Noffsinger won the CRA championship in 1986 and ’87.
“During my championship years, it was $4,000 to win a weekly race and the big shows paid 10 grand,” recalled Noffsinger. “My car owners gave me 50 percent because I worked on the car, too, so I was doing OK. Then in the ’80s, I put a sponsorship deal together with Mike Curb for the Gardner team and found I was good at that, too.
“That led me to North Carolina in 1988, when Curb and Cary Agajanian gave me a chance to run the NASCAR Cup Series,” Noffsinger explained. “I’d only been on asphalt a few times and when we went to Atlanta and ran 14th in my first race, I was on top of the world. It was the first time I ever drove a car with a clutch and I qualified one spot ahead of Richard Petty. I was pumped.
“But before we’d run 20 races, our sponsor, Sunoco, left,” he continued. “At first they were good with developing a rookie, but then they decided they wanted to run up front. By then I missed racing four or five times a week, so I went back to sprints with Jack Gardner. I put my NASCAR knowledge to use and built some safer seats instead of the fiberglass seats with three dzus fasteners holding them in.
“I’d always had an interest in safer race cars, because in 1983 my younger brother, Todd, was killed at Ascot. Somebody got upside down and he avoided it but flipped in the process. Somebody else came in hot and didn’t see him and hit him in the side. He’s the reason I didn’t run into things. His deal taught me to look way ahead, not right off the front bumper like a lot of guys. I never watched my front tires after that.”
By the 1990s, CRA was in a slump, precipitating yet another cross-country trek.
“I decided to give NASCAR another shot, figuring if I could get on a team, I might get another ride eventually,” he explained. “But by then, I was 32 and Jeff Gordon had everyone looking for 16-year-olds. So I worked with Jake Elder, Barry Dodson and Ivan Baldwin during the week and flew to the races with Darrell Waltrip on the weekend to spot for him.
“Then I worked with the Richard Petty Driving Experience off and on for 15 years, training all their instructors. And I crew chiefed at Sabco and made a Truck Series team into a Cup Series team, working with Robby Gordon, Jay Sauter and Wally Dallenbach. But after three years of that, I went back to Petty part time and started my own Silver Crown team because I really missed open-wheel racing.”
Now Noffsinger is flat out, preparing USAC midgets for Frank Manafort Racing and winged sprint cars for owner Wade Brown and driver Scott Hunter. C.J. Leary is handling the FMR No. 76 this season.