Marshall Carlson recently was promoted to president and chief operating officer at Hendrick Motorsports, filling a dual position that had remained vacant for almost six years.

The last person to hold the title was John Hendrick, owner Rick Hendrick's late brother who was among those killed in a team plane crash in October of 2004. Carlson, previously executive vice president and general manager at the organization, talked about the promotion and much more with NASCAR.COM.

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What's cool is that Hendrick Motorsports is really a crew chief-led organization. The way we look at it, the driver and the crew chief -- that pair -- is like the tip of the spear.

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-- MARSHALL CARLSON

Question: Can you talk a little bit about how you got into the business, basically sweeping floors at first as a college intern at Hendrick Motorsports?

Carlson: Actually, one summer I got the opportunity -- and I don't know if you'd call it an internship as much as part-time work -- but it gave me a lot of exposure to the organization. I was working in the chassis shop as a clean-up guy, and I got to work with the guys who built the chassis, built the engines. It was not too long before that when they started the in-house engine program. So it was a pretty neat group of people that they pulled together to do that, and I really enjoyed them. So much of the foundation of the race car is the chassis, so just being around those guys and seeing how it came about was a real good experience for me.

During that summer, I got to know Dennis Connor, who was starting the truck team that Hendrick Motorsports was going to field. ... He was starting to put a program together in a tiny little metal building next to the chassis shop with kind of a skeleton crew. So in the evenings and on the weekends, I kind of hung out with them and got to see how a race team comes together.

Q: So you were still in college at the time?

Carlson: Yes. Then I went back for my last year of college. I had helped Dennis with some stuff that summer, and GM had a program where they needed to have data on this Truck Series and all the new tracks it was going to run on. They needed to have data acquisition engineers so GM could support the Truck Series, things that they would be able to look at that would help all the Chevy teams. There was an opening to do that within the Hendrick organization. So Dennis called me and I got to go and do some training for that.

When I graduated [in 1996 with a degree in business from the University of North Carolina] I came on full-time and traveled with the Truck Series team for two seasons, and we had a blast. We won a championship and I really enjoyed that experience. That was a real good foundation for me, to see how a traveling team works and how things come together.

Q: Did you get to know Ricky Hendrick, Rick's son (who also passed away in the 2004 team plane crash), around that time as well?

Carlson: I had known Ricky for a few years. During that time, he was racing in the Legends series over at Charlotte Motor Speedway. There were a bunch of guys at Hendrick Motorsports, myself included, and we would go over and help him and just have fun as much as anything.

Maybe a year or two years later, he started racing late-model stock cars around the Southeast. At that point, I had come off the road with the truck team and was working in supporting the vehicle engineering group here -- and on weekends, I was able to travel with Ricky and that team to help those guys out at the track. I actually spotted for Ricky.

That was a blast. That was one of the coolest times I've ever had professionally because it was neat to see somebody like Ricky who was so appreciative of everyone around him. You could see him kind of coming on and learning and performing.

Q: You went to college at North Carolina. Are you still a big Tar Heel fan?

Carlson: Yeah, of course. You've gotta be. People ask me that, and I think it's because Tar Heel fans are pretty fervent fans. I try to keep up with all of it the best that I can -- but in this sport, we've got so much going on ourselves. Sometimes my buddies will be like, 'Hey, did you see the game? What do you think about this?' I sometimes get caught off-guard because I was paying more attention to the guys with 800-horsepower race cars instead of running backs and power forwards. (Continued)