Winston Cup driver Hut Stricklin may have made a name for himself on the race track, but if given a chance he could have just as easily become a rock star.

“I always wanted to maybe be a singer, but racing kind of prevailed,” Stricklin said with a laugh.

Stricklin’s not too busy on the track to completely forget about the music, though. He still gets a chance to croon a couple of songs whenever he does karaoke at one of his community parties. Held at his barn at his Rowan County home near Patterson Farms, Stricklin sings country music and Elvis Presley songs at the parties.

He even dresses up as Elvis occasionally.

“I’ve kind of been nominated to do that every year, whether I wanted to or not,” Stricklin joked. “But I dress like an Elvis look-a-like and come out and karaoke to Elvis songs and try to do the moves. But I’m no Elvis in the moving department.”

Stricklin reserves his moves for the track, which is no surprise. He’s been involved in the sport since he was a child working with his racing father back home in Alabama.

“My dad never did it professionally or anything, but he raced on a lot of short tracks and stuff around Alabama and I used to go with him and was more or less like a crew chief to him,” Stricklin explained. “By the time I was 8 or 10 years old I knew what I wanted to do.”

And what he wanted to do was race.

Stricklin got his first chance when he was only 15 years old, racing at a quarter-mile track in Alabama without even having his drivers license yet.

“You didn’t have to have a driver’s license like you do now,” Stricklin explained.

It was while he was racing that Stricklin met his wife Pam, the daughter of former NASCAR driver Donnie Allison, and sister to Ronald, Donald and Kenny Allison, who own Allison Brothers Race Cars on Statesville Boulevard.

Thanks to a friendly competition between Stricklin and her brother, the late Davey Allison, the two met when Stricklin was still just a senior in high school in Alabama.

“We really grew up together," Pam said.

The two have been together for more than 20 years and married for 14 years. During that time, Pam has seen her husband’s career grow.

Stricklin has been involved in racing’s biggest division, the Winston Cup series, since 1989, and Pam helps her husband by operating Hut Stricklin Enterprises.

She also runs a “taxi service” for their children Tabitha “Tabby”, 7, a second-grader at Mount Ulla Elementary School, and Taylor, 11, who goes to West Rowan Middle School.

Taylor is also involved in the football team, the YFL’s West Rowan Warriors.

“That’s another taxi run," Pam joked.

Stricklin has plenty of extra driving to do as well. Even though he moved into the area in 1995 to get closer to the racing scene that dominates North Carolina, the team he races for is located in Richmond, Va.

Which makes it tough to visit his family sometimes.

“It wouldn’t be as bad if I was driving for somebody around the Charlotte area, but this time I’m driving for a team out of Richmond and I’ve been having to spend an awful lot of time up there,” Stricklin said.

Stricklin often leaves on Tuesday morning or even Monday night to go to his shop in Virginia to set up the car for the following week. Plus, racing’s schedule doesn’t exactly allow for many Sundays off.

“It’s rough enough as it is, but it’s a deal where at least what time you get to spend with your kids, it’s at least considered some pretty quality time,” Stricklin said.

When Stricklin does get a chance to relax, he likes to walk around and feed the cows that he owns on his farmland. He even takes the kids for a little bit of fishing on the lake by their house.

And every once in a while he’ll even run a few “laps” around the local skating rink.

But don’t expect Stricklin to display the same skills at the skating rink that he might on the speedway.

“I usually wear out a pair of pants each time I go,”he said with a laugh.