519 - Waddell Wilson: NASCAR's Pioneer Of Speed

The Dale Jr. Download

Dale Earnhardt Jr. invites NASCAR Hall of Fame engine builder and crew chief Waddell Wilson to the Bojangles Studio for a conversation about his storied career. Waddell details his journey from his home of Bakersville, North Carolina to the Nashville Auto Diesel College, which he learned about from a recruiter at his high school. Upon graduation, his journey took him to Florida, where he actually took a chance on racing himself at Miami-area strongholds like Hialeah, Palmetto and Hollywood. Eventually, a demolished racecar would extinguish his hopes of making a living behind the wheel and he headed back home in search of work.

Waddell explains that at the suggestion of a friend he went to inquire about a job at the famed Holman-Moody race team, which at the time was Ford’s manufacturing arm in NASCAR. After a chance meeting with owner John Holman, Waddell was thrown into the most challenging area of the shop: the engine room. He passed an initiation of sorts and over time developed into one of NASCAR’s greatest engine building minds. Waddell went on to build engines for and work with some of NASCAR’s greatest drivers, and he fills listeners in on the characters inside the helmet like Fireball Roberts, Bobby Allison and Buddy Baker. Finally, Dale gets to pick Waddell’s brain about the legendary “Gray Ghost” Oldsmobile that helped Ranier Racing and Buddy Baker be a dominant force at superspeedways in 1979 and ‘80.

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