By Bobby Markos
Some figures behind the scenes in auto racing seem to have a formula for success. Kingsport, Tennessee’s Tony Glover must have discovered this formula in the late 1970s and kept it close to his chest for the last four decades. On this week’s episode of The Dale Jr. Download, Glover will join Dale Earnhardt Jr. and co-host Mike Davis in the Bojangles Studio to discuss winning championships, crown jewels, and running successful racing programs.
Glover first discovered his knack for making the right calls from the pit box in his teenage years, when he began working as crew chief on his father Gene’s late model sportsman team. The father-son combination made headlines in 1979 when they brought home the NASCAR Late Model Sportsman National Championship crown. Glover used this experience to springboard into the NASCAR Cup garage, where he found a spot calling the shots on the Morgan-McClure No. 4 car. He helped earn the team’s first victory with driver Ernie Irvan at the Bristol night race in August of 1990.
1991 began an incredible streak that most crew chiefs would dream of, where Glover would help lead the Morgan-McClure team to three Daytona 500 victories in five years. After winning stock car racing’s biggest event for the first time with Ernie Irvan, he followed the feat with Sterling Marlin back-to-back years in '94 and '95. Glover would also go on to prove he has what it takes to run a major racing program when he served as team manager of Chip Ganassi Racing for well over a decade. In 2010, he oversaw one of the greatest sweeps in North American racing history, as Ganassi drivers won the Daytona 500 and Brickyard 400 (Jamie McMurray) and the Indianapolis 500 (Dario Franchitti).
Tune in to episode 400 of The Dale Jr. Download to hear Tony’s story and insight from his over forty years in auto racing.