Dave Nelson has spent 40 years dedicated to motorsport safety. He has been a constant at Simpson Performance Products from the Bill Simpson era through to Holley’s current stewardship of the brand and is known in the motorsports world for his dedication to customers and his passion for safety. Currently serving as Operations Manager for the fire suit division, he was inducted into the MPMC Hall of Fame during the 2025 PRI Show in Indianapolis.

“We are always chasing the latest technologies and materials,” says Nelson. “Developing the functions of the suit to make the driver comfortable has really fueled my passion over the years. When somebody walks away from a wrecked race car, or a drag car that’s on fire, that’s the best feeling in the world. You feel like everybody did their job – from the safety team, to whomever manufactured the car and the safety equipment. You feel like you made a difference.”

Growing up in Torrance, California, Nelson’s interest in cars was encouraged by his mechanically inclined father, who owned and worked on classic cars. He passed away when Nelson was only 17 but was a lasting influence on Dave’s life and subsequent career. He says, “My dad always told me, if you’re going to do something, do it right the first time. So that’s the measure I always try to take.”

A 1965 Volkswagen had come from his father with the promise of, “If it breaks, you fix it.” When the engine blew not long after he’d obtained his driver’s license, Nelson and his uncle rebuilt the motor. “That really got me into cars,” he reflects. “From there I was always fascinated about them, souping them up, making them look nice, starting from a $500 Volkswagen and making it look like a $3,000 Volkswagen!” His passion for Volkswagens lives on in his current restoration project, a 1955 Porsche 356 ‘Pre-A’ Continental.

Nelson racing his Street Stock Chevelle at Ascot.

The noise from racing at the local dirt track, Ascot Park, could be heard at the Nelson family home every Friday and Saturday night. Dave enjoyed watching the racing and promised himself that he would one day take part. The dream came to fruition when, in his early-20s, he built a Street Stock Chevelle to race on the oval, “besides the little bit of drag racing I did behind an industrial complex with my friends, or at a local eighth mile track,” he laughs. “But I thought stock cars on dirt was an interesting type of racing: getting the car on the edge, sideways and semi-out of control, but in control. I raced Street Stocks and Late Models for about 10 years, until the track closed in 1990.

“I wanted to go on and do more, but I had a young family,” he continues. “Fortunately, by then I had a job at Simpson, and that kept the fire burning. I was still involved with drivers and teams – at a grassroots level and at a professional level – and I grew with them as they progressed in their racing careers. That’s one reason why I have stayed at Simpson for so long.”

A job in Gasoline Alley

Several years working in plumbing in the early-1980s had come to an end when Nelson decided to make racing more than a hobby. A four-decade career at Simpson began when he was picking up Volkswagen parts from a speed shop in Gasoline Alley, the small industrial complex that Bill Simpson had built in Torrance. “I was telling one of the guys at the counter, man, I really want to get into something car related,” he recalls. “He said, ‘why don’t you go over to Simpson and see if they’re hiring?’ So I did. I filled out an application and they asked if I knew anything about racing. All they had was a driver job and a warehouse job. They said I could do both.”

Nelson began in the warehouse, assembling seat belts and packing them in boxes. He would also collect newly made helmets from a building down the street and bring them back for shipping. Soon, he moved to a position in shipping – a one-person department at the time.

Dave Nelson (left) pictured in 1998 with long-time Simpson colleagues, Miguel Avendano (Suit production supervisor), Hyme Hagen (Suit operations manager), and Steve Johnson (Suit production manager).

Regular interaction with the sales office eventually led to a job selling safety products, where Nelson remained until 1997, latterly as Customer Service Manager and Sales Manager, working closely with colleagues on the production floor.

The work brought Nelson into contact with many leading drivers in many different motorsports disciplines, including Bill Auberlen, Kenny Bernstein, John Force, Robby Gordon, Robert Hight, Jimmie Johnson, Tom McEwen, and Tony Pedregon. Diligence was key to Nelson’s successful sales career, according to another longtime customer, P.J. Jones.

