Stanton Barrett’s approach to living is full-on, with little regard to the dangers he experiences almost daily. He is one of the few people who may actually be able to say he got into stock car racing because it was safer than his last job.
For the past decade, Stanton Barrett has led a double life as a racecar driver in North Carolina, and Hollywood stuntman and director. On the west coast, Barrett owns and operates Stanton Barrett Enterprises, Inc., a production company that produces national commercials and films.
Stanton is best known for his amazing stunt work, and more recently as an emerging director and producer. Want someone to jump a car 80 feet over a dry river bed, or fall 100 ft from a building, or perhaps jump a motorcycle from building to building in downtown Los Angeles, well Stanton’s your guy. Genetics and environment were certainly both key contributors to his extraordinary talents and accomplishments. Stanton comes from an amazing lineage of pro athletes.
Stanton’s grandfather, Dave McCoy, served as a coach for the US Ski Team and founded Mammoth Mountain, the largest ski resort in the US. They still motocross in the mountains together. His mother, Penny McCoy, was an Olympic and US Ski Team member. At the age of 15, Penny became the youngest woman to ever win a World Cup medal for the U.S. World Cup Ski Team, and was considered the nation’s top skier in world cup racing. They still ski and ride motorcycles together.
Stanton’s father, Stan Barrett, was one of Hollywood’s most respected stuntmen appearing in over two hundred movie and television productions. His global fame came when he was the first person to break the speed of sound on land, in 1979 in the infamous Budweiser Rocket Car that sped him to over 739 mph (1,330 km/hr) at Mach 1.01. Stan then went on to be an accomplished NASCAR driver with 19 Winston (Sprint) Cup series races between 1980 and 1990, posting two top ten finishes.
Paul Newman, a very close friend of his fathers’ and Stanton’s godfather has also had a big influence on his life and drive to excel plus to give back to others.
Stanton Barrett is a driven professional stuntman and has worked in nearly 150 motion pictures and television series. He has performed a variety of dangerous stunts, stunt doubling and coordinating for many of Hollywood’s finest actors in films such as, Spiderman 1, 2, and 3, The Dukes of Hazard, Jurassic Park 2, and 3, Rat Race, Blade, Extreme & Volcano, Batman, Jumanji, The Nutty Professor, Most Wanted, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, and many more.
Stanton is also an exciting media personality, and has been profiled on such well known shows as, MTV Japan, Men’s Vogue, GQ Magazine, NASCAR Angels, Tyra Banks’ America’s Next Top Model, ABC News’ NASCAR in Primetime, and many more.
Stanton is highly respected as one of the very few independent NASCAR team owners who is also the team driver. After personally directing his team’s race preparations, he routinely drives from 0 to 60 in about 2.4 seconds, then races for hours at speeds up to 200 mph, within fragile inches of others. That’s living motor sports full-on.
Stanton Barrett is also a highly competitive racer. After a successful career in go-karts with an amazing 21 wins in 28 starts, Barrett made his NASCAR Busch (Nationwide) Series debut in 1992 at Oxford Plains Speedway where he earned the outside pole in his very first race.
Stanton has run a limited schedule in the Busch (Nationwide) Series since then, with a best finish of fifth at Atlanta Motor Speedway, and eight top ten finishes.
In 1993 Stanton raced a late model at Concord where he earned a win, 9 top-three finishes and 9 poles in 13 races. He also has four ARCA starts with three top-five finishes, and fifteen Winston (Sprint) Cup starts.
In 1999, he ran several races in the Channellock Chevy for Darwin Oordt but was soon replaced by Butch Miller. He finished out the year for Steve Coulter, competing in the final three races of the season for him. 1999 was also the year he made his Winston (Sprint) Cup debut, at the Las Vegas 400 for Junie Donlavey, starting 42nd and finished 30th. Barrett also declared for NASCAR Winston (Sprint) Cup Rookie of the Year that year, but fell well short of the required number of races need to qualify.
He joined Tri-Star Motorsports for the 2000 Daytona 500 with SportCut.com as a sponsor. He attempted the Bud Shootout qualifier for drivers who ran the fastest in 2nd-round-qualifying in 1999, but crashed, and did not make the 500.
After running several Busch (Nationwide) Series races as an owner/driver in 2002, Barrett got his first shot at a quality ride in 2003, when he signed with Jack Roush's Busch (Nationwide) series team and won two poles, but sponsorship woes forced the team to close down.
In 2004, Barrett returned to Nextel (Sprint) Cup driving the #94 car owned by Dave Watson.
For 2005, Barrett attempted another run at NASCAR Winston (Sprint) Cup Rookie of the Year with #92 Chevy for Front Row Motorsports, but was soon released. He also started this year in the Busch (Nationwide) Series in the underfunded #36 Pontiac, and was in 20th in points, but was released and signed with #40 car at Fitz-Bradshaw Racing. Following his release from FRM, he started his own team using cars from The Sadler Brothers Racing Team.
Stanton is helping introduce NASCAR motor racing in Asia where more and more fans and corporate sponsors are starting to follow and support this exciting motor sport that is already #1 in North America.
Stanton has and continues to be a strong and willing supporter of many charitable organizations. His personal goal is to create the “4Caring” non-profit organization (www.4Caring.org) whose primary mission is “To reach out and help comfort those dealing with a personal health crisis.”
Stanton was recently first introduced to competitive bobsled racing when he appeared on Geoff Bodine’s Bobsled Challenge TV show, and after just two seasons of limited training he was recognized as the top amateur in international competition
http://www.allamericanspeakers.com/speakers/Stanton-Barrett/2762
http://www.interushracing.com/en/drivers/index.html
http://www.nascar.com/drivers/dps/sbarrett00/bg/bio.html
