Chapter One
RACING
TO WIN * * *
Watch out! Trouble on the backstretch!"
The excited voice of Eddie Masencup, the spotter for our
Interstate Batteries #18 car, crackled in my headset, piercing
the din at the Homestead-Miami Speedway. Eddie's job was to warn
our driver Bobby Labonte of impending traffic around him, and with
race cars streaking by at nearly 150 miles per hour, Bobby needed the
extra "eyes" Eddie provided. One small bump by another hurtling
NASCAR missile could send Bobby's car careening out of control, crashing
into another car, or worse yet, smashing into the thick concrete wall
surrounding the race track.
Anyone associated with NASCAR knows the risks involved with racing
high-speed stock cars on tracks not much wider than the roads in
front of most American shopping malls. Four cars running behind
Bobby smashed into one another like bumper cars at an amusement
park-only these bumps were costly, dangerous, and anything but
amusing to our race team.
As rescue crews hurried to the scene of the accident, I strained to see
what was going on down in turn four, the last turn before the homestretch
leading to the start-finish line. For a long moment, I couldn't tell
whether Bobby had made it through the rising smoke and metal strewn
across the track. Nor could I locate Tony Stewart, the driver of our #20
car, who had been leading the race. From where I was standing in the
pits, it was difficult to see the entire race track. More than 75,000 race
fans had jammed into the enormous grandstand to see the 2000
Pennzoil 400, and I craned my neck along with them, trying to catch a
glimpse of our guys.
Unable to see the crash site, I paced back and forth in the pit area,
waiting anxiously for information to come over the headset. As a former
head coach of a National Football League team, I was accustomed to the
tension. I was used to having to recover and regroup when plays didn't
pan out the way I had meticulously drawn them up in our game plan. I
knew the joys and the frustrations of building a
strong team, fighting and clawing to get to the top,
and overcoming adversity. I knew what it felt like
to win, to succeed in front of a worldwide audience.
I also knew how it felt to fail in front of
friends, family, and people I had never met but
who knew all about me-or at least thought they
did.
But all that heightened exponentially when I got involved with
NASCAR-the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, as the
organization has been known since 1949. The competition in NASCAR
was just as intense as in the NFL.
I had coached the Washington Redskins for only two years before we
won a Super Bowl. Now, in my ninth year as owner of one of the premier
NASCAR racing teams, I could almost taste our first Winston Cup
championship. Joe Gibbs Racing had grown to nearly 150 employees,
including my two sons, J D and Coy. We all wanted this one badly.
Bobby Labonte had grown up a Dallas Cowboys fan. "I hated the
Washington Redskins!" Bobby once admitted to me. No matter. Today,
Bobby and I were on the same team. He was my "quarterback" on the
Interstate Batteries #18 team. Jimmy Makar, our crew chief, was the
coach who called the shots. Tony Stewart drove the Home Depot #20
car, while Greg Zipadelli was that team's crew chief. When I coached the
Redskins, I designed the offense and helped call the plays so I could control
the football team's destiny to some extent and help make it happen.
Not so in racing. On our race team, Jimmy and Greg are the technical
guys; they are the ones making the tough decisions. Bobby and Tony
drive the cars. And my job as the owner . well, truthfully, my job is to
let the guys do their jobs while I stay out of the way. As the owner, my
main function is to pace and worry. What a job description!
OUR RACE DAY ROUTINE
During the prerace interviews that morning, Bobby and Tony joked and
laughed casually with the press. One reporter asked Bobby, "How'd you
sleep last night?"
"Best night of sleep I've had the whole time down here," Bobby
replied.
Another reporter piped up, "What was your first thought when you
woke up this morning?"
"I've got to go to the bathroom," Bobby deadpanned. He was obviously
going to enjoy this day. Bobby had been here before. His older
brother, Terry Labonte, had won the Winston Cup title in 1984 and
1996, and Bobby himself had finished second in the championship
points race in 1999. He wasn't about to let the pressure get to him.
