Wayne Auton surprised at his promotion to NASCAR Nationwide Series Director – NASCAR news
Wayne Auton who served as the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series director since 1995 claims that he was shocked when Mike Helton, NASCAR’s president, asked him to become director of NASCAR’s Nationwide Series.
The Hickory native expressing his surprise over his promotion said, “I didn’t see that coming.”
According to the 54-year-old Auton, he met with top NASCAR officials Michael Helton, Robin Pemberton, John Darby and Steve O’Donnell with Helton being the president of NASCAR, Pemberton being the vice president of competition, Darby being the director of
Sprint Cup Series and O’Donnell being the senior vice president of racing operations.
At the December 11 meeting, Helton made the new job proposal to Auton.
“Mike asked me if I would like to be the NASCAR Nationwide Series director,” Auton said. “I said ‘wow,’ and he said, ‘I’ll ask again; would you be the Nationwide Series director?’ And I said ‘wow.’ ”
Having accepted his new job responsibilities, Auton has now become the director of Nationwide Series. Auton is quite happy and enthusiastic about his new promotion.
He said, “It’s a great opportunity and I’m glad they have faith in me.” Auton further added, “I go from the No. 3 racing series in motorsports today, and I’ll move to the No. 2 racing circuit in world. It’s a pretty great step.”
After the announcement on Tuesday this week, Auton has replaced Joe Balash, with Balash being promoted to International Competition Liaison. Amongst other duties, it shall be Auton’s responsibility to conduct a technical inspection before a Nationwide Series
race and to determine penalties during a race.
Auton seemed quite content with his achievements as the director of Camping World Truck Series. Now that Auton is the director of Nationwide Series, he intends to accomplish similar goals in his new title as well. Expressing the idea, Auton said, “I’m proud
of what we’ve done with the Truck Series and hope we can do the same for the Nationwide Series.”
Following his promotion, Auton got 120 congratulation texts and phone call between 3 p.m. when the announcement was made until 9 a.m. Wednesday morning. NASCAR has showed its best intentions of goodwill for the sport and hopes to further promote it. Now
it is up to Auton to further improve Nationwide Series and to achieve new milestones.
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