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NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
CUP: RCR Trainer Has Eye On Ball
Ray Wright’s career began in baseball...
Mike Hembree  |  Posted March 25, 2010   Welcome, NC
Ray Wright is a former collegiate baseball star and now the pit crew fitness/strength coach at Richard Childress Racing. On race day he's also a tire carrier on the No. 21 RCR Nationwide team. (Photo: Phil Cavali)
Richard Childress Racing, still on an upward spin in the early weeks of the Sprint Cup season, has its three drivers – Kevin Harvick (1), Jeff Burton (7) and Clint Bowyer (12) – sitting in the top dozen in the point standings.

If they stay in Chase qualifier positions, one of the reasons will be a former star baseball player at Louisiana State University.

On the wall behind Ray Wright’s desk at RCR is a large and very personal photograph. It shows Wright, then the LSU rightfielder, leaping in front of the outfield fence to rob a Stanford batter of what would have been a two-run home run in the championship game of the 2000 College World Series.

LSU ultimately won the game (and the CWS title), 6-5, so Wright’s play obviously deserves the big-picture treatment his office provides.

That was then. This is now. Although he still loves the sport, Wright, 31, has moved on from baseball to his other athletic passion – strength and fitness training. He has been RCR’s pit crew strength/fitness trainer for three years and is in charge of keeping the team’s crewmen in shape, sharp and healthy. Wright knows what they need because he’s one of them – he’s also a tire carrier on RCR’s No. 21 Nationwide team.

The RCR gym is strictly utilitarian. It’s workaday, no frills. No televisions. No comfy couches to rest on.

“I’ve got to try to mimic every condition these guys face,” Wright said. “It’s a little warm in the gym. It’s dimly lit. There are no mirrors. TVs are for the lunch crowd. There’s not a nice place to sit. I’m doing all I can to make an environment as close as possible to what they have to deal with.

“It’s an intimidating place for a man’s ego. And I hope that transfers to over-the-wall.”

Wright has stopped just short of bringing space heaters into the gym to fire up the room like Daytona Beach in July.

“Our workouts are really hard from a strength endurance format,” Wright said. “We need strength and endurance when it gets to be really warm out there. And the last pit stop is the money stop. You have to be ready for that, and ready in the firesuits, the heat and the stress. It all comes down to that.

“It’s a meat market. If you’re not performing, you’re gone, just like it was at LSU.”

After graduation from LSU, Wright got a job as baseball and strength coach at Forsyth Country Day School near Winston-Salem, N.C. (and near the RCR shop). Among the athletes he trained was Austin Dillon, Richard Childress’ grandson (and now a NASCAR Camping World Truck Series driver). Dillon and other family members recommended Wright for the position at RCR.

“This was the ideal job for me, and being on the pit crew has kind of filled the void baseball left,” Wright said. “It’s definitely an adrenalin rush going over the wall.”

Mike Hembree is NASCAR Editor for SPEEDtv.com and has been covering motorsports for 28 years. He has written several books on NASCAR, including "NASCAR: The Definitive History of America's Sport" and "Then Tony Said To Junior: The Best NASCAR Stories Ever Told". He is a six-time winner of the National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year Award.

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