Although the Sunday race was not scheduled to begin until one
o'clock, the flurry of activity had begun early for all of us. Dressed in my
usual race day garb-a white shirt sporting the Interstate Batteries and
Home Depot logos, black slacks, and black running shoes-I had flown
in to join Bobby and Tony in visiting the hospitality tents, the areas in
which our corporate sponsors entertain their clients before, during, and
after the race. The drivers and I went from group to group-Bobby to
visit with the #18-car sponsors, Tony to greet the #20-car sponsors, and
I to do both-meeting and greeting myriad people, many of whom were
avid race fans and many others who knew me from my twenty-eight
years as a football coach. Bobby, Tony, and I shook hands with fans,
posed for pictures, and signed autographs for several hours, right up
until it was time for the drivers to get ready for the race. Although Bobby
and Tony have risen to what could be equated with superstar status in
other sports, they remain extremely accessible to the NASCAR fans.
Finally, just before race time I returned to our transporters, the
eighteen-wheelers in which our race cars are hauled to the track. Parked
in the NASCAR garage area, the transporters carry everything from spare
lug nuts and an extra engine to a complete backup car. The transporters
also serve as our portable offices at the track.
I picked up my headset and headed for the pits, pressed by a throng
of reporters and fans each step of the way. It was a chaotic scene. Pit
crew members from various teams, dressed in brightly colored uniforms
decked out with a wide variety of corporate logos-McDonald's, Tide,
Coca-Cola, etc.-scurried in every direction. Curious fans, sporting the
credentials which gave them "backstage access" to the pit and garage
areas, watched for any glimpse of their heroes. The crowd-a strange
mix of corporate executives, ruddy mechanics, immaculately dressed
women, and the jeans-and-T-shirt crowd-all surged harmoniously
along. A young woman bearing a sign, NASCAR Garage Tour, led a group
of Japanese fans through the garage area, while a translator conveyed her
words to the tour members listening on headsets. A sea of faces blurred
in front of me as I passed by, many people calling out words of encouragement
and reporters pelting me with last-minute queries.
I tried my best to answer the reporters' questions as we moved
through the crowd. When asked how I was doing, I told them the truth:
"I'm nervous." Just as I had experienced so many times on a football
field, I had an anxious excitement in anticipation of the race. I felt sure
that this was going to be a big day for both our racing teams.
With all but two of thirty-four races already run, Bobby had won
four times during the 2000 season. He had accumulated 4,505 points,
leading the hard-charging, always competitive Dale Earnhardt by a mere
218 points. "The Intimidator," as Dale was known by legions of his fans,
was pursuing his eighth NASCAR championship with a passion. Jeff
Burton trailed right behind him, and Dale Jarrett stood just 356 points
shy of first place.
The Winston Cup points system looks complicated, but it's really
quite simple: The winner of a race receives 175 points, second place gets
170, and the points awarded drop 5 per position until seventh place,
where the points drop 4 per spot down through twelfth place. The
points drop is then 3 per position down to last place. Five bonus points
are awarded for leading a lap, and the driver who leads the most laps in
each race receives a 5-point bonus. Points earned each week are added
to the cumulative season totals, and the team with the most points at the
end of the season wins the championship.
Since every car that starts a race receives some points, drivers and
teams will race like mad even when they know they have little possibility
of winning a particular race. If a car crashes or has a mechanical
problem that forces it out of the race, the driver drops to the bottom of
the points for that race. That's why race teams work feverishly to get
banged-up cars back into the race after a wreck or other problem,
because the points earned even in a losing effort will be important in the
year-end championship tally.
Bobby had owned first place in the point standings for most of the
2000 season, even as Dale Earnhardt pressed ever closer. Before the
Miami-Homestead race, Dale admitted that Bobby had the inside track:
"Bobby has a pretty solid lock on things . but we're going to keep
fighting till it's over."
The Pennzoil 400 would be a key race. If Bobby could finish in fifth
place or better, he would clinch his first NASCAR championship-and
accomplish the dream of a lifetime. We would take home the Winston
Cup trophy and a check for more than $3 million at the awards ceremony
to be held at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York the first week in
December.
Should Bobby fail to place fifth or better, he'd still have a good chance
to win it all in Atlanta the following week, but that would only increase
the pressure. Besides, close is never good enough in NASCAR. Anyone
associated with motor racing well understands that anything can happen
at any moment on the track. Although Bobby had finished every race he
had started during the year, all it would take is one spinout in the third
turn, one blown tire, one broken valve, or one serious miscue by a competing
driver-and dreams of winning our first championship after nine
years of racing could be shattered.
