NASCAR: An In-Depth Look At The New Crew Chiefs In The Chase

USA Today Sports

Cole Pern – Crew Chief for Martin Truex, Jr. at Furniture Row Racing

Cole Pern graduated with distinction from the University of Waterloo in 2006 with a degree in mechanical engineering. He was on the Dean’s list in 2004.  His racing experience began with a job at McColl Racing Enterprises, a custom builder of race and high-performance cars in Canada for the summer of 2003 while still in school. The next two summers of 2004 and 2005 saw Cole work as a product development engineer at auto-parts manufacturer Dana-Long Corporation and as a test engineer at MTD Products, Inc.   During all of these years, Cole was also the owner of Pern Motorsports from 1999 until 2007. During this time, he also became acquainted with Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada in 2005 and worked as a project engineer, focusing on improving bottlenecks in their production facilities. Needless to say, Cole wears many hats simultaneously, as most crew chiefs often do!

Cole was then hired in November of 2007 by Richard Childress Racing (RCR,) where he was a race engineer for Kevin Harvick and the No.  29 team for two seasons. He began at Furniture Row Racing, an affiliated team to RCR in 2010 as Head Race Engineer, a role he held until being named crew chief in December of 2014 for the No. 78 team.

Pern and the No. 78 team earned their 2015 Chase berth by winning the Axalta “We Paint Winners” 400 from Pocono in June of 2015.