For Glendale native Michael Madill, his journey to working full time in NASCAR is deeply ingrained in his family’s love for racing. After moving to Arizona from Colorado at a young age, Madill grew up watching his uncle race street stock cars and spent his Sunday mornings watching NASCAR races with his grandfather.
After graduating from Cactus High in 2006, Madill attended the Universal Technical Institute for two years. In 2008, he decided to take the next step toward working in professional racing and transferred to the NASCAR Technical Institute.
When Madill was 19, he landed a job through a friend at a transmission shop for NASCAR teams in North Carolina. Madill got his first job working on a NASCAR Cup Series team in 2011 when he was hired by Joe Gibbs Racing.
Fast forward nine years, and Madill is winding down his 12th season in the sport and third as the rear suspension mechanic for the No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports team of William Byron. Although Byron is not competing for a championship this season, Madill is looking forward to NASCAR hosting its championship race in Phoenix in November.
“I love going to Phoenix. I get to spend time with family and friends when I’m not at the track, so that’s always a plus,” Madill said.
Although he’s a huge racing fan, Madill revealed that he never attended a NASCAR race at Phoenix Raceway until he was a freshman in high school, but he is very impressed by the track’s latest renovations.
“I think for the Phoenix fans, that place packs out every year and it’s so cool to see, because just the way the garage area is now, I get to see a lot of people that I’ve known just from racing out there years ago,” Madill said.
This past March during a practice session in Phoenix, he saw a kid in one of the newly-renovated garages wearing a William Byron jacket and a hat with a logo that looked very familiar. After further examination, Madill deemed it was a Cactus High Cobras hat.
“I think I totally made this kid’s day, because I told him I went to high school there and graduated back in ‘06,” Madill said. “You never know who you’re going to come across in the garage and especially when you go home. You get to see a lot of familiar faces and stuff like that. Everyone wants to say ‘Hi’ and cheer for you, it’s pretty cool — and we’ve got a lot of William Byron fans out there.”
When the COVID-19 pandemic shut down racing across the country, Madill turned to his passion for T-shirt design and his personal clothing brand to get him through it.
“During the offseason, I spent a lot of time drawing up some T-shirts and stuff, and during COVID I had actually printed my first batch of shirts,” Madill said. “There’re so many people — especially the drivers — who do their shirts separate from their cars and what not, and this was kind of more to give back to the mechanics.”
Madill named his clothing company the Filthy Mechanic Clothing Company, playing off how the mechanic is usually the filthiest person in the garage.
“It’s been a new adventure for me, like a little side hustle of learning marketing and stuff like that,” Madill said. “You don’t see a lot of guys behind the scenes grinding it out all the time …You take your car to get fixed, but you’re only talking to the white-collared guy at the front of the service station, versus the guy that’s actually getting greasy and working on the car. That was kind of my thought process with it.”
After spending his whole childhood around racing, Madill is right where he wants to be. What started as a dream for Madill has become his everyday reality and he is hoping he can inspire others to follow in his footsteps.
“Don’t let the distance of the country hold you back from chasing what you want,” Madill said. “If you’re a true racer and you want to chase that, don’t let that hold you back. That’s all I needed was somebody to just come say you can be a professional race mechanic and travel the country. If that’s your passion, then go after it.”
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