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Hardly a race weekend goes by as he sits atop the pit box as crew chief of the No. 20 NASCAR Nationwide Series Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR) that Dave Rogers doesn’t thank his lucky stars for achieving his racing dream. From his earliest days as a child, tagging along with his dad to race Late Model stock cars at short tracks in and around his native Vermont, Rogers always wanted nothing more than to work in the racing business. It was with such determination to achieve his one and only career goal that Rogers even went against the advice of his dad, Davis C. Rogers, who strongly advised his son to steer clear of the world of professional motorsports. “I’m here despite the fact Dad discouraged me from getting into racing,” Rogers said. “Even so, he’s probably the biggest race fan in the world. And he always said for me to set goals and accomplish them. He always laughed at my desire to go racing, saying, ‘It’s not the way to make money and try to pay the bills.” As the story goes, Rogers’ father grew up in a working-class family having to toil on a farm through his teenage years, and he wanted his own kids to enjoy opportunities that he never had. Davis C. Rogers had an auto body business in Marshfield, Vt., when Dave was a youngster, and father and son were fixtures at nearby tracks like Bear Ridge Speedway and Thunder Road Raceway, fielding cars for the likes of local hero “Rapid” Ralph Baldwin. Some of Rogers’ fondest memories involved sitting in the race car after an evening of racing, “raising Cain like most nine-year-olds do,” he said, while the grown-ups around him were tearing it down. Times got tough in the auto body business about the time Rogers turned 10, forcing his father to cut back on things like his racing involvement. Still, they would never miss a Thursday night show together at Thunder Road, sitting in the stands and roaming the pits, rooting on their friends. And Rogers continued to dream about his future in racing. “My parents still continued to feel otherwise,” Rogers said. “So they pushed sports on me from the time I was 10. I played basketball, baseball, soccer and learned the team aspect of things. Even so, I was still always at the race track, but I wasn’t working in the pits where I really wanted to be. Playing sports was always great, but I always managed to get bored. I was always ready to move on to the next sport before the one I was playing was over. Racing is the only thing I never have gotten bored with to this day. It’s still fun for me today, just like it was when I was a kid.” When he was finished with high school, Rogers actually heeded a piece of advice from his dad and went to Clarkson University in Potsdam, N.Y., to pursue a mechanical engineering degree. “I knew Dad wanted me to get a ‘real job,’ but I had ulterior motives because this was a time when the concept of engineers in racing started becoming popular,” Rogers said. With a mechanical engineering degree in hand in 1996, Rogers took a look at job opportunities in the “real world” his father envisioned. But none of the opportunities that presented themselves looked like much fun to Rogers, so he again took a long, hard look at how he could find his way into big-time auto racing. “The job offers I did have were with big ‘Corporate America’ type companies, and that’s not what I wanted to commit my life to at all,” Rogers said. “That’s when I got serious about racing, and I learned about GMI (the General Motors Institute in Flint, Mich.), which is known as Kettering U., and I fell in love with their vehicle dynamics program. There was a professor there named Dr. Tuttle, and I let him know what I wanted to do. He gave me an assistantship to teach manufacturing processes. In return, I got a graduate education in mechanical engineering. I studied vehicle dynamics, and I got my masters in 1998.” Rogers’ time at GMI was thoroughly committed to his studies, with one exception – working with a Late Model stock car team at Auto City Speedway in Clio, Mich. “While I was at GMI, the only thing I did was study and work on Late Models,” he said. “I had really nothing else going on. I tried to make up for lost time between the time I was 10 and 22 years old. I tried to get as much experience as I could. I tried to apply the book side of engineering to working on Late Models.” As graduation time neared in mid-1998, Rogers littered North Carolina race shops with his resume, and started knocking on doors in search of the break of his racing lifetime. He had solid offers for entry-level engineering positions with a small handful of high-profile teams, but the one that intrigued him the most came from JGR, and he jumped at the chance. “I joined JGR on July 1, 1998,” said Rogers said, a date that he’ll understandably never forget. “When I started out, I was just a shop rat. I did a lot of component studies – modifying and designing new components while trying to keep the components durable and lightweight. I took the job with Joe Gibbs because of his reputation as a winner. I felt that if there was a team that was going to be around forever, it would be this one.” Memories of those early days at JGR are ones Rogers cherishes the most. “The company was small, and some of those long nights at the shop, Joe would walk through and we would enjoy a few minutes of his time, listening to what he had to say. He’s a true winner in life, so we hung on to every word.” In 1999, Rogers was taken under the wing of Greg Zipadelli, crew chief of the No. 20 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series team and driver Tony Stewart, who went on to capture a pair of Sprint Cup titles over the next six seasons. It was the defining moment for Rogers, who worked side-by-side with Zipadelli until 2005. “It was the opportunity of a lifetime,” Rogers said. “Zippy will go down in history as one of the best in the business. I viewed him as a hands-on guy who built race cars from the day he was born – the kind of life I probably always wished I could have lived in the back of my mind. And I got to contribute to the success of the 20 during those years, which is very satisfying. In return, Zippy probably helped me out more than I ever could have helped him out. He took me under his wing and showed me a lot of things that I never could have learned from a book. It was a golden opportunity, and by far the most valuable experience I ever had.” Zipadelli also knew a guy with Rogers’ talent would some day have to be thrown from the nest and set out on a crew chief career of his own. It was in 2005 that JGR started a third team to go with the Nos. 20 and 18 cars of Stewart and then driver Bobby Labonte – the No. 11 FedEx car first driven by Jason Leffler with Rogers as its crew chief. The new team struggled, as new teams tend to do more often than not, and Rogers found himself back in the JGR engineering department before season’s end. “When I was working with Zippy, he took me aside and gave me a behind-the-scenes look at what really goes on and the struggles that some crew chiefs encounter,” Rogers said. “He really gave me a crash course on what I was about to get involved with as crew chief of the 11 car. When Joe (Gibbs) gave me the opportunity to crew chief the 11 car, some of the things Zippy warned me about actually came true. It didn’t go too well and I went back to the engineering department for the second half of the ’05 season.” Opportunity came knocking again at the end of 2005, when driver Denny Hamlin asked Rogers to take over the reigns of the No. 20 Nationwide Series program. It’s been smooth sailing ever since. The 2006 season featured a pair of wins and five poles for Hamlin. “We have a really strong program and there is great chemistry on the team,” Rogers said. “All the lessons learned over the years are contributing to our success. It’s a true team effort here. I love racing against crew chiefs who think they can do it all themselves. I know that, collectively, 10 guys are a lot smarter than any one guy. I’ve adopted Joe (Gibbs’) philosophy of hiring the best people and listening to them. There was a quote in my physics lab in college that said, ‘The reason I see so far is because I stand on the shoulders of giants.’ I remind myself of that every day.” Rogers, born March 12, 1974, lives with his wife, Tracey, and sons David and Matthew in Huntersville, N.C. In their off time, they enjoy slow cruises on the water in their pontoon boat. |
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