Ken Clapp Started Out Hanging Around a Race Garage at 12 and Helped Carry NASCAR to the West Coast and Beyond

DANVILLE, Calif. Ken Clapp was about 12 when he started spending his free hours at a service station garage in Walnut Creek where local racers kept their cars. A few races in the fall of 1951 settled the matter. He decided then that he would find a way into the sport, and he spent the next seven decades doing exactly that.

He did not wait long. By 1955 he was working on a pit crew, and his team won NASCAR's Pacific Coast Grand National title that season. Before long he was the youngest crew chief on the West Coast.

After high school he served three years in the U.S. Navy, stationed at Naval Air Station Point Mugu and later aboard the USS Duncan. He has said the discipline of service carried into everything that followed.

The years after the Navy were a long apprenticeship in business. He sold cars, managed his mother's chain of women's apparel stores, promoted NASCAR sanctioned races at Vallejo Speedway in the 1960s, worked on the Sears Point Raceway project as vice president and public relations director, and spent time at Autoweek magazine, where circulation grew during his tenure.

In 1977 NASCAR leadership asked him to take on marketing for the western United States. He also bought into Bob Barkhimer Associates, the promotion company that became California Auto Racing Speedways and at its peak ran races at 19 tracks. On December 16, 1983, during a major executive reorganization in Florida, NASCAR named him vice president of western operations alongside his longtime friend, the former football star Les Richter.

From that post he helped stretch NASCAR well past its Southeastern roots. He arranged for Cup Series dates to move to Sonoma and Phoenix, worked through the early 1990s on the exhibition races that grew into NASCAR's truck series, and spent five years negotiating the races NASCAR held in Japan at Suzuka and Twin Ring Motegi in the late 1990s. He later became NASCAR's senior vice president of marketing development, with responsibility for corporate events and selection of the board for the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

He retired from that role in 1999 but kept working for NASCAR as a consultant for two more decades. In 2005 he helped bring the series to Mexico City's Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, NASCAR's first event in Mexico. He also served eight years on the board of the National Hot Rod Association.

Outside racing he is a senior partner and board member of The Vehicle Recycling Services LLC in the automotive recycling business. He chairs the West Coast Stock Car Motorsports Hall of Fame and has served on the boards of World Wide Technology Raceway, the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America and the National Midget Auto Racing Hall of Fame. Before stepping back from the role, he also sat on the board of the USS Iowa battleship foundation in Los Angeles.

His own record is in three halls of fame: the Motorsports Hall of Fame of the Western United States, the Sonoma Raceway Wall of Fame and the West Coast Stock Car Motorsports Hall of Fame, where he was part of the inaugural class.

In 2022 he told his story in "Sea to Shining Sea: Racing from the Wild West to Daytona," written with racing historian Bones Bourcier. The book runs past 400 pages, including 152 pages of photographs, and every dollar from its sales goes to charity. He also spends time mentoring young people and credits his parents for the honesty and integrity that guided his career.

Dynamo Times recognizes Ken Clapp for more than 70 years in motorsports and for the work that helped turn stock car racing into a national sport with a home in the West.