Where the rubber meets the test track: Kevin Fuller pairs his passions for racing and research
A 35-year career at Michelin put Fuller ‘90 in the driver’s seat countless times. He found his way to the test track through racing and an education in engineering.
As an undergraduate student studying mechanical engineering at Virginia Tech, Kevin Fuller ‘90 found his way into racing while working in an industrial co-op program.
One of Fuller’s co-workers there, Phil Good, had been a crew member for NASCAR legend Buddy Arrington. After leaving the crew, Good had made it into several races of his own in cars formerly owned by Arrington. He was getting ready for a Winston Cup race when the young Fuller came into the picture.
Always ready to get under the hood, Fuller helped Good get his car ready for racing and accompanied him to the race in Richmond. “In those days, you could work on a car in your backyard garage, put it on an open trailer, and get into a NASCAR Cup series race,” Fuller said.
After that race, Fuller felt motivated to do his own racing. At the time, new options were popping up around the country for amateur drivers, one of which particularly interested Fuller. “Enduro” races brought low-cost cars onto a short track for more than 100 laps, awarding money to the driver who both endured to the end and passed the rest of the pack. Good helped Fuller build a car for an enduro race, and Fuller got behind the wheel while he was still a student.
At Virginia Tech, Fuller completed five co-ops in the automotive industry. Each of them steered him toward research and development in automotive engineering, a subject for which he found he had both talent and interest. But at the same time, Fuller’s love for racing continued to grow. How could he combine his two passions? After Fuller graduated in 1990, he decided to work from the bottom up, focusing on tires.
On the job, on the track
Fresh from his experiences in both automotive engineering and racing during co-ops, Fuller met a recruiter for tire manufacturer Michelin at a career fair just before he graduated. The connection started a journey that would continue for more than 35 years. The design of tires, how they make contact with the road, and the dynamics that impact their performance were all subjects right in line with the education Fuller received in Blacksburg. To explore them, Fuller moved south.
“I discovered that not only was the Michelin research and development center in upstate South Carolina, but the Michelin proving grounds were also in the area,” Fuller said. “I went to check it out and I was really impressed with the company and the people I met there. I couldn’t wait to start my career at Michelin.”
Fuller started working in tire wear research for Michelin in 1990. His work included using vehicle design analysis to estimate the rate at which tires would wear, taking things like vehicle kinematics and compliances into account. Essentially, he was making tires and cars work well together.
“This was really exciting work for a young engineer,” Fuller said. “Not only was I working for the largest tire company in the world, I was also working closely with the Big Three car companies to help them understand how their vehicle designs affected tire wear.”
The business of tires is integral to racing, and Fuller’s love of the sport remained with him even as he was comparing wear patterns on tires. He volunteered on NASCAR pit crews during the early 1990s, working 30 weekends a year at the cup races while working full time for Michelin. This work put Fuller in the orbit of future NASCAR Hall of Fame driver Ricky Rudd, who started a new team in 1994 and asked Fuller to join it.
Fuller developed software to optimize the team’s pit strategy based on the tire’s lap time fall off, the car’s fuel mileage, and the time it took the team to change tires.
Within the next few years, Fuller found his way back into the driver’s seat.
In 1996, he stepped away from the NASCAR pits and changed his weekend spot to get behind the wheel. This meant buying himself another race car, which he entered in local short track races in South Carolina on the weekends. Over nine seasons, Fuller won many races and even a couple championships.
When a crash damaged his car beyond repair in 2004, Fuller decided to step away from racing. He and his wife were raising a family, sponsorships were getting harder to find, and keeping a car in optimal running condition was expensive.
Fuller certainly didn’t become a pure pedestrian, though. In 2000, while still racing on the weekends, he took a new job with Michelin: test driver.
This is a test
Fuller had been part of the Michelin team for a decade when he moved from the lab to the test track. Now, instead of competing against other drivers, he was hitting the gas to keep more drivers safe. He wasn’t just testing tires at high speeds. Some days were focused on the noise and comfort provided by the tires in everyday driving, while others put him in a pickup truck or a minivan plowing through the snow in Michigan or New Zealand to test the tire’s snow traction. The job took him to test tracks in France, Japan, Spain, China, Brazil, and across the United States.
Now in his third decade with Michelin, Fuller spends less time testing and more time teaching. He teaches Michelin’s tire dealers and customers about tire performance and tire safety. He also teaches defensive driving, car control, and performance driving to test drivers from car and truck makers.
Fuller also administers driving skills examinations as part of a certification offered by the Society of Automotive Engineers and is a member of a working committee that developed the SAE J3300 Driving Skills Certification, a standard for certifying the driving skill levels of professional drivers. That job has moved him from the driver’s to the passenger’s seat.
“A lot of people ask me why I have been doing this job for so long,” Fuller said. “I always tell them the same thing. This is my dream job, and it never gets old. Early on, it was more about the performance driving, the speed, competition. Today, I’m more passionate about tire safety, driver training, and sharing what I’ve learned over my many years in the industry. My focus definitely started to change when I began teaching my daughter how to drive.”