From his spot atop the pit box of driver William Byron’s number 24 Chevrolet, crew chief Rudy Fugle sits at the top of NASCAR’s Cup Series. Together, the pair won their second straight Daytona 500 in February, and Byron currently leads the series in points. They’ve been together at Hendrick Motorsports since 2021, winning 13 races and finishing in the top 10 in every season. Though they have yet to win a championship, there’s a sense that it’s only a matter of time.
Nothing could have seemed more unlikely a dozen years ago, when Fugle, who’s now 41, started working for Kyle Busch Motorsports in the Camping World Truck Series. A native of Livonia, N.Y., he’d entered the sport with no connections, and slowly worked his way up the ranks of several organizations before getting his chance to be a crew chief at KBM in 2013.
