing other odd jobs for modified teams at I-30 Speedway in Little Rock, he knew where he wanted to eventually land.
There was never any doubt.
Monster Energy Cup
QUAKER STATE 400
WHEN Today, green flag at 6:45 p.m. Central
WHERE Kentucky Speedway, Sparta, Ky.
TV NBCSN
On Saturday night, Gayle earned his first victory as a NASCAR Monster Energy Cup Series crew chief, when he helped guide Erik Jones to victory in the Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona International Speedway.
"I never would have said it at the time, but I knew this is where I would wind up," said Gayle, a Little Rock native. "When I left Arkansas in 1999 to come to North Carolina, there was no doubt that I would be a Cup winner as a crew chief. I wasn't going to take no for an answer."
Gayle said he had expected his team to hit victory lane this season before now, but Kevin Harvick and Kyle Busch have dominated, winning five times each.
"The Stewart-Haas cars have been really strong," Gayle said, "and Kyle ... well, Kyle has been Kyle."
Gayle and Jones came into the Cup Series together last season with mixed results, although Jones was named rookie of the year after the season. Hopes were high for more success in 2018, but Gayle said he thought they were closing in on a victory.
"We were awful when we showed up at Sonoma," he said. "But we worked at it and got better and finished seventh. That carried over to Chicago and then to Daytona."
On the final restart Saturday night, Jones was on the outside of the front row beside defending series champion Martin Truex Jr. Gayle gave his driver a pep talk coming to the green flag.
"Go have fun. Throw caution to the wind here," Gayle told Jones over the in-car radio.
Jones received a big push from Chris Buescher on the backstretch and went three-wide around Kasey Kahne and Truex for the lead. He took the white flag alongside Truex and pulled away for the victory.
"Exciting stuff," Gayle said this week.
Gayle, 42, graduated from Little Rock McClellan High School in 1994. Around that time, he began working with a couple of modified teams at I-30. He did not have a racing background -- his grandfather helping sponsor some sprint cars at the quarter-mile dirt oval was his only previous connection -- but he soon developed a strong fondness for racing.
He attended the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville before realizing his life's ambition was at NASCAR's hub in Charlotte, N.C. In 1999, he transferred to UNC-Charlotte, where he earned a mechanical engineering degree in 2002.
"I could have stayed [in Fayetteville] and sent my resume to teams," he said. "But you have to be that guy who's going to get his foot in the door. I knew I had to meet the right people and get that face time in order to get the opportunities to be where I eventually wound up."
Gayle accepted a position with Joe Gibbs Racing and spent 10 years as a race engineer before being promoted to crew chief in the Xfinity Series in 2013. In four Xfinity seasons, he earned 20 victories in 132 starts with 12 drivers. He collected 16 victories with Busch, with whom he had previously worked with extensively as an engineer.
He also earned his initial victory with Jones in an Xfinity race at Chicagoland Speedway in 2015.
Gayle said his experiences working with top drivers made it clear big things were in Jones' future, even with his early growing pains.
"Erik was like a lot of these young guys who won right away in the truck series, won right away in Xfinity," Gayle said. "But racing in Cup in a different animal, but he gets it. With Kyle, he never wanted to hear much during the race. He knows what's going on. With Erik, he is the kind of guy who is never too far up or too far down. We talk about the outlook for the weekend, for the race."
When Gayle was promoted to Cup crew chief for Jones before last season, they moved to Colorado to be with Furniture Row Racing, which was under the JGR umbrella. After one season, they were switched to a full JGR team and moved back to the shop in Huntersville, N.C.
Gayle's career-long tenure with one team is a rarity in the sport.
"Once you got in with Gibbs, you became a part of the family and you knew you were in the right place," he said. "There's lots of talented people in that building."
Whether he is in North Carolina, Colorado or at any NASCAR race across the nation, Gayle remains a fiercely loyal Arkansas Razorbacks fan and makes time to attend their football games when he can.
Members of his wife's family were visiting from Tuckerman when the UA baseball team was in the College World Series finals last month. The Hogs' loss to Oregon State was excruciating, he said.
"That was a tough one, gosh," he said. "I was pacing back and forth so much they thought I was going to wear a hole in the floor.
"My wife keeps telling me, 'You're going to eventually have to give up this Razorback thing.' But that's never going to happen. No matter where I am, I'm from Arkansas and I'm going to stick with my Hogs."
Sports on 07/14/2018