Tim Brown was a young man in his 20s who did a variety of tasks for Cale Yarborough’s racing crew 35 years ago. He constructed motors. Car bodies were installed. suspended hungs. When he wasn’t fixing other people’s vehicles, he was busy fixing his own and winning at small tracks around the Southeast, notably in North Carolina, where he was born. He was a short-track racer with big NASCAR goals. He is in the midst of a “whirlwind” right now. He appropriately refers to it as a “Cinderella story.” One that ends at the racetrack he might as well call home with the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season opening. On Sunday at 8 p.m., NASCAR will stage The Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium in Winston-Salem, marking a return to its origins.
In addition, Brown, the Yadkinville native, employee of Rick Ware Racing, and the most successful driver in Bowman Gray Stadium history, will make his maiden Cup Series appearance as the series returns to a racetrack from the past in North Carolina. When asked how the past month has gone since the announcement, Brown told The Charlotte Observer on Monday morning, “I’ve called it a whirlwind, but it’s been really good.” After finishing his morning work at the RWR shop, he was splicing in before going on to his next media event, which was on The Dale Jr. Download. He went on, “And the car is freaking amazing.” “Dude, I’m so excited.”
Tim Brown’s journey to become Bowman Gray’s all-time top driver
Consider the different trajectories of Brown and NASCAR — and how Bowman Gray is prominent in both — to get a sense of how this all came together. First, Brown: His grandfather, Eb Clifton, who managed a race shop in Yadkinville, introduced the 53-year-old vehicle constructor, mechanic, and driver to racing when he was a young lad. Since Brown’s father was absent, Tim and his brother Ben were essentially reared by Clifton. Tim and Ben were taken to racetracks throughout North Carolina and abroad by their grandfather. Tim aspired to be a racer after graduating from Starmount High School. However, he had neither money nor a source of it, so he used the connections his grandfather had to work on Yarborough’s Cup team.
It was his first racing job. He would work from the race shop, travel with the team for a while, and “then I’d come back and race my car,” which was a modified vehicle that he paid for himself. Wins started to accumulate gradually and then almost simultaneously. Bowman Gray Stadium, a quarter-mile oval and one of North Carolina’s oldest racetracks that hadn’t hosted a NASCAR race since 1971 but was still thriving, was the place where he was most successful during the weekly features. He is undoubtedly the favorite to win at Bowman Gray. It’s comparable to his first one from the early 1990s. Additionally, his 70th does, giving him the most victories of any driver in the Modified Division at the racetrack.
According to him, his favorite is the first one that he won in front of his entire family, including his wife Megan, son Cam (8), and daughter Marley (3). The one that is most known is his 100th victory at the Winston-Salem track, where he overtook Jimmy Johnson as the most successful driver in all of the stadium’s racing series. In addition to 146 poles at the track, Brown now has 12 track titles and 101 victories. He will be able to fulfill a lifelong desire in a few days when he makes his NASCAR Cup debut. He has previously competed in a 2009 Truck Series race in the NASCAR national series, but never at the Cup level he admitted with a laugh Monday he wanted to race at when he was young.
“I had aspirations of becoming a Cup driver,” Brown stated. I reasoned that if I went to the stadium and did well in the races, Richard Childress, Rick Hendrick, or someone else would call me and give me a truck, Xfinity car, or Cup car. “Hey man, how much money can you bring?” was the tone of the phone calls. To be honest, I had no money. To get to the racetrack and race my car, it was all I could do.And as I turned 27, 28, I came to the realization that when you didn’t have several million bucks to offer, the phone calls stopped. Thus, at that point, I was like, ‘You know what? As long as I can still be competitive and win races and win championships, I’ll be content with that.” And that’s what he’s done.
His narrative is similar to those of other short-track legends who were denied opportunities to compete in full-time NASCAR due to a lack of sponsorship money or other extenuating factors. Consider the case of Bubba Pollard, one of the all-time greats in short-track pavement racing. “I watched my grandpa’s cars race from the stands, and to be honest, they didn’t do well,” Brown remarked. They did not win many races, but they did win a couple. And as a young child, all I wanted to do was sit up there. I never thought I would be the most successful driver in the history of the place, much less win a race.
