For GAINSCO/Bob Stallings Racing owner Robert W. “Bob” Stallings, operating a championship-winning professional sports car team is just his latest achievement in a long line of success stories in the business world and beyond.

Stallings currently serves as Chairman and President of Stallings Capital Group, Inc., a Dallas-based merchant banking firm specializing in financial services. He is also Executive Chairman of team sponsor GAINSCO Inc., a property and casualty insurance holding company that specializes in auto insurance.

Additionally, Stallings serves as a director of Texas Capital Bank and previously was a director of Crescent Realty prior to its sale to Morgan Stanley in 2007. He also cofounded and managed the Pilgrim Capital Group, a $20 billion investment fund, before selling the firm to ING. Last year Stallings launched BobStallingsCars.com, an Internet-based retailer of pre-owned family, luxury and specialty vehicles.

While Stallings has found gratification in his business endeavors, it was a certificate for the Bob Bondurant Racing School that he received as a birthday gift from his wife Linda that unlocked another passion. Stallings was instantly hooked on driving and just three years later won the pinnacle of amateur racing in this country, the SCCA Runoffs, to become a National Champion in the Formula Atlantic division.

His driving coach at the time was Alex Gurney, and in 2005 the duo entered Daytona Prototype competition in the GRAND-AM Rolex Sports Car Series with the debuting GAINSCO/Bob Stallings Racing team. Stallings drove in a total of 11 races in the 2005 and 2006 seasons, and joined Gurney in scoring GAINSCO’s first top-three podium finish at Watkins Glen in August of 2005, when they finished second in just the team’s fourth race.

Despite that career-best result and other encouraging showings, Stallings soon realized that if his racing team was to reach its championship potential, he must replace himself with a driver comparable in talent to Gurney. Stallings stepped out of the cockpit two races into the 2006 season, and after Jimmy Vasser (Homestead-Miami) and Rocky Moran Jr. (Long Beach) each drove a race with Gurney, Stallings signed Jon Fogarty as his full-time replacement in April 2006. The selfless decision was one of several key strategy moves made by Stallings that created the winning foundation for GAINSCO/Bobs Stallings Racing’s GRAND-AM Rolex Series Championships in 2007 and 2009.

With Gurney and Fogarty behind the wheel, Stallings shifted his focus to working with the team on race weekend strategies and winning season championships. With seven wins, 10 poles and numerous qualifying and race lap records, GAINSCO/Bob Stallings Racing’s 2007 championship season remains one of the most successful years of competition on record in Rolex Series Daytona Prototype history. Stallings and the GAINSCO team backed it up with a runner-up championship showing the following season before the taking the team’s second set of GRAND-AM Rolex Series Championships in three years in 2009. GAINSCO finished third in the team standings in 2010 and 2011.

Stallings is a native of Malden, Missouri, the father of three daughters and the grandfather of seven, including triplet boys who turn six in 2012. He and Linda Stallings, who manages the racing team’s marketing and sales efforts, live in Frisco, Texas, and the couple is very active in The Stallings Foundation, founded in 2000.