He is a three-time National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) champion. He has 14 national event titles and 15 divisional victories. He owns a local engine shop owner, has been inducted into the International Drag Racing Hall of Fame and the Sampson County Sports Hall of Fame. And he is a two-time NHRA Driver of the Year.
What is there that Clinton native Bobby Warren hasn’t accomplished?
That list doesn’t even include his induction into the North Carolina Motorsports Hall of Fame or the fact that he was named NHRA Sportsman Mechanic of the Year in 1975 and 1978. The latter honor came the same year he earned his second NHRA Driver of the Year award.
To truly understand how Warren’s legendary career began, you have to travel back to 1957.
“Me and Earl Smith, who was a local here, went to Daytona Beach that year to the NASCAR race,” Warren recalled of how his interest in drag racing began. “After we got down to that race, we found out that they were drag racing in NHRA on the airstrip at Flagler Beach. We left Daytona and went down to Flagler Beach. He (Smith) had a new ‘57 Chevrolet that we were riding in. We entered that car, and I drove it in that race. That’s what kind of got me hooked.”
Oddly enough, before that trip to Flagler Beach, Warren never envisioned racing as a career.
“There wasn’t plans for having a career at that time,” he admitted. “We just kept messing with it, and it naturally evolved into a career when I started running major races under NHRA.”
Once fully committed, Warren quickly established himself in NHRA’s Sportsman division. In 1970, he captured his first World Finals championship in Dallas, Texas, defeating Bob Burkitt for the Stock Eliminator title.
“I thought I was doing something then,” Warren laughed recalling what winning his first championship felt like. “But then it came again in ’74 and then again in ’78.”
Even while building his racing career, Warren continued farming tobacco through the early 1970s. After winning his second world championship in 1974, he used his winnings to build the home where he still lives today.
As part of the organization’s 75th anniversary celebration, Warren was recognized as one of NHRA’s Top 50 Sportsman drivers.
“It gives you a good feeling,” he said of the accolade. “It’s an honor that I’m right in with the top 50 over the years since NHRA was formed in 1951, and I started in 1957.”
The 92-year-old Warren continued competing well into his later years, racing as recently as a decade ago while in his 80s. In 2004, at age 69, he won the Thunder Valley Nationals in Bristol, Tenn., becoming one of the oldest drivers ever to win an NHRA national event. A year later, he was inducted into the Sampson County Sports Hall of Fame.
“You talk to a lot of people that come up and know you from it (the Hall of Fame) that I can’t put a name on them. I don’t know them,” Warren said. “Even now, people come in here and remember everything that happened over 50 years ago, the biggest parts of it (his career). Of course, they’re mostly older people,” he added with a laugh.
A family thing
The Warren family was built for racing.
Both of Warren’s sons, Joey and Jeff, along with his grandchildren, Brooke and Joel, have competed in the sport. Brooke’s son, Langdon, has also begun racing in the junior ranks, making the Warrens a four-generation racing family. Jeff began driving when he was just 14 years old at Fayetteville Dragway.
“To me, he’s just my dad,” Jeff said. “But he was doing things that other people didn’t do, and at that time nobody won as much as he was winning. It was always kind of normal for me. What he did amazed other people more than it did me because I just grew up with it.”
Joey shared a similar perspective.
“It wasn’t much different because that’s something I’ve always been used to,” he said. “But it was a fun experience getting to go to the races. I was going to races by the time I was old enough to walk, and then when I was old enough, I started racing myself. Now I’ve got a son-in-law that does it, too. That’s where my extra time was spent — in the shop and going to races on the weekends.”
Warren Engines, the business Bobby founded in 1985 and now operates alongside his sons, has allowed the family to remain closely connected to the sport while serving customers throughout the region.
“All of us are working because of the racing business,” Jeff said. “At one time, we were farmers, obviously, before racing ever started. But the performance side of the business, the engine building — it all came from racing.”
According to Joey, however, success in racing extends far beyond what fans see at the track.
“It’s something that’s hard to explain to people unless you’ve actually been involved in it,” he said. “It’s not like a stick-and-ball sport. A lot of people don’t realize everything that’s involved — the time, the sacrifice, the effort and the expense that goes into it.”
When it comes to time and dedication, few have embodied those qualities quite like Warren. He devoted nearly five decades to the sport, winning three NHRA world championships and, at age 69, accomplishing what few drivers ever have by capturing a national event against competitors decades younger.
As a member of four halls of fame, Warren’s legacy extends well beyond the drag strip. He is, most will say, one of Sampson County’s greatest sporting legends.