In 1982, a 19-year-old Bobby took a job sweeping the floors at Hagan Racing. "I was working on a race team, making money during the day and moonlighting by working on my late model stock car at night," Bobby said." When Terry left Hagan Racing after the 1986 season to race for Junior Johnson, Bobby was let go. "Hagan's people didn't think it would be a good idea Terry's brother, and father, too, to be working on someone else's car and we got fired. I thought since I've got all this time on my hands, I might as well work on my own car and run some more races," Bobby said.
So while working for car builder Jay Hedgecock in 1987, Bobby tried racing again, winning the track championship at Caraway Speedway. In 1990, Bobby moved to the Busch Series, running the entire schedule and finished fourth in the series standings. A year later Bobby pushed harder scoring his first career Busch Series victory at Bristol and going on to win the series championship. Bobby missed back-to-back Busch Series titles by just three points in 1992, as Joe Nemechek took the title in the closest points race in Busch Series history.
Bobby finally joined the Cup series fulltime in 1993, running the No. 22 Ford for Bill Davis Racing. Finishing second in the rookie of the year battle with Jeff Gordon, Bobby did capture his first Bud Pole Award at Richmond in December. His career really began to flourish in 1994, when he joined Joe Gibbs Racing. Bobby took his first Cup win that season in the Coca-Cola 600 and swept both races at Michigan en route to a 10th-place finish in the season points.
Finally it all came together in 2000, when Bobby captured the NASCAR title with four wins and 24 top-10 finishes in 34 starts. To this day, however, Bobby says his biggest break in racing was when he was fired from Hagan Racing in 1986.
