MOORESVILLE, N.C. — Ever since he was a fresh-out-of-high-school 19-year-old just beginning his racing career, Tim Brown had an eye on competing in the NASCAR Cup Series. Nearly 35 years later, Brown will finally get the opportunity to race in NASCAR’s premier division.
Rick Ware Racing (RWR) has tabbed Brown to drive its No. 15 Ford Mustang Dark Horse in the Feb. 2 NASCAR Clash at Bowman Gray, the season-opening exhibition race for the NASCAR Cup Series.
Brown isn’t some journeyman. With 101 victories, he is the all-time winningest driver at Bowman Gray Stadium, the flat, quarter-mile asphalt oval in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, that is the country’s longest-running weekly race track. NASCAR runs the venerable facility and the city of Winston-Salem is listed as its owner, but Brown has made “The Madhouse” his house by augmenting his win tally with 12 track championships and 146 poles.
The 53-year-old from Yadkinville, North Carolina, competes in the track’s Tour Type Modified division, where he has set just about every record imaginable. Beyond having the most wins, the most poles and the most championships at Bowman Gray, Brown owns the fastest lap ever recorded (12.965 seconds on April 30, 2016). He won every pole during the 2003 season, and his championships span four decades, with titles in 1996, 1997, 1998, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2008, 2009, 2012, 2015, 2021 and 2022.
“I’ve worked my whole life to try to be a Cup driver,” said Brown, who toils full time at RWR as its suspension and drivetrain specialist. “I’m good with working on race cars for a living because it’s still a pretty cool gig, but I always wanted to drive for a living. For Rick Ware and everybody involved here at RWR to give me the chance to go run a Cup race is so humbling and so heartwarming. It’s really cool.”
Ware is a former driver who transitioned to team ownership after injuries took him out of the seat.
“As someone who understands what it’s like to try to achieve goals and move up the racing ladder, it’s just a great opportunity for Tim and it’s something we’re proud to do,” Ware said. “We’ve had the opportunity to give a lot of drivers their first Cup start, and this is one that’s very well-deserved, especially at this track.”
Brown has turned thousands of laps around Bowman Gray, and he will turn even more before the NASCAR Clash. He will race his Modified in the undercard Madhouse Clash on Feb. 1. That means in addition to the track time Brown will get in a Cup car via practice, qualifying and his heat race prior to the NASCAR Clash, he will get a practice session in his Modified before qualifying and the 125-lap race.
“That time in the Modified will be very helpful for multiple reasons,” Brown said. “NASCAR has already done some updates to the stadium with soft walls and things like that. That’s going to change the line of the racetrack because you make the track smaller. So the line that we generally run, you won’t be able to run because they run right out against the wall. If the soft walls take up 2-and-a-half or 3 feet, now that’s 3 feet that you can’t let the car drift out to the wall. Just getting some track time before we climb in the Cup car, which I’ve never driven before other than on the chassis dyno, will be very helpful.”
While Brown has not driven a Cup car, he knows it inside and out. He has been building Cup cars since he was in high school, first with Cale Yarborough Motorsports and through the many iterations of Cup technology, including the current-generation car.
“I’ve been Cup racing for almost 35 years now, and I don’t know that you’ll find a Cup driver who actually gets to build his own Cup car from the ground up, chassis dyno it, and then go race it,” Brown said. “These guys that work here at RWR, they’re my buddies and they’re all racers, and we get to do this as a group effort. I actually get to put the nuts and bolts on it, and mount a seat, put the motor in it, and go drive it on the chassis dyno before I run it in the Clash. That’s pretty cool.”
The cool factor is heightened because the opportunity is coming on NASCAR’s biggest stage.
“The guys who race these Cup cars today are elite,” Brown said. “They’re the best drivers in the world, and I’m not even going to put myself in that same category. I’m just going to do the best I can.
“I want to climb out of that thing at the end of the Clash and see my son and our family with big smiles on their faces and knowing that we did the best we could because, I promise you, I’m going to give it 110 percent. I just want to enjoy the moment, relish it and soak it all in. I’m not going to leave there and say, ‘Hey, I’m a Cup driver, now.’ I’m just going to leave there knowing this was the experience of a lifetime.”
Beyond creating an exceptional moment for Brown, Ware envisions this endeavor highlighting grassroots racing and the skills of its personalities.
“At Bowman Gray, Tim really has the same opportunity as anybody else,” Ware said. “He was with Roush for decades before he was with us. He’s a very good mechanic. He’s built all his own racecars and he understands racing. I think he’s got an inside track just because he has touched every single part of these cars. He’s a racer, and particularly at this track, he’s got a lot of experience.”
