Pearn engineers Sprint to NASCAR
Fri, October 31, 2008
The 26-year-old from Mt. Brydges is living his dream with Richard Childress Racing

By JIM CRESSMAN

There were times when an 18-year-old Cole Pearn would daydream that his trips around Delaware Speedway were actually being done on a grander scale -- in NASCAR.

Then reality would set in.

But little did he realize that eight years later it actually would be a reality, only in a different sense.

Pearn, who turned 26 last week, has gone from being Delaware's youngest late model champion to one of the youngest team engineers in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, working for Richard Childress Racing on the No. 29 Shell-Pennzoil Chevrolet Impala SS of Kevin Harvick.

Pearn, from Mt. Brydges and son of former Delaware hobby car legend Ron (Peaches) Pearn, set his mind to something like this when he enrolled in engineering at Waterloo. But setting one's mind and then actually achieving it, well . . .

"It was just a matter of finally bridging the link between everything I've done as far as school and my practical racing knowledge," Pearn said yesterday from Texas Motor Speedway where the team is preparing for Sunday's Dickies 500. It's the eighth of 10 races in The Chase for the Championship, which Jimmie Johnson has all but clinched his record-tying third straight. Harvick is fifth in points.

After graduating and working with Toyota on getting the Woodstock plant up and running, Pearn quit last fall and also put driving on the shelf.

Off he went to North Carolina, NASCAR's heartland, with resume in hand and began knocking on doors.

"I wanted to do something where I would be able to go racing full-time and I decided now was the time I needed to do that."

Fifteen doors later he was hired by Gillett Evernham Motorsports, which fields Kasey Kahne and Elliott Sadler in the Cup series.

"I was home for Christmas and planned to start with them in January, when RCR called and said they got the go-ahead to hire somebody. I took it because I thought things were a little bit more solid for the future with them."

His initial job was in racing development, working with Harvick's team in the shop near Winston-Salem, N.C.

"I worked hard and started to find ways I could contribute on the car with setup stuff. I eventually made myself important enough for them to start bringing me to the race track every week."

That began with the Aug. 3 race at Pocono and since then he's been official team engineer, working beside Harvick's long-time crew chief Todd Berrier at their pit spot.

"Most of my work (at the track) is done in practice before qualifying, then Saturday practice. That's where it's the busiest. Sunday is pretty calm and a long drawn out day. By the time the race starts you're ready to go home."

He flies to the track on Thursday afternoon and returns home Sunday night. The lead-up is when the majority of his work is done.

"That's when you're wide open," Pearn said of the two days a week he spends testing at the shop on what's called the seven-post machine.

"We also test at tracks a lot but the seven-post machine is seven hydraulic actuators we mount the car on. When we go testing at a track we have data all over the car and we put it on this machine and re-create the road profile and actually simulate running the car at that track.

"So when we unload at Texas, we basically unload a car that's been testing at Texas for two days but we've been doing it at the shop."

After Sunday, there are two more races in The Chase and then work begins immediately on 2009. "We test in Iowa on the Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday right after Homestead (the final race on Nov. 16). Daytona testing is the first week of January and Feb. 7 is Daytona (500) qualifying."

Pearn said there are days he wakes up for work and almost has to pinch himself.

"I honestly didn't think at the beginning of the year I would be in the position I'm in now. But it was something in my mind that I could totally do or I wouldn't have tried it.

"I made a commitment to myself I was going to do this and I've stayed pretty much true to that. This is one of the biggest reasons I went into engineering. I was getting frustrated with my own racing just from the sense I didn't have the time or the means to put in the effort I wanted to.

"I know it's one thing to say you want to do something, but to flip the switch and go and do it? Sometimes it is crazy that I've been able to do it, but there's a lot more I want to do."