Book details Hammond's career in racing

FOX Sports and SPEED Channel NASCAR expert analyst Jeff Hammond -- a former championship winning crew chief in the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series -- is the latest personality racing personality to author a book chronicling his career.

Part of the NASCAR Library Collection, Real Men Work in The Pits: A Life in NASCAR Racing is now on sale in the NASCAR.COM Store.

Published by Rodale, this book documents how Hammond got his start as a teenager working on dirt track cars around his Charlotte, N.C. ,home before moving into the major leagues in the mid-1970s as a crewman for such noted independents as Walter Ballard and Elmo Langley.

Hammond's big break came in 1976 when he joined the team owner by racing legend Junior Johnson and started out doing everything from sweeping the shop floors to driving Johnson all over the country. But soon after, Johnson promoted Hammond to crew chief. For more than ten years they found enormous success with such great drivers as Cale Yarborough - including all three of his championship seasons - and Darrell Waltrip.

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"Looking back on those days, it is sometimes hard to believe how far racing has come and how much it has changed," writes Hammond. "The money is so much bigger and the technology is so much more sophisticated. Big as it has gotten, racing is still about the cars and the drivers and the crews. Racing has changed, but a lot of it is still the same and will never change. The things about racing that got me into it when I was just a kid keep me coming back, 30 years later. Once it gets in your blood, it never leaves."

Hammond finished his career on the pit box in 2000 with 43 wins to his credit, putting him in the record books as one of the greatest crew chiefs of all time. He remains one of auto racing's most popular figures.

Real Men Work in The Pits: A Life in NASCAR Racing offers an engaging account of a life devoted to NASCAR and chronicles the enormous changes he's seen in the sport over his 30-year career. Filled with compelling stories and amusing anecdotes, this publication reveals an insider's view of life on pit road. Hammond has known both triumph and heartbreak and understands the business, people, and culture of NASCAR better than anyone.

As he explains, being crew chief meant doing whatever was necessary to not only win races, but keep the entire operation afloat. Aside from tending to the car, Hammond also had to run the shop and handle everything from getting uniforms laundered to making travel arrangements to organizing birthday parties.

Real Men Work in The Pits recounts some of the most memorable chapters of racing lore: the epic clashes between Richard Petty and Bobby Allison, of Darrell Waltrip's great races against such fierce competitors as Dale Earnhardt and Geoff Bodine, and of Hammond's amazing gamble that won the 1989 Daytona 500. Hammond examines the close friendships and bitter rivalries that developed between teams, the finer points of interpreting the rules, the economics behind the game, and the intense preparation for each racing season. He also reveals the myriad ways in which NASCAR has evolved through technology, marketing, and television deals.

Hammond is quick to note that, through it all, the real fun for him began once the green flag fell.

"It was exhausting and incredibly rewarding," Hammond writes in the book. "But I always said that at the end of the race, I wanted to feel just as tired and wrung out as my driver. Otherwise, I didn't feel like I'd done my job. You just couldn't believe the adrenaline pump ... especially if we won."