CONCORD, N.C. – This weekend, Greg Ives is headed home.
The Bark River, Michigan – or Perronville, Michigan, depending on who you ask – native returns to his home state of Michigan as the crew chief of the No. 88 team.
“In the end I am from that area, and that is all that matters to me,” he smiled discussing the Bark River-Perronville debate.
Regardless of which town claims him, Ives will be looking for his second career win as a crew chief at his home track – Michigan International Speedway.
The first win came as a crew chief for JR Motorsports in the NASCAR XFINITY Series, when a call to stay out and maintain track position earned Regan Smith a trip to Victory Lane.
“That was pretty awesome just because of the fact that on the No. 48 team we had a bunch of fast race cars, and whether it was fuel mileage or a motor failure, something like that, it always seemed like we had the fastest race car but could never cross the line first,” Ives said of his time as an engineer for Jimmie Johnson and the No. 48 team.
“That was always a big one for me to want to win at,” he continued. “I remember staying in the Irish Hills when I was a kid and then going to the racetrack. That was the place of my first NASCAR race and my main memories of actually going to watch racing, whether it was Jeff Gordon or Dale Earnhardt or Dale Jarrett or any of those guys.”
It wasn’t easy to pursue a career in motorsports growing up in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. But Ives’ father and brother found a way to race, and Ives followed in their footsteps. Eventually he got the opportunity to drive late models when he was 16, but a different side of motorsports beckoned.
“My dad kind of told me at a young age if I wanted to race, I had to learn how to work on the car and learn how to set it up myself,” he said, noting that he even worked as a mechanic in his father’s shop. “When I graduated high school and was in college for a couple years and the racing bug was in me, my mom and dad kind of steered me in the direction of pursuing mechanical engineering.”
All of a sudden, Ives -- who had once dreamed of becoming a pediatrician or orthopedic surgeon before “smashing my hands a few times” and realizing that racing rather than surgery was the route for him – found himself a hired as a mechanic with Hendrick Motorsports in 2004.
His racing background, mechanical experience and engineering degree eventually earned him the opportunity to serve as an engineer for the No. 48 team, a position he held until 2012.
“I took a big step at the end of 2012 to leave a successful organization in Hendrick Motorsports, a successful race team in the 48, and kind of go into a land of darkness trying to be a crew chief at JR Motorsports with a guy named Regan Smith,” he explained. “Whether or not that was the right path for me, it proves it three years later.”
Now, Ives returns to Michigan International Speedway as a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series crew chief, back with Hendrick Motorsports and Dale Earnhardt Jr., the sport’s most popular driver for 12 consecutive years.
He can’t help but think back to visiting the track in his Gordon T-shirt, “just a skinny-looking kid watching some racing.”
“It is funny, I can kind of picture myself looking down from the stands in the seats where I was, whether I was across from entry to pit road or entry to Turn 1 – you kind of just remember those times and remember that feeling of seeing the cars go through your turn,” he said. “Now I’m on the other side, so it is awesome.”
He has his first win as a Sprint Cup crew chief under his belt, a trip to Talladega Victory Lane that he called “just another stepping stone.”
If he were to snag win No. 2 at Michigan?
“If we were to go out and win this weekend I would say it would kind of mimic what I felt in 2012 with Regan at Talladega and then we got our second win at Michigan,” Ives said. “That feeling when I won Talladega with Regan was the same as kind of what I felt with the (No.) 88 -- I feel I belong. My hard work, my decision-making, it proves that we can win and then that would probably be the same for Michigan if we were able to do that. It just gives you a good feeling that the hard work you put in is actually being shown on the racetrack.”
Ives said it was hard to fathom reaching his current status growing up in Michigan. But from there, he made it all the way to Concord, North Carolina, and the highest level of NASCAR.
“I didn’t think somebody from that far north would be able to break into a sport that far away,” he said. “It is pretty neat to be here now, looking back.”