HOWARD HUMPY WHEELER, 86, DIES

By Speed Sport staff – August 21, 2025

(Photos courtesy Speed Sport)

Howard Augustine “Humpy” Wheeler Junior, a revolutionary figurehead in motorsports and the longtime president and general manager at Charlotte Motor Speedway, died peacefully of natural causes yesterday surrounded by loving family. He was 86.

Born Oct. 23, 1938, in Belmont, NC. to the late H.A. Wheeler Senior and Kathleen Louise Dobbins, Wheeler had a lifelong love affair with cars and racing. At the age of 11, he hitchhiked to his first auto racing event at Charlotte Speedway, not far from where Charlotte-Douglas International Airport is today. Two years later, he founded Belmont’s first-ever bicycle repair shop, which he used to help promote local bicycle races.

“I actually promoted my first race when I was 13,” Wheeler told the Roanoke Times in 1990. “A Little Rascals type of a deal, but I would give prizes and stuff. It was a unique business. They’d tear their bicycles up over there, see. They’d take ’em home to try and let their daddies fix ’em. They couldn’t, so they’d bring ’em in to me to put back together. Had to make a living some way back then.”

Before he established himself as one of NASCAR’s greatest promoters, Wheeler considered a career in professional boxing. Despite aspirations of joining the U.S. Olympic Boxing team in 1960, a career record of 40-2 and a Golden Gloves championship at the age of 17, Wheeler hung up his gloves when he realized his weight class could find him sharing the ring with boxing greats like Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier. He was inducted into the Carolinas Boxing Hall of Fame in 1992.

When he was 18, Wheeler spent a summer at Darlington Raceway, where he was mentored by Russ Catlin, a respected publicist.

“It was kind of a rat’s nest bunch of people like Richard Petty, Cale Yarborough and Bobby Allison. We were all the same age group and we knew each other while we were coming up,” Wheeler told sportswriter Randy King of The Roanoke Times in 1990.

“Nobody ever thought that anybody would amount to much.”

Wheeler played football at the University of South Carolina until a serious back injury brought his playing career to an end. He later earned a double major in journalism and political science in 1961.

After graduation, he returned to Charlotte where he worked with local CBS television station WBTV and simultaneously began promoting local auto races at grassroots tracks in nearby Gastonia and Monroe. After brief stints with Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, the City of Charlotte and the Ervin Company, Wheeler was hired by businessman and fellow racing promoter Bruton Smith in the fall of 1975. Smith, who owned Charlotte Motor Speedway and its parent company, Speedway Motorsports, named Wheeler track president the following year, beginning a career that spanned more than three decades at one of NASCAR’s premier venues.

“Bruton and I shared the same philosophy,” Wheeler shared with King. “Racing must be the greatest sport in the world because we’ve dusted people to death… we’ve given them terrible rest rooms… they sit out in the rain, snow, sleet and hail… lousy parking…traffic jams. But they kept coming back, and they kept multiplying. What would ever happen if you ever did it right?”

In only his second year at CMS, Wheeler diligently worked with Smith to bring sports car racer Janet Guthrie to the 1976 World 600 where she became the first woman to qualify for a race at a NASCAR superspeedway. Guthrie would finish 15th ahead of future Hall of Famers Dale Earnhardt and Bill Elliott following a whirlwind week of publicity orchestrated by Wheeler.

A transformative figure, Wheeler guided the famed 1.5-mile facility through periods of unprecedented growth and expansion. Under his management – and in an effort to keep NASCAR’s All-Star Race rooted at Charlotte Motor Speedway – Wheeler supervised the installation of a first-of-its-kind lighting system, illuminating the superspeedway for the sport’s first-ever night race in 1992. Following the success of that event, dubbed “One Hot Night,” many racetracks followed suit and night racing soon became a more regular part of the schedule.

It was the latest in the speedway’s long history of fabulous firsts that Wheeler and Smith spearheaded, including overseeing the construction of a fine-dining restaurant overlooking Charlotte Motor Speedway, adding VIP suites and luxury condominiums.

“We did a lot of things to try to make it better for the fans, and he did a lot of that,” Smith said after Wheeler’s CMS retirement in 2008.

Wheeler was at the helm when the speedway inked the first ever major naming-rights agreement for a motorsports facility, establishing an 11-year partnership to call the venue Lowe’s Motor Speedway. With an eye toward making racing affordable and groom future racing stars, Wheeler was also instrumental in the creation of U.S. Legend Cars International, a subsidiary of Speedway Motorsports, which manufactures, sells and delivers small-scale grassroots race cars worldwide.

Despite his contributions across many areas of motorsports, his flamboyant and flashy pre-race stunts and shows were, perhaps, what endeared him most to fans. From hosting boxing matches and a three-ring circus in the infield to recreating the Battle of Grenada, sending stunt drivers flying through the air or introducing fans to Robosaurus, a metal-mashing robot, Wheeler’s flair for showmanship earned him the nickname the “P.T. Barnum of motorsports.”

“I don’t know what it was, but I just saw something in racing,” he told The Roanoke Times. “There was spectacle waiting to happen. And that was always in my head.”

Wheeler’s larger-than-life persona extended far beyond motorsports. He published his autobiography, Growing Up NASCAR in 2010. Wheeler’s voice was immortalized in the 2006 Pixar animated movie Cars, where he played the role of Tex, a 1975 Cadillac that owned the fictional company Dinoco. He later reprised the role in the franchise’s Cars 3 reboot. He also appeared on the third season of the series American Pickers when he donated items from his personal collection to the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

For his contributions to motorsports, Wheeler was inducted into the National Motorsports Press Association and North Carolina Sports Hall of Fames in 2004, the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 2006 and the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 2009. He was awarded the Achievement in Motorsports Tribute Award from the North Carolina Motorsports Industry in 2013 and received an honorary doctorate from Belmont Abbey College in 2019. Earlier this year, the NASCAR Hall of Fame announced Wheeler as the Landmark Award for Outstanding Contributions to NASCAR recipient as part of the 2026 NASCAR Hall of Fame class.

“His passion was to ensure that when each fan left the track, they felt as if they had been a part of a happening,” NASCAR Hall of Famer Richard Petty said, according to a 2008 Yahoo Sports article. “Under his direction, Charlotte Motor Speedway became the gold standard by which all other racetracks were built and in how they were measured.”

Survivors include his wife of 63 years, Pat; their three children, Patti Wheeler (Leo Hindery), Tracy Hardy and Trip Wheeler (Jacqui); 4 grandchildren, Jackson Marchant, Adele Marchant, Austin Hardy (Donna), Adam Hardy and one great-grandchild Augusta Hardy plus sisters, Angie Wheeler (Janet Jones) and Mary Plexico (Lowry).

Information regarding funeral arrangements will be released at a later date.

In lieu of flowers, the family has requested donations be made in memory of Humpy Wheeler Jr. to the Belmont Abbey College Motorsports Management Program, which Wheeler was instrumental in launching more than 20 years ago to prepare young professionals for business, management and marketing roles across the industry.

Belmont Abbey College Motorsport Management Program

Office of College Relations

100 Belmont-Mt. Holly Road

Belmont, N.C. 28012