He is not a household name to the average race fan.

But with his close ties to Tony Stewart, former longtime IndyCar chief mechanic Chris Paulsen now has roots embedded deep in NASCAR. He owns a business -- C&R Racing -- that has supplied virtually all Cup Series race teams with radiators for nearly the past two decades. He also teamed with Stewart and other partners recently to begin a new motorsports trade show in Indianapolis -- the International Motorsports Industry Show -- that rapidly is developing into one of the biggest and most successful of its kind. Paulsen recently talked with NASCAR.COM about all of the above and more.

Tony Stewart and Chris Paulsen

“

He's got a knack for it, just like he does for driving a race car. He really does. He's got some pretty successful entities going on.

”

-- CHRIS PAULSEN, talking about Tony Stewart the businessman

Q: Let's talk a little bit about the trade show. Could you talk about how and why you founded it with Tony and some of the other guys?

Paulsen: Sure. The trade show [hosted by Performance Racing Industry] was in Indianapolis for seven years, and that definitely was the growth period for that trade show regarding hard-core racing. But they decided they needed more room and he definitely did at the time because we had filled up our convention center at Indy, so they decided to move to Orlando [Fla.]. That was in 2005. When the show went to Orlando, it lost a lot of its luster. The feeling wasn't the same, the people walking the show floors definitely weren't the same. I know for companies like mine at C&R Racing, we just weren't getting our customers there any more. At the same time, companies started dropping out of the show, as well, in Orlando. So that wasn't a good sign, either.

Over a period of years, we tried extremely hard to get that show back to Indianapolis. ... I'm the chairman of the board of our state's Motorsports Trade Association, so I felt personally that I had a responsibility to try to get it back to Indy. When they signed a long-term contract [in Orlando] through 2016, it was evident that show wasn't coming back to Indianapolis. Consequently, we had a big hole to fill there. Myself and Tom Weisenbach -- who is executive director of the Indiana Motorsports Association -- put our heads together and said, 'Hey, I'll bet we could start our own show and be successful with it.' So that's exactly what we did.

Q: How did you get Tony Stewart involved?

Paulsen: We went to work on it, formed up a company -- and right away Tony Stewart got in contact with me and wanted to be a part of that. Tony is very entrepreneurial, and has a lot of different businesses outside of just driving a race car and owning that race team. He saw it as a potential good investment, so we sold him a piece of it, as well, and he became a partner of ours.

We pulled off our first show last December, and it was a big success. We rented all the convention space they had available for the first of this December and filled it all up. For 2010, we're well over double in size and over 99 percent sold out. We just have a couple of miscellaneous 10-by-10 booths left. So we're pretty excited.

Q: But you knew Tony prior to this association, right?

Paulsen: Oh yeah, I've known Tony since he was a kid virtually. And his dad, Nelson, worked for C&R for years. So we've had a relationship with Tony since way back in the day, and a lot of common ground there. ... I watched him take off from a midget sprint-car racer and march all the way to the top of racing very quickly and very successfully.

Q: Has he surprised you through the years with his business acumen?

Paulsen: No question about it. He's got a knack for it, just like he does for driving a race car. He really does. He's got some pretty successful entities going on. And obviously, for as busy as he is, he hires very well, too.

He hired Brett Frood several years ago to manage all his business affairs, and Brett's really, really sharp. He adds detail to Tony's vision, I guess would be the best way to put it. They're a pretty strong combination, the two of them together.

Q: Speaking of a strong combination, you guys do an awful lot at C&R Racing yourselves -- but let's talk a bit about how you became the largest supplier of radiators for Cup cars?

Paulsen: We've been doing the radiators for Cup now for pretty close to 20 years. People within the racing business obviously know who we are and what we do there. To some extent, people think all we do is racing radiators because of our involvement with NASCAR and all the publicity we get related to it. In reality, it's about 20 to 25 percent of our business.

It started out when a good friend of mine, Steve Hmiel, who probably was the only guy I knew at the time in NASCAR. We were totally IndyCar-focused prior to that -- because I had an IndyCar background. But when he was with Jack Roush and Mark Martin, he was the first guy to approach me to build a radiator for him. I did and it worked real well, and all of a sudden I had all of Roush's business. Then I got a call from Richard Childress right after that. He liked what he had seen, and that was back when Dale Earnhardt was winning races and championships, and then we had their business. And it just sort of spread from there.

Within one or two years, we had most of the field covered. We always have competitors come in who might want to try something new, and they sort of come and go. But we bounce anywhere from probably 85 to 90 to 100 percent of the competitors just depending on the period of time. ... If we do our job right, we always get that business back.

Q: So as a former IndyCar guy, do you think Tony Stewart made the right decision to switch to NASCAR years ago?

Paulsen: Well, he made the right choice at the right time. ... If Tony would have chosen the IndyCar path, he would have won many championships and Indy 500s and lots of races by this point. But when he turned to NASCAR, that was a good move on his part. The NASCAR business was growing and really took over from IndyCar racing in a big, big way -- not only took over but far exceeded what IndyCar had ever done from a business case. It was at that time that NASCAR took off on probably the most incredible climb that any professional sport had ever done. Tony was right there at the right place at the right time, and definitely rode that wave right to the top.