Champion Crew Chief: Mardy Lindley
Championship-Winning Driver Gets First Title From Pit Box
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Mardy Lindley captured a NASCAR Whelen All-American Series track championship in just his second season as a late model driver, and it was in his second season as a NASCAR K&N Pro Series East crew chief that history repeated itself.
In 2013 Lindley called the shots for the No. 98 Turner Scott Motorsports team and driver Dylan Kwasniewski that earned the K&N Pro Series East crown.
It was a dominant performance for the duo of Kwasniewski and Lindley, who racked up six wins and 10 top 10s in 14 events together. The six victories are tied for the second-highest single-season total in the series’ 27-year history.
Lindley, who was grew up and still resides in Greenville, S.C., got his start as a driver in karts and jumped to Late Models at his hometown track, Greenville Pickens Speedway. He raced just two seasons at GPS – highlighted by the 1995 track title – and moved on to compete from 1996-2006 in what is now known as the CARS Pro Cup Series.
His transition from behind the wheel to the crew side began in 2007 with Ginn Racing. He then went to Roush Fenway Racing in 2008 as crew chief for Ricky Stenhouse Jr. in ARCA. The 2009-11 seasons were spent working with Greg Biffle’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series team at RFR, then he went to the K&N Pro Series East in 2012 to serve as Bryan Ortiz’s crew chief with Rev Racing. Lindley moved over to the newly-established Turner Scott Motorsports K&N Pro Series program for 2013 to work with Kwasniewski.
Early on in the season, Lindley felt like the No. 98 team wasn’t quite where it needed to be. Lindley had earned a victory as a driver at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway in 2006, and applied his same setup to great success for the 2013 opener in Thunder Valley as Kwasniewski was dominant in victory, but he felt like the team underperformed the next few races.
“We hit it the first race, but Dylan was in school out in Las Vegas early in the season, and there was really no time to test at all,” Lindley said. “The rest of our teams were testing, a lot of the competition was testing, but we just couldn’t do anything.”
Lindley singled out April races at Greenville and Richmond (Va.) International Raceway where he thought the team’s performances weren’t what they should have been.
“I’d say if there were odds coming into the season, Dylan was expected to win the championship, he and Brett Moffitt were the favorites,” Lindley said. “I really felt like – with the opportunity that Turner Scott had given us – that it would be our own fault if we didn’t get the job done.”
It wasn’t until after Kwasniewski graduated high school and the No. 98 team tested on back-to-back days at a pair of North Carolina short tracks – at Bowman Gray Stadium and Caraway Speedway – that Lindley felt like the team was really coming together as a championship contender.
“I knew that day when we were at Caraway that it was going to be special,” Lindley said. “We don’t race there, but we went through a whole lot of different scenarios and we really hit on a lot of stuff.
“When we left that day I knew it was going to be game-on, and we went on a tear there for a while with our short-track stuff.”
Lindley drew attention to the team’s improved performance from the spring race at his home track – Greenville – to the fall date at the historic half mile. They finished 15th there in April, but cruised to a 2.6-second victory in September.
“From a 15th-place finish in the first race, to dominating like we did the second race, I just knew that day at Caraway that it was going to be special,” Lindley said.
As Lindley gets ready to celebrate with the TSM No. 98 team on Saturday, Dec. 14 with the NASCAR Night of Champions Touring Awards ceremony in the Crown Ballroom of the Charlotte (N.C) Convention Center inside the NASCAR Hall of Fame, he already looks back on the season with fond memories.
“The first thing that comes to mind is that it’s kind of sad [the season] has come to an end,” Lindley said. “He [Kwasniewski] has so much talent and he’s such a great person – full of personality – that it was one of the most fun seasons I’ve had in racing yet.”
Sources: Jason Cunningham/NASCAR K&N Pro Series East PR