He worked and flew with Greg Biffle. But as many in NASCAR knew, 'Craig was family.'

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — For whatever reason, Craig Wadsworth loved Snapchat.

It’s where he documented his life: the pork chops and mac and cheese he cooked, the boat rides he took, the dune buggies he hauled from Charlotte to the West Coast. It was all there — in a string of six-second “movies” directed by and starring Wadsworth, who was living a life he loved with people he considered family.

Kenny Wallace, back home in St. Louis, loved keeping up with Wadsworth through those videos. He always knew what his friend was doing. He thought he always would.

Then Wallace’s heart nearly stopped. Time blurred.

“When I heard that the plane had wrecked, I immediately went to Snapchat, and oh my God,” Wallace said in an interview with The Charlotte Observer on Friday. “I started going through, and that last ‘Snap’ was one that just stopped my whole day.”

The image Wallace is referring to is one of Wadsworth taxiing on the Statesville Regional Airport tarmac, in a Cessna. It showed the final moments before the aircraft took off for Florida and turned around out of desperation and crashed into the grass — the few moments before the wreck that left behind orange flames and a billow of black smoke and claimed seven lives, including that of Greg Biffle, the NASCAR driver-turned-humanitarian whose efforts off the racetrack made him a North Carolina hero.

“That’s when I knew Craig was on it,” Wallace said. “And I just …“ He paused again. “It was devastating.”

In truth, Wallace didn’t need Snapchat to tell him. The former NASCAR Cup Series driver knew that Wadsworth — who worked for Wallace from 2008 to 2015, driving his motor home for six of them to and from the racetrack, handling everything without a fuss — was on that plane if the Biffles were. That meant Greg, but also his wife, Cristina; daughter, Emma; and son, Ryder. Wadsworth was Greg Biffle’s “right-hand man.”

Wadsworth, 64, worked for the 19-time Cup Series race winner, sure. He was a “jack-of-all-trades kind of guy,” friends confirm. He helped on all of Greg’s humanitarian missions. He organized things. He fixed things. He regularly cooked meals. But make no mistake: “Craig was family,” Wallace said.

“He was unforgettable,” Wallace said. “He touched so many. I’m sure you can call Mikey Waltrip up (another driver Wadsworth worked for), and he’d tell you the same thing.”

Wallace then shrugged, trying to find the words: “I just can’t believe this.”

Who was Craig Wadsworth?

Traci Hultzapple understood why she saw those headlines. In a previous life, she spent nearly two decades as a public relations manager for several NASCAR teams. But the director of development of The NASCAR Foundation still didn’t like seeing them.

“He was ‘an assistant,’ ” Hultzapple said, of how Wadsworth was referred to in some stories Thursday. “And it’s like, ‘No, he has a name. Everybody on there has a name.’ Everyone on there loved each other, and were tight.”

Friday, Hultzapple and her best friend, Paula Kendrach, set out to ensure everyone remembered Wadsworth’s name — and to help make known who Wadsworth was: someone who “has the most genuine and purest of hearts.”

Wadsworth grew up in Anderson, Calif., population just under 12,000, in Shasta County in the northern part of the state. He graduated from Anderson High School in 1981. After that, Wadsworth went to a trade school in Arizona before relocating to Charlotte and finding a home in NASCAR.

Wadsworth met Paula Kendrach in the early 1990s. He worked on four different race teams with Paula’s father and brother over the years and had several titles throughout — from truck driver to pit crew member. He joined Wallace’s team in 2008, when the Cup driver moved to Furniture Row Racing, and stuck with him until Wallace retired and moved back to his St. Louis hometown in 2015. Then he joined Michael Waltrip Racing and took the role as the teams’ chef.

In 2020, Wadsworth’s last project in the stock car racing world was working in Superstar Racing Experience (SRX), the Tony Stewart-founded racing series, where he drove motor coaches, trailers, haulers or anything else that needed driving, Kendrach said.

“I considered him a big brother,” said Kendrach, who now works outside of NASCAR. “He just had the biggest heart.”

Hultzapple, meanwhile, met Wadsworth when he was with Michael Waltrip Racing. She described the NASCAR community as a “family” — a group that you spend 36 weekends out of the year with, Thursday through Sunday, a group that “did and does everything together.”

“That’s the one thing I’m sure Kenny explained to you: that once you get involved in the sport, you become a traveling family,” Hultzapple said. “We all take care of each other.”

And Wadsworth was at the center of it. When Hultzapple moved on from Michael Waltrip Racing and got a job with the NASCAR Foundation, Wadsworth helped move her to Daytona Beach.

Wadsworth had that glowing reputation. He earned it before he started working for Wallace, driving and managing his motor home that took the Wallaces from racetrack to racetrack over the course of Wallace’s career that spanned from 1988 to 2015. But Wadsworth’s reputation certainly grew under Wallace.

Ask the 62-year-old driver about what Wadsworth means to him, and he’ll say a simple maxim: “He didn’t just drive our motor coach. He was a friend.” Wallace can offer details that will never leave him — about the trophy case Wadsworth built for all of his fire suits and helmets Wallace wanted to preserve; about the ways in which Wadsworth made the motor coach feel like a home, with freshly cut flowers and meals and every effort imaginable to ensure that Wallace’s wife, Kim, was happy while she traveled with Wallace for half the year.

“He made our life wonderful,” Wallace said. “I’ll never forget my wife saying this: Once we got through the holidays and started getting in January, Kim would say, ‘I can’t wait to get into our motor coach.’ Because he spoiled us.”

‘Everybody needs a Craig’

Hultzapple estimates that for the last two years of his life, Wadsworth was basically under the Biffles’ wing. He became “a family member to them, wherever they went.” Hultzapple knows this because she kept up with him on Snapchat, yes. But also because every morning, without fail, Wadsworth would text in a group chat, keeping his chosen family up to date.

Hultzapple then thought about a particular text from him.

“This is one of the last group chats I had between Craig, Cristina, myself and another friend that’s in racing,” Hultzapple said. “Craig sent a sweatshirt design that said, ‘Everybody needs a Craig.’ Because whatever we need, we can always call on Craig to help us.”

Kendrach and Hultzapple can still see Wadsworth, they said.

“I just think when you see him, it’s his laugh and smile, and how he was just always so good to everybody, you know?” Kendrach said. “Such a loyal friend to so many in the sport. He loved NASCAR. It was his life.”

Hultzapple added: “He loved entertaining at his home, and he loved to see people laughing and smiling. … It was like his purpose. And he didn’t have to do all of that. We loved him because he was a genuine, good-hearted person.”

After the sun went down on that blurry Thursday, Hultzapple received a call from someone who wondered who Wadsworth’s closest family was, and where they lived. The answer is that his mother, Joyce Wadsworth, survived him at 89 and lives in California.

But there’s another truth, too, as Hultzapple responded:

“We’re his next of kin.”