Rusty Wallace Visits Former Blue Max Racing Shop: 1980's NASCAR History Hiding in Plain Sight!

never have come back here until you called me up about this and i said okay pit stop practice was right about right here they called me up say tom cruise is coming over this building here man i got a story for that dog on building right there i'll never forget when i oh what does it feel like to be standing here right now it's kind of weird because you look at this building and this is where we won a lot of races probably close to 18 20 races in the 89 championship almost won a championship and 88 out of this building but it was blue max racing from right here all the way down to the end of that big building the offices were only with the very end car fabrication we had body shops we had the engines built behind here it wasn't all these different companies that are in this one building but this was a uh this is this is where we got it done man i mean blue max race you never where was the front door so like it's it's 1989 you're gonna walk in here and walk into the front office where are you going okay i'm gonna i'll i'll go down and show you but i don't remember all these other doors being here at all they probably weren't i don't think it was this is just one flat building and like i said behind there we had uh fabrication they were hanging bodies back in there harold elliot his engine stuff was about the middle over here let's walk down so we can find where the front door used to be okay i bet the front door is probably still there they just added all these other doors to put these units in yeah i would think so i would think so was the parking lot always like this yeah real soon i remember driving in like this it was always all crooked and you had to kind of angle your way in when i show up and most of the time i came and i go through the gates that the gates were open and i parked behind the back that's where the race haulers were all at there wasn't any room for the hauler to go inside of a building like all teams have got now but um yeah we uh we parked a hauler out back and i remember when the cars get done we used to take them off the jack stand we'd roll them outside if we roll them in the back by the truck we'd fire them up and light them off and make sure they didn't leak everything sounded good we load that baby right up and off we go head over to charlotte when to cook 600 go out to sonoma california when the road courses out there go into atlanta 500 everything was right out of this building blue max racing did he move in here after oscar lund or stacy or whatever was out of there how did that what was do you know when they got here well that would have been osterlund that was uh before blue max yeah because that was like in um that'd have been like oh my gosh one was that like 81 81 well blue max i didn't go to work for blue max in 1986. so i worked for blue max 86 87 88 89 and last year was 1990. i remember in 1990 we won the coax hunter and we went and won the road course out in sonoma california and then after that that was it and uh and raymond uh folded the team up was really having a tough time finding sponsors getting all the stuff we needed to really put a big effort in rick hendrick got in at that point at the very last year and helped financially fund the business a little bit and he did a hell of a job to help us win a championship in 1989 doing that interesting yeah but anyway okay the front door would have been right here very very end okay and so that is still there where it's supposed to be i remember there was two doors i believe this first one here and that one were the two doors that went into blue max racing we walked right in there and judy tucker she was the our front desk lady she was kind of the lady running everything at blue max handling all the reservations for hotels rental cars all that type of stuff she sat right behind a little wooden desk right behind that door and you would walk in and say hey judy how you doing then hang it right and walk into the shop and the shop was back there you see all the cars all lined up and it was pretty small area i think we had like four cars maybe at one time in the building and the rest of them are scattered through this building down here whether they're in fabrication or whether in a paint shop or whatever but like i said none of this stuff was here at all this was one flat front and that i remember this building here man i got a story for that doggone building right there i'll never forget when i i was always fabricating stuff and i wanted to help the team a little bit so i had to get a headlight bezel i was making for one of our pontiacs and a band saw was in this building i went that dog on bandsaw and i'm cutting this part of a headlight door and i it slipped and it went through and the doggone saw blade went started here went all the way down to my finger it went down almost three quarters of an inch but i cut my finger off blood squirting everywhere and that damn building right there you know i've never been in it since then but it had a big old band saw in there that really got me pretty good that's funny i almost did that the other day on this finger did you really yeah the back side you got to learn how to work a band saw especially when you're sitting here pushing through like this and the the piece of wood that i was pushing through had a big cut in the wood and a blade went into that but it happened right in that building that's one of the big memories i got about blue max racing by cutting my finger off in that building did they do like chassis fab in there as or what is what went on in here was a multiple use building and um we never did use that building really a lot full time where you find five bucks underground merry christmas that's pretty cool hey usually you find a quarter a nickel or a penny you found five dollars laying on the ground yeah i was really lucky yeah it's my lucky weekend this is your special day there's one gallon of gas exactly we're allowed to do let's just peek around here you want to yeah yeah i talked to the guy that owns this place he said go walk around do whatever you want oh he's okay cool yeah he was all about the finding out more about this place and all that so we could do whatever we want well i'm sure it was multiple uses after we left but i remember this he had a big crane inside there i thought which i thought was real strange the first day i saw the building right down to the center there's like a big crane they would bring metal in and out of or something i bet it's still there uh but right here against his fence all the way against the fence