In early December of 2006, Jamie McMurray called Larry Carter and asked him to come to Roush Racing and be his crew chief.

"You want me to be your crew chief?" Carter asked.

"No, I really want Donnie Wingo but he's not available and I think you're the next best thing," is what Carter remembers McMurray saying.

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Now, Larry was flattered. Carter and Wingo are best friends.

"If somebody thinks I'm half the crew chief Donnie Wingo is then I'm happy. He taught me a lot about racing. Donnie and Travis [Carter, former crew chief and Larry's uncle] taught me just about everything I know."

"Jamie wanted to work with me. I wanted to work with him. What better situation could you ask for?"

Eighteen races later McMurray, with the ever-subdued Larry Carter, was back in Victory Lane, celebrating his second career win. (read more)

On Tuesday morning I called now Roush Fenway Racing and asked to talk to Larry Carter. I was politely told that he was in a meeting but I could leave a message on his voicemail. That was fine with me. I never want to bother a crew chief when he is in a meeting. When his office phone rang the voice on the other end said, "Hello?"

"Larry?" I inquired.

"Yes," he replied

"You're supposed to be in a meeting," I said.

"I just got out. What can I do for you?" he asked.

He was just as polite as anyone could possibly be. And why not? On Saturday night his driver won the Pepsi 400 at Daytona. Only thing is, Larry Carter is always that nice; but he never seems to get excited. He was as calm as could be after the win, already thinking about the next race and the next challenge.

"I think that people who know me, know I like to have fun, like to have a good time," Carter said.

"I'm not the best at ... I would rather send somebody else to get the trophy. Sometimes it is just overwhelming, people telling you that you did a good job. Well, Jamie did a good job, and so did all the guys. It's a little strange. I don't feel like I did it. They did it. And that's fine. I like to run the team in a diplomatic fashion, not a dictatorship."

Carter's first day at Roush was Jan. 1, 2007. His agreement with Michael Waltrip Racing expired on Dec. 31. So on Jan. 1, he was at the shop.

"I think three people were there," Carter said.

"And that's OK, it was a holiday. But it was the first day I could legally go in the shop, the first day I could put my hand on the cars that Jamie would be driving. We were behind, in fact, I think we're still a little bit behind. We've never really caught up."

But Saturday night they were out in front, at least at the finish line, by a whopping five one-thousandths of a second. (watch video)

"A lot of guys had a hand in it. We were watching the last 10 laps and our engineer, Derek Stamets, wouldn't look. I kept hitting him on the shoulder telling him he should be watching this. Then with a couple laps to go I hit him on the shoulder again and said, 'This is getting good, you better watch,' but he would not look up so we had some fun with that.

"On the last lap I thought, well, we might win this thing. Then he came off of Turn 4 and I thought, well, we're going to finish second. But we had the perfect pit stall to watch the finish, directly across from the finish line and we could see it. I mean we could see it just as perfect as it could be. I was 99.9 percent certain we had won."

And when you were 100 percent certain?

"When I finally knew for sure, I looked up and everyone was gone," Carter said.

They were all headed for Victory Lane.

And who was the first person Carter ran into on put road? Donnie Wingo.

"He said congratulations and gave me a big hug," Carter said.

To win the Pepsi 400, McMurray had to recover from a penalty for dipping below the yellow "out-of-bounds" line to make a pass. Carter simply told his driver to stay cool and things would be OK.

"I was fine with it. I saw the replay. I don't think NASCAR is trying to hurt you. They just want to make the playing field even. If you've got a decent car the chances of getting the Lucky Dog were good. It would only be a matter of time. The caution came out and the whole thing turned out to be very fortunate. We wanted to change spring rubbers but you would not want to do that under green or even yellow if you were at the front of the field. You would end up at the back and things can happen back there. Since we were already at the back it didn't make any difference so we changed the spring rubbers because the car was too tight. We needed to loosen it up. I think he was loose the rest of the night."

I'll say.

This was the second win for Carter as a crew chief. He won with Rusty Wallace at Martinsville in 2004. His road to No. 2 was about as difficult as McMurray's path on Saturday.

At the end of the 2005 season he was working with Wallace, who was retiring, at Penske Racing. Kurt Busch was coming in. Roger Penske called Carter into his office and said he wanted to make a change. He wanted Carter to stay on and mange the Nextel Cup operation, but Roy McCauley would be the new crew chief. Penske wanted things to be more "engineering-driven." He asked Carter what he thought.

