LAS VEGAS -- It started, simply enough, with his grandfather's automotive repair shop. That was when he first dirtied his hands with grease and oil, first learned the language of engines and chassis, first became smitten with the secrets it took to make cars run well and go fast. He never quite shook it, not through all those years of playing football in high school, not while he was wrestling in college, not when he had door after door slammed on him and had to mow grass at a golf course to pay the rent. The desire was always there, simmering but persistent, and in time it propelled Drew Blickensderfer to Victory Lane at the Daytona 500.

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He's come out of nowhere, it seems, this former Nationwide Series crew chief who has guided Matt Kenseth to wins in the first two events of this Sprint Cup season. But in reality, the native of Decatur, Ill., has been working toward this point for a very long time. Before he was 10 he was tinkering in his late grandfather's garage. In high school he often sneaked off to drag strips or dirt tracks. After graduation he bought a modified car and raced it in the summertime. And when concussions ended an All-American wrestling career at the University of Indiana, he took the leap -- with $300 to his name, he loaded everything into a U-Haul and moved to Charlotte, N.C., where he began what seemed the impossible task of searching for a job in NASCAR.

"Two years ago, a friend of our family's asked me how I got into this deal, and I kind of told the story. It was the first time I'd told it in a long time, and I thought, I'm a pretty lucky guy, you know?" Blickensderfer said at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. "I had $300 bucks in my account. I never asked my parents for money when I was down here. They would have given it to me, I just never did. After two weeks I thought, if I don't find a job, I've got to pay rent again, what am I going to do? Lucky thing is, I was mowing grass at a country club, and could get off at 2 [p.m.] when I was done with that, shower and go knock on doors."

He's come a long way. After a victory at Daytona to open the season and another at Auto Club Speedway last week, Blickensderfer and Kenseth are bidding to make NASCAR history by becoming the first team to sweep the year's first three events. Many in the garage are still struggling to pronounce the new crew chief's name. But no one who knows him is surprised by his immediate success.

“

Drew is a really, really cool guy, for a number of reasons. He's probably one of the more competitive guys I've ever been around. He's real savvy on a lot of subjects, not just the race car, but on people and motivating and stuff like that.

”

-- CARL EDWARDS

"Drew is a really, really cool guy, for a number of reasons," said Carl Edwards, who worked with Blickensderfer on the Nationwide circuit last year. "He's a real nice person. He's probably one of the more competitive guys I've ever been around. He's a lot like Bob Osborne in that respect. He just wants to win more than anything. And he's got street smarts. He's real savvy on a lot of subjects, not just the race car, but on people and motivating and stuff like that. I think Drew's success is no accident. He's going to be successful. Right now he's batting 1.000, which is amazing. Hopefully he can keep it up. He's a really good guy. I'm proud to call him a friend."

Motivation is just what Kenseth's No. 17 team needed after last year, when the driver suffered through his first winless campaign since his second Cup season in 2001. When Kenseth's longtime crew chief Robbie Reiser was promoted to general manager at Roush Fenway Racing, lead engineer Chip Bolin stepped up to take his place. But Bolin proved better suited at managing data than people, and last December Kenseth -- taking control of team personnel matters for the first time -- met with Bolin and the two determined that the engineer would be more comfortable back in his old position. Then Kenseth called the person he next wanted sitting on top of his pit box.

"He usually just texts me, so I knew he had something to say, calling on the phone," Blickensderfer said. "We talked for a long time about who he wanted, what he wanted, why he wanted me, what Chip's idea was, what Jack [Roush's] idea was. We had a great conversation. It really was a perfect fit for me to come in, being someone who hasn't dealt with the [new car], to come into a team that's already established, a Chase regular. Everybody's still going to stay there, I'm just putting in my influence and some of my opinions and some leadership. It couldn't have worked out any better."

Blickensderfer saw it coming. Late last season, Roush asked the Nationwide crew chief to start sticking around on Sundays for the Cup events. Since Blickensderfer knew Bolin and Kenseth well, he'd often wind up watching from the No. 17 pit box. Little did he know that Kenseth was also watching him.

"I was really comfortable with Drew. He was kind of my personal selection. That's who I wanted to get in there, somebody young, somebody who hasn't been a Cup crew chief before. I wanted to get somebody in there who hasn't been there and done that and seen that. They work that much harder and they're that much more loyal and everything," Kenseth said.

"We worked together a couple of years in the Nationwide Series, and I think we learned some things from each other. I liked working with him right away in the Nationwide Series, and actually when we started, I said that he was probably the next guy in the company that had the potential to move up when there was an opening. Now, when I said that, I didn't think that would be for us. I didn't think we would have the opening. But I knew that he probably was the guy with the most potential over there to move up, and had the leadership abilities, the work ethic, and all that stuff to step up if he wanted to."