remember we used to get the hauler smashed against the fence all we possibly could and that's where the taller would sit and so we back the cars out of these garage doors here and roll them over and start them up and run them and do pit stop practice out here and everything out this little parking lot really and the trains are flying by because there's the train tracks pretty crazy huh that is crazy it doesn't seem big enough to have all that going on back here i know no i mean the haulers you park a hauler back here there's not much room to do anything that building over that little piece sticking out the back i remember we had a big air compressor in there and i remember todd parrot was our tire guy back then he always had tires laying everywhere out in the back here he was measuring them and airing them all up and getting them all ready and breaking the tires down off the wheels it was it was a lot of tires over there i remember that but uh yeah boy stay in the back here right now it sure does look smaller than what i remember it you know what is it when was the last time you stood back here probably 1991 wow i never have come back here until you called me up about this and i said okay i'm glad i did because i'm interested to see what it looks like you know that's cool but um there was enough room there to win a championship back then we had 30 no i think we had like 28 total employees and we won a title wow you know and now where do they got two 300 yeah per team yeah protein i don't remember all this stuff this is really neat so yeah i think they built that after we were here for sure because that was a big garage door yeah he said it it's all offices in there now and the upper part is where he keeps his stuff and i think he did say the crane is still in there oh he did yeah i don't know if it's like visible or if it's up in the attic or what but i know that when we were here blue max i always personally treated this whole side is something we never went down to never did really come down here this area at all but there was enough equipment in there that i remember when we had to do some fabrication we would come down and do some welding down here do some things so much so that's where i told you almost cut my damn finger off right in there but yeah wow so that had been first year i went to work for max bluemax that was 86 and i was driving for gatorade before that with uh with cliff stewart up in high point north carolina then i got my big break when i came went to work for raymond bid and we won let's see 86 i won the valley deal 500 just only four or five races into it and then two races later we win martinsville and that was a good feel because you knew that it kind of i made it then you know i won two now not just maybe luck into one which i kind of thought i lucked in the first one at bristol but then when you go to martinsville and you win again you're like oh man this is pretty cool i think i'm part of the club now you know but uh so be like your time here is what you feel like when you were you were there like you were here to stay oh this was it right here blue max we had the coolest crew guys we had some of the fastest pit stops we had fast race cars we had a cool car owner i'm not saying i mean roger penske come on he's the coolest guy that i know you know when it comes to that but beetle raymond beatle was the king of having fun taking care of everybody always had a big smile on his face always cutting deals and he had a lot of friends and uh but boy i tell you what we had a hell of a time out of that building and with that race team 86 87 88 89 95 years or probably the best five years of my life you know as far as just growing up and learning things and doing that then obviously i move on to penske and that's where i really got my skills all honed and he taught me a lot he's a hell of a mentor for me did a lot but beatle is the only got me in victory lane and that was good you had barry dotson you know world-class crew chief you had harold elliott world-class you know engine builder todd parrot incredible chassis guy jimmy macar now runs basically a lot of joe gibbs's operation so this shop developed a lot of talent and they they found their own ways after the team fell apart uh and that was it wow i was just thinking back to something kenny said when we were doing the the valley park history tour oh you do that that's right yeah oh that's cool yeah that that boy that's a way back in the day now that's so we're kind of filling out the the story here like so you go you come there and then you you bounce around a little bit and you like get your feet here well there you know what you're talking about with kenny back in valley park missouri i was racing the american speed association myself mark martin the late alan quickie davey allison all of us doing that and i was racing out of st louis in that building that you went to with kenny then then i won the title in 83. i got an opportunity to move down to high point north carolina worked for a really cool guy cliff stewart he's the one who gave me my very first break and uh won the rookie year with him in 1984 and then we had gatorade sponsor in the car and um and then you know we just we started blowing a lot of engines and had a lot of issues and i got the cold phone call from uh from barry dodson a crew chief here at blue max he said i've been watching i believe in you tim richmond's leaving right now he's going over to hendricks to start a new deal i drive for the folgers car he said we'd love to have you drive for us i said man holy smokes came over here first thing that happens pontiac puts me in a big deal which was great like i say remember three races in i win bristol two races later i win martinsville and career was off and running and we went five years as hard as we could and never looked back much at all we were just winning like it was it was almost illegal how much we were winning we're just winning everything you know we leave here go over to charlotte win the all-star race the big controversy me and daryl walter the whole damn infield's fighting i win that race and when you cook 600 i win sonoma i win charlotte when he's winning everything with this team right here out of that little building right there that's crazy now look at all those mom-and-pop shops internet yeah there must be five restaurants in that building there's another one we just drove through here like a month ago and there was nothing in the front of this now there's like another mexican restaurant in there yeah wow everybody said i get to start somewhere right but i got you know i had some good good help along the way but i'll