"I thought it was cool that he asked me. I told him it's your race team; if you want to make a change, make it. But I've always been competitive. I like to be at the track, working on the cars. That's the kind of job I would love to have later in my career but right now I want to be a crew chief."

Penske asked Carter to think about it over Christmas but even after the holiday, Larry did not change his mind. He wanted to move on and Penske released him from his contract.

"I was just driving around one day after that and Michael Waltrip called and asked what I was doing. I told him I was waiting for an apple to fall and he said, 'One just hit you in the head.'

"I thought going over there [to Michael Waltrip Racing] would be a good move. Toyota had the potential to do well, and they still do. But there, the expectations were very high. People were looking for immediate results. And the closer you get to the moment when it is time to produce, the greater the pressure gets. I told them immediate success was two years down the road. I tried to tell them we could miss 20 races this year and that was a legitimate possibility. Some of the people involved figured no way, that in a couple of weeks we'll be just like Hendrick [Motorsports]."

That didn't happen. And when McMurray called in early December of 2006, Carter was ready for a new opportunity, one that has already paid off with a win.

"A bunch of people worked for six months on this team to try and win a race, and every time you win one whether it's a week, a month or a year in-between, you put so much time and effort into it that it's a big release when you win. You know the guys you're competing against are the best at what they do in the biggest series that there is, so it's quite an accomplishment."

Now I could hear the passion, and satisfaction, in his voice.

"I just came out of that meeting this morning and told the guys it's time to go to Chicago and do it again, but enjoy it. Enjoy telling your family about it. Enjoy talking about it. Don't forget it.

"Daytona and Indy are the two big places we go to. I thought, man, if I could just win a race as a crew chief. Then after winning one I thought, man, now I need to win at Daytona or Indy."

Carter does not take his cell phone to the pit box.

"I left it in the truck like I do every week. I don't really have a lot to do in tear down so I walked down to the truck to check my phone. I must have had 17 or 18 messages."

Carter and his wife, Tracy, have been married for 19 years. The first message was from her.

"She's about like I am, but this was about as excited as she has been in a while," he said. "She said, 'Nice job.' That was cool."

The next message was from Wallace.

"He said, man, I'm in the Bahamas but I was watching that race. I'm proud of ya. Great job. I'm happy for ya," Carter recalled.

Then came Sunday.

"You make a lot of sacrifices to do this job. We have a lot of young guys working here, and that's good. They don't have a family; they'll work 'til midnight if that's what it takes. I'm not like that. I've been married 19 years. We have an 11 year-old son [Benjamin].

"He thinks I'm the greatest thing in the world. I don't think I am but it's OK that he thinks I am. So we spent Sunday on the lake, riding the jet ski, having as much fun as I could possibly have. Some people might want to go to Cancun for a week. The time I can spend with my son is so important. And coming off winning a race just makes it even better. When I won before he really wasn't old enough to enjoy it. Now he watches and understands. And spending time with him is just as big as winning."

Benjamin had gone to bed before the race ended, but Tracy went and woke him up after it was over to tell him his dad had won. Sunday was the celebration.

Larry Carter was a baseball player as a kid, a first baseman, a contact hitter that, according to Carter might still hold a record or two at Garner Senior High School in North Carolina.

"In 1980, I think I had 96 at-bats and struck out maybe three times. I think that is still the record," Carter said.

I talked to Coach "Doc" Harrell; he is the athletic director at Garner. He wasn't there in 1980 and admits some of the records might be hard to find. So, for now, Carter still holds that record. But at the Garner High Web site, there is his picture, with a link to the stories of his success at Daytona. Oh, and by the way, Coach Harrell would love to hear from Carter.

Carter hides his excitement. It's just the way he is.

"I guess growing up you see lots of stuff going on. Sad people. Happy people. I like to stay on an even keel. I don't show a lot of emotion," Carter said.

But don't mistake that for a lack of intensity.

"The thing is, I'm probably my own worst enemy," he said.

"I don't like to lose. I played high-school baseball and college baseball. When we lost, I use to go behind the dugout and throw up. And that's when there are just two teams. In racing there is only one winner, and look at all the teams. It's so much tougher to win in racing when in most sports you've got a 50-50 shot at it. In racing, when you win, it's almost like a relief.

Larry Carter is still trying to return some of those voice messages from Saturday night.

"It was nice of them to call. To say the things they said. I guess you don't realize until you really get it done, that this Daytona thing is a little bigger than most," he said.

Yeah, just a little.

And for Larry Carter, just another one for the record books.

The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.