“Dave would go out of his way to ensure you got what you needed,” says the Rolex 24 winner and former Champ Car, NASCAR and off-road racer. “Like him, I grew up in Torrance. My brother and I were down at Simpson all the time with our helmets and gear, even when we were racing midgets and sprint cars. Dave was so accommodating and so very diligent in his job, and fun to work with. Here was a guy you could call and talk to a little bit. He’d always give you the straight skinny of what was going on!

“He's able to talk to the customers and understand what they need, and he knows the product,” he continues. “His heart is in it – he believes in the product – and he is very diligent in calling you back or making sure that everything goes through like it’s supposed to, and you get what you need. That’s important because as racers, we need things on a time frame or we need to know when we’re going to get our suit or a helmet, because we’ve got to go to the next race. He’s also a racer – he loves the racing part of it – and I think that’s so important for us race drivers when we’re trying to look after our equipment.”

“Dave and I were born and raised in the same area of SoCal,” adds two-time NHRA Funny Car champion, Tony Pedregon. “We hung out when we were younger and did whatever guys in their early-20s would do, including racing speedway-midgets at Carlsbad a couple of times.

“During my racing career, all my equipment was Simpson. Dave has always known the business and through all the evolution of the helmets, suits and the rest of the safety equipment, Dave was there. He was always looking at different materials, trying to make the suit safer and more comfortable, as well as lighter, so that we weren’t as restricted in the car. He would get our feedback, and he would give us his input. I know that Dave had a lot to do with the advancements in the equipment that we were using when I was racing.”

“As I started to form relationships with our customers and our drivers, you wanted them to come home safe to their family and race another day,” Nelson explains. “That really drove my passion to try to continue to develop a fire suit that has the utmost protection and still make it light enough and comfortable enough for the driver to wear and race inside of a race car.”

Dedicated to safety

From selling safety equipment, he next moved into manufacturing and product development. When Simpson moved most of its business to New Braunfels, Texas, Nelson wanted to remain close to his roots in California. After a short stint in the Simpson retail store in Gasoline Alley, Bill Simpson called him into his office. “He asked whether I wanted a job or if I wanted a career,” he says. “I had to think about that for a second! He asked me to run the manufacturing plant where we make the suits. I replied that I didn’t know much about sewing, but he said, ‘you know about our product, and you know about our quality’.”

From there, Nelson absorbed everything about the makeup and function of the protective suits, working with product developers on new designs, and educating drivers and new crew members or salespeople who came by the factory.

“Today, as Operations Manager for the fire suit division, I wear several hats,” he relates. “I do a lot of the development and testing of the protection of the suits, which meet SFI or FIA certification. We’re always trying to get the lightest-weight material in to offer the most protection, so I’m always thinking about different materials for comfort or for protection, always trying to find new ones and be innovative in our materials and in the functions of our suits for the drivers. Many drivers now look at the suit as fashion as well as function. They know that it meets the certification, but they want to look good as a driver. Simpson is tasked with making suits that fulfil both goals.”

He cites the development of thinner materials with better fire-resistant properties as the biggest advance in fire-suit safety during his time at Simpson. He explains, “In the past, fire suits were much thicker, so drivers tended to sweat more inside the suits. Sweat is not your friend in a fire suit, and not just because of heat exhaustion. Most drivers don’t get first- or second-degree burns from the flames. They get them from the heat transferring through the suit. And if you have any type of moisture on your body, that will heat up first and blister your skin.

“Thinner materials, in multiple layers, slow down that heat transfer through the suit. A three-layer suit with thinner materials will be more comfortable and offer better thermal protection performance (TPP) than a thicker, two-layer suit because the air gaps act as a form of fire block. And the materials being as light as possible, but still breathable, helps dissipate the sweat off your body to help reduce any type of injury if they were to catch on fire.”