tell you back then this building though i remember coming down here in 86 and walking in and remember looking at it and going man this is such a cool building it's so beautiful inside walls were all striped you know and we're sitting in here i forget what year was they did the days of thunder movie they called me up say tom cruise is coming over and we're winning like hell back then we're in that point where hendrick is getting ready to help uh shoot that movie supplying all the cars and all that stuff but we were really winning a lot of races and so he wanted to talk to us i remember sitting that door right there and they're walking all around that door that first door right there those cruises in there so now how do you do this and what's the lingo i want to hear this lingo you guys use you know what's loose tight and the old hot rods loose on me and it's pushing the front end so we're talking lingo we're talking about the way the cars handle we're talking all this stuff you know so we weren't the only ones they were popping around to different teams also building that movie and building the lingo and building you know the way you're you set these cars up and if i say the car is doing this or that on the racetrack he wanted to hear all those terms they got to hand it to him he really dug deep one and wanted to really learn and know about this stuff that's really cool yeah yeah i heard about them going to some places i didn't know they went like everywhere like how much background they really did well harry hyde the late harry high did a ton hendrick did a ton with them harry hyde's teams are running great with rick hendrick as the owner but they're at their infant stages that's when hendrick was just starting his stuff but hendrick and um and raymond beetle really great friends and raymond was a wonderful man i wish he was still around but uh we had a little bit of hendrick influence in here we had drag racing influence in here we had great personalities we had big horsepower we're making that behind those doors right over there it had been the one two three the fourth dart door down where all the engines were coming out of and boy you see those engine shops nowadays are just unbelievable that's but that was an area that was about 60 foot wide by about 50 foot deep three or four thousand square foot the whole entire engine compartment was right there and we're building all that horsepower to that stuff pretty cool so what was hendrick doing down here when you guys were up there he was just kind of getting going rick was and he was using part of this facility i barely remember i'm sure i'm wrong about some of this stuff but that was that was one i told you this this whole area from here down i never did come down here harley at all and rick and rick and uh and uh blue max you know what raymond beatles were such good friends they it's like rick was in this facility a little bit so i don't quote me in all that my you're really taxing my brain now to go way back like this but this is pretty clear right here i kind of want to look at this this thing up here where they had all the you said all the tires yeah let's go check it out yeah i called that that dealership place and asked him if we could like go inside there and tell him what we were doing penny there's all kinds of money in this party she found five dollars you only found a penny i need to frame this one and they were like no we're not interested hung up on me did it really yeah like what the heck all right this whole area all that down there was like super dirty area i remember had you know the big oil drums were down there they were taking all the oil that was ran out of the car and dumping big old barrels and spilling everywhere it was a mess and like i said this big building here had tire air compressors in it and tires were always everywhere there is like a whole back here is like a frat house yeah then we're just winning like hell but this is where it all happened so where did the hauler park right here we would try to get the hauler as far left as he possibly could against this fence because we didn't have a lot of room here yeah so to haul over the park with almost a nose you know probably about 20 foot from that pole and the back of a hauler would be dropped down and then we would have the cars right out here running them and firing them up and getting ready to head to the race and they roll them over here and i remember me and all the guys pushing the car up into the hauler and didn't know any different back then it did this was like so cool and you went on everything so you're like this is the way it's supposed to be we never knew that these trucks and trailers were supposed to be inside of a building building all air conditioned and covered up and washed waxed and polished but this is the way it was man we were getting it done so you were still pretty hands-on in the operations of the the team back as much as they would let me you know i just never could disconnect with the handling of the car the springs the shocks and all that stuff because that's what i grew up that's what mark martin grew up doing that's what i grew up doing like i said late alan quickie davey allison all of us we always built our cars and so i had to be involved in it because if i wasn't i was just lost on the track man when that car's going around the track i got to beat on board computer i got to know what's going on you know when you did pit stop practice where was that how'd your pit stop practice was right about right here anywhere in this area they'd rolled the car out and we'd fly up slammer brakes on and skid to stop and they'd run out and change the tires and so that was a bad one do it again so i'd back back up and burned the tires to come flying up to it you know and we used a real car back then we didn't have any pit stop cars i mean we would actually take the car maybe we ran the week before uh very seldom did we take a car that we're getting ready to take to the track but we take a car that was whatever available and use that for pit stop practice that's cool this is neat what's crazy is when you're back here working on the cars i'd be inside the doors be open sometimes and uh trains will be flying by here that's crazy i feel like i'm at the martinsville speedway you've got that place and the race is going on and here comes the train by you're like that's random man you're not used to seeing that yeah that was it that's cool a lot of memories are out here yeah kenny uh when we were doing that video he said that you were not a sentimental guy he said quote rusty would say passed so he didn't think that you'd be really…