“The Man behind the Wrenches…Gary Crooks”

Originally from Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, one would think that Gary Crooks would have gotten caught up in a traditionally winter sport, but it was racing that has not only been a passion but a career for some time now.

Since the time of working for his father’s Crooks Racing business in 1981, Gary has emerged as one of today’s most sought after crew chiefs in short track racing. From Canada to Florida Crooks has lead drivers to success, wins, and championships all over the map.

In 1991 Gary took over his father’s racing business which specialized in the maintenance, repair, and building of various types of short track race cars. Gary then added a new element to the Crooks Racing business as he himself took his own shot of climbing behind the wheel of an IMCA modified over the next four years capturing many feature wins and various honors such as Rookie of the Year. Soon after, Gary made the decision that working on the cars was the wisest career choice to make and spent the 1995 season with King Racing in Pictou, Nova Scotia building and maintaining the team’s fleet of Nascar Busch North and super late model cars.

Easily being recognized as the go-to-guy for race car knowledge throughout the Maritimes, Gary made the major decision to head south and relocate to the Charlotte, North Carolina area often referred to as “Race City USA”. After spending a year as a fabricator for Leading Edge Race Cars hanging bodies on Nascar Camping World trucks, Nascar Nationwide cars, as well as ARCA Remax cars, Crooks landed his first crew chief job with S&S Motorsports and driver Sean Studer. The team competed full time in the Nascar All-Pro series in 1997 and 1998 and again in 1999 on a part time basis.

In late 1999 Crooks made the switch to Brian Smith Motorsports, another Nascar All-Pro series team. This became the turning point in Gary’s career as he became both crew chief and team manager until 2002 when an up and coming driver named Travis Kittleson nabbed Gary as his crew chief in the ASA National touring series for the next three seasons. To this day Gary still works with Kittleson along with other drivers such as Justin Drawdy, and Lonnie Sommerville. In 2008 Gary guided Nascar Nextel cup driver Regan Smith to victory lane at Canada’s biggest race of the season at Riverside Speedway as part of the Carquest Maritime Pro Stock tour.