Dickerson has come a long way on the spotter stand

Jeff Dickerson is one of the more interesting behind-the-scenes operators in NASCAR these days, working as an agent (his company, Motorsports Management International, prefers to call him "a manager") and also as Kyle Busch's spotter during races.

He talked about how he came to become a spotter in the Cup Series and the challenges of it

Question: How do you even become a spotter?

Dickerson: I was spotting in the [Indy Racing League]. And in those days, there were only like 10 IRL races. So I would come over on some weekends in NASCAR and spot for Jason Leffler or Johnny Sauter, who were clients of ours at MMI. I got my first big Cup break with PPI [Motorsports] and [driver] Rickey Craven in 2004. That was my first Cup gig. Craven turned into Bobby [Hamilton] Jr. at the end of that year. So without Cal Wells and Mike Beam [of PPI], I'm not even in Cup.

Cal is still a great friend. I love messing with him and giving him [crap]. But seriously, without him, maybe none of this happens. Certainly he could have held me to my contract at PPI, and he didn't. He let me go to go do Kyle's stuff.

Q: And when was that exactly?

Dickerson: It was around the beginning of '05. Kyle was a rookie [in Cup] and for whatever reason they were saying Kyle's not happy and the team's not happy with their spotter. It didn't really occur to me to do anything, but me and Alan Gustafson [Busch's crew chief at the time] ran into each other in the garage in Charlotte at a test or something. That was the first time that we had talked and he asked if I would be interested—and I said sure, but I have this contract and Cal had given me my chance. I went to Cal and said, 'Hey, this is the opportunity that I've got.' Cal pretty much said to me, 'I know this is going to hurt my team. But this is an opportunity you can't pass up.'

It was Kyle and it was Hendrick, and you could see what they were doing with that 5 team. They were putting a bunch of young guys together to go try and win a championship within three years. I was like, 'That'll be great. Where do I sign up?'

Q: So you didn't even known Kyle at that point?

Dickerson: Alan hired me. Kyle and I had never worked together; we had never even met each other. I walked into the hauler at Sonoma at 9 in the morning before Cup practice and was like, 'Hey, I'm Jeff. I guess I'm your new spotter.' And he's like, 'OK, I'm Kyle. I'm the driver. Talk to you on the radio, man. I'll see you later.'

Q: Were there some rough spots at first, or did the two of you hit it off right away after that?

Dickerson: We had some chemistry, but we hit everything. I probably still wasn't ready for prime time—and he was still trying to figure out how to drive a Cup car. Alan stuck with both of us. There were a few stern talking-to's along the way. That's kind of what put me and Kyle kind of together, because we developed a bunker mentality. We'd get called into the hauler and it'd be like, 'What are you two kids doing?' And I'd be like, 'Uh, I don't know. I thought we were clear.' And there were times when Kyle said, 'Yeah, you know, I thought I could make it into that hole.'

Now it looks pretty and now it looks like we're a real good team. But that rookie year, we won two races somehow, right? But you know, we had our tough moments.

Q: Do you remember some of the worst moments?

Dickerson: Looking back, I had no idea what I was doing. I totally screwed up our first Chase race in Loudon (in 2006). And my rookie year, I just didn't know any better. You go from this side of the grid to that side of the grid and it's a different race. There are a lot more unwritten rules—and for both of us, it was not the [Nationwide] Series. It was prime time. In some cases, you're bouncing off your teammates; in others you're bouncing off some of the other heroes that are running. … It was so easy in those days to just get spun up, for both me and Kyle. I remember one time at Bristol when Alan pretty much was just yelling at us to go find our happy place, to get our [crap] together.

When you look back at it, Bristol summer race of '05, that was it. Alan had sat us down and said, 'Get your [crap] together.' And you know what? We had a horrible race. Kyle and Alan were fighting on the radio and not talking to each other, and pretty much I was the only voice for the rest of the night. But I tell you what: we all thought about it—and the next week, we won. Then we won again at Phoenix and we all thought, 'We can do this.' All it took was us winning that first race. Alan was like, 'Now we know we can do it. Let's just do it.' Then we made the Chase in '06 and '07. There was a lot of torn-up stuff at the beginning, but now we know what we're doing most of the time.

Q: Is there more pressure now?

Dickerson: No, there was more pressure then. To me, I was trying to figure out if I belonged here—and I think Kyle was sort of fighting the same thing. So there was more pressure then. And if you look at it also in the sense of that team, we were all just a group of misfits they had put together. It wasn't like now. I mean, I knew I could spot when I got to JGR [Joe Gibbs Racing, where he and Busch moved in 2008]. It was more like you just didn't want to let the team down. Now it's more like I know I can do it, we all know Kyle is a great driver and we've got a great team. We just gotta make sure we don't hit anything.

Q: Has it changed the dynamics of spotting now that you're also representing Kyle on the business end of his career?

Dickerson: They're really two separate things. But sometimes maybe in a Nationwide or a Truck Series race, under caution or something, he may say, 'Hey, remind me to talk to you about this, or that.' But never during a Cup race.