Credit: Autostock

Urban Legends: California Speedway

Think you know everything about NASCAR and its teams? Robert "Bootie" Barker, crew chief of Jeff Green's No. 66 Chevrolet, dispels some notions about life at NASCAR's top level.

Myth: A 25-year-old can't be an effective crew chief.

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Fiction: It depends on the person and the situation. If a guy has grown up working in racing and has been doing it for 12 or 13 years already, and he's a smart guy and is with a good team, I see no reason why a 25-year-old can't be a good crew chief.

I think I was only 27 when I became a crew chief. There's a few guys in their mid to late-20s who are crew chiefs and seem to be doing a good job. It's all relative to the individual and the situation he's in.

Myth: Drivers get 100 percent of the purse.

Fiction: I haven't read every driver's contract, so I can't say for sure whether or not that's completely false, but I think it's a rare situation where the driver gets 100 percent. I'd say it's fairly common for the driver to get 40 percent of the purse, and some of the elite guys may even get 50 percent.

Where guys can make more money is with a higher base salary, or maybe they can negotiate a higher percentage of the revenues from their souvenirs or whatever. Also, they can make more through their personal endorsements.

If a guy's getting 100 percent of the purse, he's probably not getting any sort of base salary, so he better hope his team does extremely well and wins big purses. Again, I don't think there's many, if any, guys who are doing it that way.

Myth: Over-the-wall crew are almost always under 40 years of age.

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Fact: Yeah, that's pretty much true, and it's increasingly becoming the trend to go with younger guys. You want to get the best athletes you can, and you want to have them do the job for many years, so it makes sense to go with the younger guys.

Occasionally, you'll see a tire changer or carrier who's around 40, but usually the only guys who are around that age that go over the wall are your gas men or catch can men. It's no different from other athletic activities, in that a younger guy is usually quicker and stronger. It's a sad fact of life for us older guys, but it's true.

Myth: Crew chiefs are typically very stingy when sharing information.

Fact: This is absolutely true. All of us crew chiefs are paranoid, and whether or not we actually know something the other guys don't, we think we do, so we don't want to share too much.

There are some crew chiefs who'll talk to you and only tell you about 75 percent of the story, so it's not like they're lying. They're just not telling you everything they know.

Then there are some crew chiefs who'll lie to your face. Now, if there's a guy talking to you who is just way off the mark in his thinking, you'll usually point him in the right direction on information, because this is still somewhat of an extended family in the garage.

You want to beat the guy, but you don't want him to be embarrassed, so you'll tell him what he needs to know to keep him in the hunt. But, if your team has worked for two months on something to gain a slight advantage, and it takes you 10 seconds to tell that info to another crew chief, you're breaching the trust of your team by giving away all their hard work.

Now, if the other crew chief knows something useful that can help your team, then it's only fair to do a mutual trade of information.

Myth: It takes forever to paint a car.

Fiction: This depends on whether or not it's a superspeedway car for Talladega and Daytona, or if it's a downforce car.

If it's a downforce car, the idea is to keep the weight down, so you want to use as little Bondo (body filler) material as possible, and it doesn't have to be a perfect paint job. As long as it fits the templates and is fairly smooth, you're good to go.

When it's a car for Daytona, you really work on fitting the templates and getting the car as smooth as possible, so it can take up to three times as long. Your guys will Bondo the car, fit it to templates, sand it, Bondo it, fit it, sand it, etcetera.

If they have the time to really do it right, they'll paint it and clear coat it until the finish is like glass, so it can really slip through the air. On a downforce car, once it's primered and goes into the paint booth, it takes about a day to get it done. With a superspeedway car, it could be three times that, or more.