If only for one week, Cole Pearn is back in the tower.
With nine cars, and only four open spots in this year’s Daytona 500, Pearn has come out of retirement hoping to lead Martin Truex Jr. into the Great American Race.
“We’ll try to out-qualify some other teams, and hope to make it on speed and then if not, go into the qualifying races Thursday night,” Pearn told CTV News before heading to Daytona.
The Mt. Brydges native has been retired from NASCAR since 2019 when he walked away from the sport after being considered one of the best crew chiefs in the business.
After a series of text messages, he was convinced to come back for one week.
“It seemed like kind of a good situation to go back in one race,” said Pearn. “It’s not too big of a commitment, and being a speedway, it’s definitely a little bit easier.”
He’s leading the number 56 Bass Pro Shops car for the new Tricon Garage Team. The team is being supported by Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR).
In their opening practice they were 31st overall. Truex Jr. spoke to Fox Sports about his reunion with Pearn after more than five years.
“So far it’s been fun. We’ve got a nice cast of characters on our car that have been around a long time. Bunch of really good guys. Got [crew chief] Cole [Pearn] to come back down to do it, so it’s been a lot of fun and hopefully we can have a good night tonight and a good night tomorrow night and have some fun on Sunday.”
“Some things never change. Pick up right where we left off, so it’s been fun so far. Happy I was able to talk him into doing it, hopefully he’s excited about it too. Seems like he is, so it’s been a lot of fun.”
Although Pearn has been away from the track, he’s been still working closely with JGR.
“I work in the aero department. basically, we go the wind tunnel almost every week,” said Pearn.
“We collect all the data and then I take that data from home here, I surface fit it, and create these giant tables, basically, that go into the simulations. It’s real engineering.” The process keeps him in the sport and allows him to work from his home in British Columbia.
It’s there where he and his family own Golden Alpine Holidays, a four-lodge backcountry ski business.
“They helicopter you in and then it’s all ski touring,” said Pearn.
“You wake up and everything you do is ski. People are there for a week at a time. And then it’s all ski turnkey. Walk up everything you ski. yeah. Then people are kind of there at a week at a time. It’s a nice seasonal business where we run four or five months in the winter, and then we shut down for a bit. I get some nice breaks which is the goal to be semi-retired but still be busy a bit.”
Pearn often gets asked if he wants back in the game - I’ve got two kids in hockey and anybody that’s in that knows what that’s like,” joked Pearn.
“That’s a full-time job in itself. I do some racing stuff as well, so that’s just enough to kind of keep my toe in the water a little bit, use that side of my brain.”
He jokes that if he knew he could work in racing while living on a mountain, he probably would have walked away years ago.
But for one week, he’s loving seeing old friends, and trying to rekindle some of that championship magic - however, it is going to require shaking off some rust.
“I’ve got a great team of people that are going to be down there to hopefully make me not look too stupid,” he joked.
