'I truly am Forrest Gump': Ray Evernham humbled by Hall of Fame induction, wowed by company

DAYTONA BEACH — According to Ray Evernham, all he needed was a park bench and a box of chocolates.

“I truly am Forrest Gump. I have no idea how I got here,” he observed.

"Here" was a ceremony honoring this year’s inductees into the Motor Sports Hall of Fame of America last Monday just outside of Turn 4 at Daytona International Speedway.

Evernham is among the 2023 class. Yet, despite the heights reached during his career, in the company of auto racing's greats, he was reduced to his humblest of beginnings.

“I’m sitting at a table with Don Prudhomme, Walker Evans and David Hobbs. I mean, really?” Evernham questioned. “Hall-of-fame drag racer, hall-of-fame road racer and one of the greatest sportscar racers in the world and I’m some modified driver from New Jersey."

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Modesty aside, the journey certainly was a unique one. Even Gumpian, as Evernham would say. Short of a stint as an Alabama kick returner, a tour of duty in Vietnam and a shrimping boat named Jenny, that is.

Yes, Evernham at one time was a meddling modified racer from New Jersey, but a crash and a resulting brain stem injury forced him out of the car and, as it turned out, on his way. He went to work on chassis in the IROC series and then joined Alan Kulwicki’s crew in 1991.

That lasted only six weeks due to a clash of personalities and as the legend goes, Evernham was stopped on his way out of the Daytona garage by a pair of Ford engineers. Seems they were impressed by his work and had a young driver in the Busch Series who could use his services.

That driver? Jeff Gordon.

And the rest, so they say, is decorated history. With Gordon driving and Evernham serving as crew chief, the pair quickly climbed the ranks and set the stock-car racing world ablaze, winning three titles and 47 Cup races together between 1993 and 1999.

After that, with all garage doors thrust wide open, he became a team owner with Evernham Motorsports, a multi-car Dodge operation that enlisted the help of drivers such as Bill Elliott, Kasey Kahne and Jeremy Mayfield among others. Despite some moderate success, by 2010, the organization was gobbled up by Richard Petty and Evernham sold off his share.

Then there was TV work and an involvement in the Superstar Racing Experience (SRX) with Tony Stewart, something he said he’s out of now.

But despite all of that, surrounded by racing royalty of all practices, Evernham returned to that 20-something trying to grind out a living while following a dream.

“This is all I’ve ever wanted to do my whole life, I never really wanted to do anything else,” he said. “Every opportunity I got to work at it or meet new people or learn something, I took that and I was fortunate enough to get an opportunity to do something with it. Again, I come from New Jersey, where people were like, ‘Yeah, you’ve got about as much chance to be hit with a meteorite as you do going stock car racing.' "

And while he claims to be in the dark with how exactly he arrived at the pinnacle of motorsports, he had some parting advice for anyone aspiring for such heights in any walk of life.

“Don’t ever let anyone tell you, you can’t do something,” Evernham said. “If I’d listened to everybody that told me I would never make it, I’d be working on the boardwalk.”

The Rainbow Warriors and a lug nut legacy

During last Sunday's race at Las Vegas, the pit crew of William Byron churned out a stop clocked under 10 seconds.

"They've got a lot less lug nuts than we used to have, right?" Evernham asked.

Indeed, the single-lug wheel of the Next-Gen car has made tire changing a more abbreviated process, but Evernham has a bit to do with those ever-shrinking pit times as well. While leading the "Rainbow Warriors", Evernham helped change the game when it came to pit stops, training crew members and instituting choreography in an effort to shave any tenth of a second that could be found.

Those efforts gained Gordon spots without ever having to pass a car on the track and quickly, other teams were playing catchup. Pit Stops went from 20 seconds to 15 and under and while those times have continued to shrink in the years since Evernham's involvement, he points to evolution.

"I know I get a lot of credit for the pit-stop stuff but all I did was take what the Wood Brothers did and improved it, it was not like I had this revolutionary idea, just continued to improve on a great idea," he said. "Those guys continue to improve on it. They're going steps further than we did. It's like the Olympics, people run further and run faster and jump higher every year."

An IROC return?

Finally, the IROC series still holds a special place in Evernham's heart.

So much so, he said he'd love to see it return … under the right circumstances.

“I’d love to see the IROC Series come back,” Evernham said. “The hard thing to do is get everything balanced out and keep it safe but there’s some opportunity coming up, especially if you want to bring back the superstar drivers.”

As for where? Evernham pointed just across the parking lot at the World Center of Racing with the caveat of a few minor adjustments.

"You just don’t need them to run at the speeds they run around here," he said. "So, maybe Jim (France) will let us put a little short track on the front straightaway."

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Motorsports Hall of Fame: Evernham humbled by inclusion, wowed by peers