The leadership at NASCAR has recently chosen Brent Dewar as the newest president of the racing league. Dewar, the former Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the organization, took over the position from Mike Helton, who was promoted to Vice Chairman. He is only the fourth president in NASCAR’s history.
Dewar has what many would consider a strange path to the NASCAR presidency. Born in western Canada to a family that was not into cars in the least bit, he became enthralled with motorsports after watching a special on race cars on morning television.
He was taken to a local drag race a short while later, and he immediately fell in love with the sport in general and Corvettes in particular.
Dewar’s love of cars and racing continued well into his college years. When recruiters for General Motors came to his school he jumped at the opportunity. After working at GM for over 30 years, and helping to launch the sixth generation Corvette, Dewar was tapped by NASCAR to become its COO in 2013.
He was already well known within the automotive industry for his work at GM before he was picked to be the COO of the organization. Once picked, it was hard to determine who was more excited – NASCAR for obtaining a top rate executive in the automotive industry, or Dewar himself for landing the job of his dreams.
Under Dewar’s leadership as COO, NASCAR was able to undergo a huge series of reforms. Nearly everything was reformed; from the kinds of fuel additives to getting Monster Energy Drinks to be a sponsor of the NASCAR premier series for 2017. He has helped to coordinate between tracks and race teams to upgrade and bring them fully into the 21st century.
Additionally, because of his extensive automotive background working at GM, he has been able to earn the trust of the three primary NASCAR race car manufacturers: Toyota, Chevrolet and Ford.
In order to upgrade and revamp NASCAR and it’s brand image, Dewar needed all three companies on board to plan and design a modern, standardized car which would conform to the new rules and standards he helped to implement.
Despite the fact that all of these companies want to beat one another both on the track and in the dealerships, Dewar was able to get these companies to put aside their differences and come together to agree on new race car standards.
As president, Dewar is expected to continue trying to make changes to the sport for the benefit of all. This includes opening up NASCAR to other car manufacturers besides Ford, Chevrolet, and Toyota. He also wants to change up the race schedule by 2018.
With the enormity of the tasks he has before him, many wonder if Dewar is up for the job. But with the love he has for the sport coupled with the invaluable experience he has in the automotive industry, it is surely safe to say that Dewar will have a lot of surprises in store for both new and diehard fans alike.
