From Tire Review
Legendary motorsports writer and TV reporter/commentator Chris Economaki passed away on Sept. 28. He was 91. 
From NASCAR to IndyCar and every race series and event from coast-to-coast, Economaki made them – and their participants – all seem larger than life, NASCAR chairman Bill France told ESPN last week.
“Many people consider Chris the greatest motorsports journalist of all time. He was, indeed, ‘the Dean.’ Chris was a fixture for years at NASCAR events, and played a huge role in growing NASCAR’s popularity. I’ll miss seeing him and of course, I’ll miss hearing that voice.”
“If he wasn’t aware of you, you simply were not a factor in the sport,” Mario Andretti said in 2004. “If you weren’t on Chris Economaki’s radar screen, you probably weren’t on anybody’s.”
His career started in a simple fashion at age 13 when he started selling copies of National Speed Sport News (NSSN). Within a year, he was writing a regular column for the publication, and by 1950, the Brooklyn, N.Y., native was the publication’s editor, a post he held for some 60 years. The newspaper version of NSSN folded a few years ago, but its online version remains a fixture in the racing community.
Economaki parlayed his NSSN efforts into an active TV commentator role with ABC, covering numerous Indianapolis 500 and Daytona 500 races, as well as dozens of IndyCar and NASCAR events. He later moved over to CBS and ESPN, where he continued to call races until the mid-1990s.
He was preceded in death by his wife, Tommye, and is survived by his two daughters, Corinne and Tina, and two grandchildren.