We had almost gotten to the place of not wanting to talk too much
about the championship to the press, or even around the race shop, for
fear that we might jinx our chances or become overconfident.
Now at Homestead, I was really sweatin' it out, thinking, We've come
all this way, after thirty-two weeks of racing, and we still haven't won this
thing! We didn't want to go into the last race of the season having to place
in the top ten or else. We wanted to win this thing today!
Four F-16 jets from Homestead Air Force Base streaked across the sky
following the singing of "The Star-Spangled Banner." Then former United
States Senator Howard H. Baker stepped to a microphone
and gave the traditional call: "Gentlemen,
start your engines!"
A roar of gas-powered thunder pealed across
the track as forty-three drivers simultaneously
cranked their motors. Few feelings in all of sports
can compare to the enormous adrenaline rush people experience when
they hear that sound-the sound of sheer power.
I prayed briefly with our team members prior to the race: "Lord, let
us have a great race today, and please keep the guys safe. Let everything
we do today bring honor to You."
Steve Park, driving the #1 Pennzoil car, sat on the pole-the number
one starting position-which he had earned by posting the fastest
speed in the field during qualifying. Ricky Rudd had qualified on the
front row with Steve. Bobby started the race in row number two. Tony
Stewart, who had won the Pennzoil 400 in his first full year of NASCAR
racing in 1999, was in row seven, driving our #20 Home Depot car.
Today there was a printed reminder on his dashboard: PATIENCE. With
his outgoing personality and sometimes risky racing style, Tony needed
all the patience he could muster, especially as he was the reigning champion
of this race. Telling Tony to take it easy was like telling Tiger Woods
to lay up.
The greatest stock car racers in the world compete every week of the
NASCAR season. The list of drivers gathered at Homestead-Miami
Speedway that day read like a Who's Who of racing-Dale Earnhardt, Jeff
Gordon, Mark Martin, Dale Jarrett, Rusty Wallace, Bill Elliott, and the
legendary Darrell Waltrip, who was winding down his on-track career.
Jeff Burton was there, too, as was Terry Labonte, Bobby's older brother.
Dale Earnhardt Jr., known as "Little E" to many of his colleagues, sat
behind the wheel of the #8 car.
The 400-mile race meant 267 grueling laps around the one-and-a-half-mile,
sun-baked track. Even in November, the heat on the track
would be horrific. Most of the cars' crew chiefs would call for a change
of tires every fifty to sixty laps to prevent their cars from slipping on the
hot asphalt track. Fresh tires are crucial to winning races, because the
track gets slicker with every lap, and as the rubber on the tires wears,
traction diminishes, heightening the possibility of accidents and hampering
the ability of drivers to handle their cars at blazing speeds. A wall
of tires stood ready, stacked four-high with lug nuts in place, at the rear
of our pit area. Even at $1500 per set, I knew that we'd probably use five
to eight sets of tires before the race was over.
The racers slowly followed the pace car around the track, weaving
slightly to "scrub in" their tires, creating a sticky quality to the rubber to
help with traction. I watched nervously from pit road, the stretch of
track where the cars come in during the race for adjustments, fresh tires,
and fuel. Pit locations are picked according to the order in which teams
qualify, with faster drivers receiving first choice. The choices are not
made lightly. Strategy is involved in the pit selection, with the crew
chiefs and drivers usually preferring locations closer to the pit road exit
leading back onto the track, though not always. Sometimes the crew
chief will select a stall farther down pit road, especially if the stall has an
opening behind or in front of it, allowing his driver's car to get in and
out of the pit area more easily-and hopefully faster. A fraction of a second
saved during a pit stop can easily be the difference between winning
and losing.
I donned my headset so I could hear the radio communications
between Bobby and our Interstate Batteries crew. Crew chief Jimmy
Makar sat perched in a chair atop the pit cart, a mobile "tool chest"
housing a television monitor connected to a satellite dish, several computers,
and a raft of tools and equipment. In front of Jimmy was another
television screen and a computer monitor on which he received constant
updates on the speed and status of every car on the track. Stock car racing
has come a long way from its humble beginnings during Prohibition,
when bootleggers took a break from running moonshine to test their
automobiles and driving skills against one another on the back roads of
the South.
Continues.
