His children still learning about modest ‘Fast Freddie’ Lorenzen’s NASCAR racing legacy

Amanda Lorenzen Gardstrom was born in 1977, five years after her dad retired from NASCAR. She didn’t know him as Fast Freddie, Fearless Freddy, Golden Boy or the Elmhurst Express. She knew Fred Lorenzen as a top realtor for RE/MAX.

What else did you know?

“He’s one of the nicest guys that I’ve ever met,” says Gardstrom, 37. “I’d see my dad treat a checkout lady in the grocery store the same way he treats the president of the bank. He treats them like they’re the most important person in the room.”

That quality should get Lorenzen into somebody’s hall of fame. But it’s his talent, creativity and persistence that on Friday will get him into NASCAR’s.

Lorenzen, 80, will make the trip to Charlotte from his suburban Chicago assisted living center. He uses a wheelchair and has dementia; short-term memory is a challenge. But he remembers races in beautiful detail, and he realizes the significance of his induction. He’ll be accompanied by a party of seven.

“When he talks about it, his eyes light up,” says Gardstrom, who lives in Elmhurst, the Chicago suburb in which her father grew up and to which, after NASCAR, returned. “And that’s a great thing.”

Gardstrom and her younger brother Chris knew little about their father’s pre-real estate life.

“He didn’t talk about it,” she says. “He’s humble.”

NASCAR was something on the TV Sunday afternoons.

“Racing was always on in the background, blaring in the background of our lives,” says Gardstrom. “I didn’t know until six, seven, eight years ago when I decided to take on his legacy.”

He never pointed to the TV and said, “I’d whip that guy.” She had no idea how good he was.

Veteran fans can tell her. They remember Lorenzen as one of the best drivers in NASCAR history. From 1961-67 he won 26 races. To put that in perspective, Hall of Fame inductees Richard Petty won 21 during that period and David Pearson eight. Lorenzen’s winning percentage (16.4 percent) ranks fifth all-time. He was the first driver to win more than $100,000 in a year. And because his team chose to participate only in the bigger races, he never ran a full season and started only 158 races.

Lorenzen was an outsider, a Midwesterner in a Southern sport. He was good looking – you can’t be the Golden Boy if you’re not – and treated fans wonderfully. He was Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson first.

Lorenzen retired in 1967, returned to racing in 1970 and retired in ’72.

He gave away a lot of his trophies but kept a few, among them the Harley J. Earl Trophy he received for winning the 1965 Daytona 500. Three feet tall and sporting figurines, the trophy is NASCAR’s most prestigious.

The trophies were housed in a room with the pool table, and as a child Gardstrom broke the 500 Trophy, knocking a wing right off it.

What did your dad do?

“Nothing,” Gardstrom says.

You didn’t get yelled at, grounded, anything?

“No,” she says.

She put the wing in a jar with the other broken trophy pieces.

Waddell Wilson, what would your dad do if you broke his Daytona 500 trophy?

“Whoa,” says Wilson. It’s not something a grown man wants to think about.

Wilson, who would attain fame as an engine builder and crew chief, built engines as a young man for Lorenzen’s team, Holman Moody.

Ford gave the crew uniforms to wear on race day but during the week they rented uniforms, white shirts and white pants. Lorenzen rented the same uniform and joined Wilson beneath the hood. The engine builder learned from the driver.

“He had such a feel for a race car and an engine,” says Wilson.

He had a feel for customers, too. After a race at a fan-friendly track the bleachers would empty. As Wilson prepared the car for whatever came next, fans would go to Lorenzen, and Lorenzen’s crew became startlingly big. Wilson once went to load the car and found a fan sitting in it. He’d have to devise ways to get around them.

“Uh, Fred, we need to go,” he’d say.

Gardstrom has heard some of the stories about her father. She’s heard and read some of the quotes. She knows the numbers.

On Friday, she’ll feel it.

“As a daughter, it’s unbelievable,” Gardstrom says. “In the Midwest, you don’t hear as much about racing as you do down there. I’ll cry. I want Dad to know that we know. The secret’s out.”

He’ll be treated like he’s the most important person in the room.

This story was originally published January 24, 2015 at 2:32 PM.