Tony Pedregon had first-hand experience of the fire-retardant properties of the suits that Nelson helped to develop. “In one of the worst fires that I had in my career, the car blew up at 300 MPH,” says Pedregon. “The engine in front of me caught on fire and blew the body off. It only lasted a couple of seconds, but the suit burned through at least the first four or five layers of the suit, which was probably a seven-layer suit at the time.

“Dave was always there to help us develop not just a better suit, but also a better and more comfortable glove, so that we could grip the wheel better. I got second and third-degree burns on my hands in that accident. We had developed the outer layers of the glove, but the grip on the palm side was just one layer. Dave and I were communicating a day or two after that happened and they instantly started to look into making them better. I still have those gloves in my glass case, but before they went into it, they went to Dave for Simpson to inspect them and investigate what had happened. And of course, since then, there are more layers on the palm side.”

In 2001, Nelson’s quest for better materials also resulted in the switch from heavy, embroidered-cotton NASCAR pit-crew shirts to lighter, more comfortable, and considerably cheaper shirts printed with creative designs via the sublimation process.

“That got me thinking about printing onto fire-retardant materials, to make fire suits lighter and more comfortable for the drivers, too,” he reflects. “We tried to sublimate onto Nomex, but the colors were not vibrant. I started looking at different printers and different printing processes and we spent years were going back and forth, trying to figure out how it could be done. In the last few years we have been able to achieve a fully printed fire suit that does not compromise its integrity or protection, giving the driver a more comfortable suit and unlimited design possibilities. I’m proud to have helped Simpson achieve that.”

Nelson’s name, along with that of his colleague, Russ Somers, is also on a 2009 patent for a seat belt that is used in recreational UTVs. He remembers, “We were going to off-road races, where we saw a lot of the racers welding their seat belt latches to the buckle or sewing the shoulder harness to the lap belt, to save time when the crew got back in after getting out to change a tire or whatever. It wasn’t safe because it threw the belt geometry off.

“On the recreational side, we observed that people were not using the sub-belt, just a four-point harness. If you’re not using the sub-belt you might as well not have seat belts at all. We looked at it from the aspect of families getting into off-road buggies, people who often had never been a race car and did not know how to use a five-point seat belt. We came up with the D3 belt, which integrated the shoulder harnesses into the lap belt, into the buckle, which put the geometry right but made it easier for somebody to put on and take off in a recreational situation.”

40 years of teamwork

Nelson continues to try to push suit safety forward, working closely with mills in North America and Europe to explore new ideas for lighter materials. “We do a lot of research and development at Simpson, testing materials to see what TPP ratings they meet,” he says. “We like to be above the industry standard because being out in the real world isn’t the same as testing in a laboratory. We don’t know how that suit has been cared for out in the field, so we like to put more protection in there, but still try to retain the mobility and the lightness of the suit. That’s why we’re always searching for different materials and working with our mills to come up with different types of weaves or knits to make up the layup for a race suit.”

“Dave has always had safety in mind above anything else,” confirms three-time NHRA Funny Car champion, Robert Hight. “Before making a sale, it was all about making sure that his customers were safe. He is very knowledgeable and always took care of us. He wanted our fire suits to fit perfectly, be comfortable, and above all, safe.”

Nelson acknowledges the role of mentors in enabling his longevity at Simpson, including Bill Simpson himself (“He taught me never to skimp on quality and safety”), former VP, Fred Crow, Chuck Davies (Simpson CEO from 2001-21) and current boss, Brian Applegate (Senior Vice President, Safety & Racing).

“It’s also down to people that I work with side by side on a day-to-day basis,” he reflects. “We have people in the factory who have been here for 30-plus years, so it’s a family. But the other thing that has kept me here is wanting to continue the advancement of the fire suit, or anything else that I could give back to safety. I’ve strapped into a race car and worn helmets, so I know what a driver it feels like in a race car. Unfortunately, as drivers, we don’t really think about what’s going to happen until there’s an accident. But I’m always trying to think about how we can make things better so that if there is an accident, there’s not an injury.”