Brent Cusick, Part 2: From NASCAR Dreams to a Life-Changing Decision
Brent Cusick, Part 2: Selling Everything and the Call from NASCAR Country
This is the second installment of a three-part interview with Brent Cusick, a series dedicated to the
mechanicians—the men and women behind the scenes in motorsports. This episode picks up with Brent's transition from racing his own Spec Truck at Irwindale Speedway to working for a large local race team as a fabricator and mechanic.
Driven by the ambition to become a professional race car mechanic, Brent and his new wife made a major life change: they sold everything and moved to North Carolina—the "epicenter for NASCAR"—so he could attend a crew school with industry connections. Despite facing skepticism from others who judged him because he was from California, Brent's advanced experience and work ethic quickly led him to help teach the class.
This led to his first major break: crewing a car at
Dover, Delaware, where he was asked to spot for a high-speed car and worked closely with experienced engineers and a car chief from Kevin Harvick's Cup car. He then secured his first full-time professional role at
Revolution Racing, the NASCAR diversity program, overseeing their late model shop as a car chief and shop overseer in his early twenties.
Brent describes the intense, unsustainable work schedule—often
18 to 20-hour days—that defined his time there, and the valuable mentorship he received from top-level figures in the industry. The episode concludes with Brent receiving his dream job offer as a car chief at Kyle Busch Motorsports, but a family tragedy—his father-in-law being terminally ill—prompted him and his wife to make the difficult decision to leave North Carolina, sell everything again, and move to Arizona to be with family.
Brent Cusick, Revolution Racing, NASCAR, motorsports, professional mechanic, car chief, crew school, North Carolina racing, Irwindale, late model racing, HPD, mechanicians.
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