Ryan Pemberton has worked in NASCAR garages for nearly 23 years. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
Ryan Pemberton can't really remember a time when he didn't make his living in racing. He has been working on cars and in shops since he was a teenager, coming into NASCAR behind older brother Robin Pemberton.
These days, he's the crew chief of Red Bull Racing's Brian Vickers, leading a third-year team that won its first race this season and made NASCAR's Chase For The Sprint Cup for the first time.
As he looks over his career, the 40-year-old Pemberton sees a sport that has changed dramatically - and one that he still seems pleased to be a part of.
As a teenager, he watched his brother Robin, who is now NASCAR’s vice president of competition, work with a series of high-profile drivers and then went to work with him, helping out around what is now the Roush Fenway Racing shop.
"Kid looks up to his big brother," Pemberton says, recalling that he was around 17 when he started working in the shop. "I always liked cars and was mechanically inclined and always liked working on stuff from a young age. It kind of made sense. Competitive background and liked competing. Some of the things you've got to like. You've got to like competition. You've got to like fixing things, making things better, being better at them than the next guy, all those things are just kind of a trait that you need to be good at this in racing.
"It was fairly natural to like it and go into it. And I'm very fortunate to have the opportunity and situation I was in at a young age to be involved in it."
After working his way up the ranks, Pemberton got his chance to work for a while as a crew chief in what is now the Nationwide Series and then moved into the Cup ranks in 1997. He earned his first career pole with Ernie Irvan in 1988 and his first victory with Joe Nemechek at Kansas in 2004.
He joined Red Bull for the 2009 season, and he and Vickers seem to have clicked at the same time that the organization, which got its start in the 2007 season with incoming manufacturer Toyota, began to hit its stride.
The team earned its first career win at Michigan International Speedway in August and closed the season with 13 top-10 finishes, all before the 10-race, championship-determining Chase For The Sprint Cup began.
While the team didn’t necessarily get the results they hoped for within the Chase, finishing 12th, it learned a lot and gained significant ground overall.
Now, it heads into next season with a vastly different set of expectations, especially from those outside the organization.
"I think it shows potentially what we're capable of,” Pemberton says of the 2009 season. “I think it raises expectations, and I think it heightens and focuses on the commitment that everybody has got to make to all of this going forward. I think this season went well, for the most part. Just being able to raise the bar and raise our goals and be realistic."
Their goals for 2010?
"Obviously, we want to continue some of the things we were doing, that was running well, qualifying well and win more races and qualify for the Chase,” he says. “Do everything just a little bit better then we did this year. Sitting on six poles, that was something that will be hard to top next year, but all the other areas I think we're realistically capable of topping."
