Larry McReynolds never raced. However, he was one of the best crew chiefs in NASCAR throughout the 1990s. McReynolds won 23 races in 470 events atop the pit box.
Over the course of his career, McReynolds worked with 13 different drivers. But no driver was as important as his own son.
Brandon McReynolds, 23, has earned the opportunity to race full-time in the NASCAR K&N Pro Series West. After racing four ARCA Series events in 2010 along with a few scattered starts over the past few years, McReynolds had a hard time finding funding. He had teams calling, and his dad wanted to make sure he got a full-time ride. Now, he has that with Bill McAnnally Racing.
“He just turned 23, and he’s been racing since he was seven. Obviously, in his early years running Bandoleros, running the Allison Legacy cars and late models, I spent a lot of time with him because it was our own equipment. We were paying the bills but I was kind of like a crew chief too. Now that he has moved on after doing some ARCA Series races for Turner Scott Motorsports and won at Talladega, and now he is running the West Series with a really good race team with a great owner in Bill McAnally and a great sponsor in NAPA, I can’t even be there with him very often. He sat on the pole at Irwindale and finished fourth. That was back when we were at Auto Club Speedway, so I was able to go over there on Saturday night, but I have not made one of his races since,” the elder McReynolds told Speedway Digest.
Being a father figure has been difficult while trying to focus on his own career. After spending years in the garage area, McReynolds became an analyst for NASCAR on Fox. He hasn’t been around too much for his son’s races, but he will be at Sonoma, and he certainly loves spending as much time with him as possible.
“I will be at Sonoma, which is his next race. I enjoy being a part of his career. I have never pushed him to race. The only thing I have asked him and told him – if you are going to race, then you have to race. You have to be all in. It is too much money. It is too much time,” he said.
“It is too much everything just for it to be a novelty. I have never told him in the 14 years that he has been racing, probably longer than that, I have never told him that he has to be the best racecar driver that there is. I’ve just said ‘be the best that you can be.”
Since McReynolds never raced himself, he wonders where his son learned how to drive so well. He said that he knows for sure it didn’t come from him, but it actually might have come from his G-D father, Davey Allison. Allison, who worked with McReynolds from 1991 until his untimely death in 1993, developed a strong bond with him. The two were like peas in a pod, but McReynolds was strongly effected when Allison was killed, and the same feeling occurred when Ernie Irvan was nearly killed on track at Michigan.
“His G-D father is Davey Allison. Maybe that’s where it came from. But the thing that I am the proudest of him is how he carries himself outside of the racecar. Hopefully, that is the thing I did teach him. I was working him hard to help him understand that our sport today is about what you do out of the car has become as important as what you do in the car and he does a really nice job with that. It is the vertical mountain I have ever tried to climb.”
Now, McReynolds is getting older. This is his first true opportunity to race on full-time basis in cars larger than late models. Through five races in 2014, McReynolds is fourth in points with a pole and three top-fives. But his father thinks that if the sport were structured based on talent and not just funding – he might just be in one of NASCAR’s top-three divisions by now.
“Unfortunately, the way our sport is structured today, I’ll lay the Sprint Cup Series aside, but the Trucks and Nationwide, it is not a lot about how much talent you have, it is how much money you can bring. We have worked hard at that. I always told him – he’s 23 and he makes all the decisions he wants to on his own – I just told him, make sure where ever you go for racing, just make sure it is good stuff. Even if it is top notch stuff, the way competition is today in any series, it is hard to beat them,” he said.
“If the equipment is not there, it is impossible to beat them. That is the one thing we did throughout all of our years. We were fortunate enough along the way to have some good sponsors to help us. Whether it was those bandoleros from 2000-2005, Allison Legacy in 2006 and 2007 or late models from 2008 to 2010, we never left that shop unless we knew we could leave there and could go win. Has he moved at a slower pace than he should have? Probably, but if I’m going to be guilty of one thing, I rather be guilty of moving him too slow verses too fast. Moving too fast kills your career. Moving too slow won’t kill it.
The work has now begun to get McReynolds into a Nationwide Series car or a NASCAR Camping World Truck Series ride for next season. Matt Loney has been working day-in and day-out to get McReynolds the funding to race in a higher division, and it might just happen in 2015 if sponsorship can come through. If not – the future will be in doubt for him.
McReynolds said the best moment of seeing his son behind the wheel was his ARCA Series victory with Turner-Scott Motorsports in 2012. He was able to capture the victory at Talladega – the family’s home track, and it was certainly an emotional day.
“To see him in an upper series, you are always proud to accomplish things, but when your kids accomplish things, it supersedes everything that you have done. All the story that is behind that win makes me almost a little bit eary because it is my home track being from Birmingham, Davey Allison’s home track (and that’s his G-D father) and we won there in the spring of 1992 with the No. 28 car. Brandon went to victory lane. He probably doesn’t remember a lot about it because he was only a year old and wrapped up in a baby’s blanket in his mom’s arms. Spinning ahead to 20 years later, he drives a racecar into victory lane. It was very cool. That ranks right up there with those two Daytona 500s.”
Joseph has been covering NASCAR since 2011 for several different websites. Recently, he was named as one of two lead NASCAR columnists for Rant Sports after working for the site for over one year. Working with Rant Sports for approximately 14 months, Joseph has covered New York City area sports teams such as the New York Giants, New York Mets, New York Rangers, New York Islanders and more.
Through his passion is for NASCAR, Joseph has adapted to changing times and realizes that he has numerous opportunities in the journalism work. As one of the top young sports writers, his goal is to become one of the top motorsports writers of this new digital media era. However, he also believes that it’s important to stick to the traditional routers of print publications after seeing his high school newspaper dissolve due to a lack of funding.
Currently, besides his duties with Speedway Digest, Joseph is a columnist with Fronstretch.com, Motorsport.com and has a weekly article in NASCAR Pole Position's digital version - ROAR! Weekly Race Preview Magazine.
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