Dave Rogers
Dave Rogers took over crew chief duties for Kyle Busch and the No.18 M&M's team at Texas on November 8, 2009.
In defending the 2008 NASCAR Nationwide Series Owner's Championship, Dave Rogers amassed 6 victories with driver Joey Logano during the 2009 season.
Last season was an amazing success for the No. 20 Toyota team with an amazing nine victories, six poles, 16 top-five finishes and 26 top-10 finishes. All accomplished despite using four different drivers through the course of the season including Tony Stewart, Kyle Busch, Denny Hamlin, and a young rookie named Joey Logano.
The 2008 Nationwide Series Owner’s Championship is a culmination of the hard work Rogers has poured into his job since he joined Joe Gibbs Racing in July of 1998. Over the past decade he has established a work ethic and determination that proved invaluable to the success of the 2008 season.
In 1999, Rogers was taken under the wing of Greg Zipadelli, crew chief of the No. 20 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Home Depot team, who captured a pair of Sprint Cup titles over the next six years. It was the defining moment for Rogers, who worked side-by-side with Zipadelli until 2005.
Zipadelli 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 the season’s end.
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 seven poles for the team. In 2007 the win total would increase to four and set the stage for the 2008 championship season.
Rogers knew at a young age that he wanted to work in the racing business, gaining exposure to the industry by tagging along with his father to race Late Model race cars at short tracks in and around his native state of Vermont. But Rogers displayed the determination that has carried him throughout his career by going against the advice of his dad, David C. Rogers, who strongly advised his son to steer clear of the world of professional motorsports.
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. The senior 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.
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 for their friends. And Rogers continued to dream about his future in racing. When he finished high school, Rogers actually heeded a piece of advice from his dad and went to Clarkson University in Potsdam, NY to pursue a mechanical engineering degree.
With a mechanical engineering degree in hand in 1996, Rogers took a look at job opportunities in the “real world” his father had envisioned for him. But none of the opportunities that presented themselves appealed to Rogers, so he again turned toward his dream and explored how he could find his way into big-time auto racing. That would lead him to GMI (General Motors Institute in Flint, Mich.) which is known as Kettering U. and where he would earn his master’s in mechanical engineering in 1998.
Although the majority of his time was fully committed to his studies, he did find time to work with a Limited Late Model race team at Auto City Speedway in Clio, Mich. By the time graduation 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 opportunity.
Dave and his wife, Tracey, have two children, David and Matthew and currently reside in Davidson, NC.