And just like that, Blickensderfer became a crew chief not only at NASCAR's premier level, but a crew chief for one of the sport's best drivers and top teams. His success, though, is far from overnight. He's been preparing for this one job his entire life, really, with various people and experiences instilling within him the management and leadership skills necessary to handle the more pressure-packed position in NASCAR. There were his coaches in high school, former Indiana basketball coach Bobby Knight, and his father-in law, former Truck Series champion Ron Hornaday. But it begins with his parents -- father Jack, head basketball coach at top-ranked Meridian High School in Illinois, and mother Laura, a motivational speaker in the health care field.

“

There's a time and a place where you kick someone in the butt and point your finger at him, and there's a time and a place where you put your arm around him. I've been fortunate enough to have good instructors kind of tell me when to do it.

”

-- DREW BLICKENSDERFER

"She's kind of been an influence on me -- not as much the speaking part as, knowing that certain people require certain things. And my dad's always been a fiery coach who at the end of the day will do anything in the world for you, but in the heat of the moment, he's going to tell you what he thinks. That's kind of how I've been taught. It took me a while to realize with all my good coaches, when they swear at you and scream at you, point their finger at you and want to kick you in the butt, that's their way of trying to motivate you. But at the end of the day, you can always count on them to be there for you. That's how I try to portray myself to these guys," Blickensderfer said, referring to his team.

"I've been around a setting where they've taught me how to deal with people. I think I've been very fortunate at the Big 10 level to have Bobby Knight 10 feet away from me all the time when I was in school. To have the football coaches and wrestling coaches I had in high school teach me there's a time and a place. I got mad today at something that was done, and I told him, 'I can yell at you and cuss you right now, but we're going to find out how to get it better.' There's a time and a place where you kick someone in the butt and point your finger at him, and there's a time and a place where you put your arm around him. I've been fortunate enough to have good instructors kind of tell me when to do it."

But when it came time to take the big gamble, to pack up everything and move to North Carolina and chase the dream, he was on his own. Throughout his wrestling career at Indiana, he had kept one hand in motorsports, finding time to race his modified car despite the training demands placed upon him as an elite college athlete. Despite his success wrestling in 126- and 134-pound weight classes, two knee surgeries and a few concussions had taken their toll. So after his junior season, he made the decision to move south. He finished college at a smaller school, worked at a golf course, and looked for a job in racing. Nine long months passed before Bobby Hillin finally gave him one. It was mostly office work, but it was something.

"Bobby put his arm around me," Blickensderfer said. "I didn't have anybody in Charlotte. I used to go to his house for dinner, used to hang out with his family, used to do activities on weekends when we weren't racing with Bobby's family. Bobby really put his arm around me and took care of me those first two years when I was getting my foot in the door, and really gave me an opportunity to do whatever I wanted. He really needed someone to do his accounting, to take care of his accounts receivable, accounts payable. But it also gave me an opportunity to go to shock school, to build shocks for him, to change tires for him, gave me an opportunity to go into the shop at 5 o'clock and do anything he needed help with. So Bobby was real influential in getting my foot in the door."

When Hillin's shop closed, Blickensderfer hooked on with Jim Smith's Ultra Motorsports, where he worked on Ted Musgrave's truck and changed tires on the Cup car. His wrestling background paid off, turning him into a tire changer good enough to draw the attention of Dale Earnhardt Inc., and later Roush Racing. Last season on the Nationwide tour, he just missed winning a championship with Edwards. Since joining the No. 17 team, he's brought a level of energy and enthusiasm that seemed to be missing last year.

"Even when we were just starting in the shop preparing our cars, you could just tell the morale was boosted already," Kenseth said. "It just had a better feeling, just felt like there was more energy there, more enthusiasm there, everybody was happier when they were at work. It just felt good. It just felt like it was the right move. We've always had a good group of guys here, but you've got to have the whole thing. I just felt that was the spark that was going to help us be more competitive and help us work better."

And it almost never happened. The first interview Blickensderfer had after moving to Charlotte was with Michael Kranefuss, the former owner of the No. 12 Cup car. Kranefuss had a family emergency and turned the interview over to his general manager, who Blickensderfer said lectured him about how he had no plan and was never going to make it in racing. The future crew chief walked out of the office shattered, wondering if he had made the right decision.

He knows now.

"That's motivated me from that day forward," he said, standing outside Kenseth's No. 17 truck, remembering the interview. "Whenever I see that guy and whenever I think of that time, I think, 'OK, that guy told me I couldn't do it. I'll show him.' That's been motivation for me."