Nascar

04.07.02
Day One
The Guru and the Kid

On the afternoon of Saturday, July 8, 2000, a man who looked barely old enough to drive climbed into an automobile designed to race at almost a third the speed of sound. Kurt Busch and 33 other drivers fired up their engines. Bone-rattling noise rocked New Hampshire International Speedway and the air smelled suddenly burnt.

From the grandstands and the corporate suites, and atop the campers and motor homes lining the hill behind the backstretch of the mile-long track, a sellout crowd of some 90,000 fans watched.

Most were getting their first glimpse of Busch, a tall, slender 21-year-old with a boyish face who only eight months earlier had earned his living fixing pipes. If they knew anything about the kid, it was that he drove ferociously and with uncommon skill, and that his talent, while still unseasoned, had earned him the backing of one of the most powerful men in American motorsports. Only the week before, Busch had won his first big race, at a track in Milwaukee.

Polite and impeccably mannered off the track, and gifted with an easy humor, Busch was transformed when he took the wheel of a racecar. He drove at the edge -- out in that rarefied zone between fearlessness and craziness, the place where speed kings thrive. No track intimidated Busch. No race seemed unwinnable at the green flag, regardless of where he started.

He was starting in fifth place in this NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race -- behind the Series leader and three racing veterans, two of whom had begun their careers before he was born. As Busch fastened his belts, checked his gauges, and otherwise connected with his machine, he reviewed his strategy, which involved a commitment to racing clean. Busch would go eyeball to eyeball with an opponent -- would crawl to within an inch of someone's bumper to bully him out of the way, if need be -- but he was determined to avoid contact.

But death does not deter born racers. Speed casts too powerful a spell.

Busch and his competitors circled the track behind the pace car, swerving in and out of file like hornets startled from a nest -- a maneuver that warms tires, improving grip. The green flag flew and the noise, fueled by 110-octane gas and the absence of mufflers, exceeded a jet on takeoff. For the moment, Busch pushed Turn Three from his mind. The race known as the thatlook.com 200, after the Web site that sponsored it, had begun. Half a million dollars was at stake.

STANDING WITH Busch's crew on pit road, where cars are refueled and receive fresh tires during a race, owner Jack Roush watched his young protege blister the mile-long track.

A short man who favored button-down shirts, cuffed khaki pants, and a straw fedora -- an outfit that made him an eccentric in a world of oil and grease -- Roush had built the largest motorsports operation in America, with nine NASCAR teams, including five in Winston Cup racing, NASCAR's top level.

But Roush, 58, was renowned for more than his racing achievements. He had a master's degree in mathematics, and he had taught college physics. He had founded and remained the chairman of a $250-million engineering firm, Roush Industries, of which Roush Racing was a subsidiary.

He enjoyed piloting his own corporate jet, and he was about to purchase three 727 airliners, to move his race teams around the country. But he felt deeper passion for his P-51 Mustang, a World War II fighter that he bought, restored, and now used to perform aerobatics, frequently with someone he wanted to thrill riding expectantly (if not nervously) in back.

Before one such adventure, Roush talked to the home office on his cell phone while conducting a preflight inspection of his plane, parked at an airport near his race shops in Concord, N.C., just outside Charlotte. Freshly painted in its original colors and sporting its original name -- Old Crow, bestowed by Bud Anderson, the war hero who'd flown it in combat -- the P-51 sparkled in the midday sun. Roush shed his fedora and pulled a flight suit over his shirt and pants, then removed two parachutes from the trunk of his Lincoln and handed one to his passenger.

"Only two reasons you'd need it," Roush said. "One is if we catch fire. The other is a midair collision."

After explaining the basics of operation as he understood them, Roush noted that he had never used a parachute. "I don't believe in practicing for something you must do correctly the first time," he said, grinning.

Photo courtesy of Jack Roush A YOUNG Jack Roush, in the center on his go-cart, hangs out with his pals in Ohio. View today's slideshow View today's gallery: Fans Who is a fan?

But automobiles, not aircraft, had remained Roush's prime obsession since childhood, when he got his first taste of speed. Son of a housewife and an intermittently successful mechanic and entrepreneur who raised their family in small-town Ohio, Roush owned a bicycle not long after he learned to walk. Pedaling couldn't propel him fast enough. So he sought out steep hills, to increase the speed.

"I was a junkie for it," he said. "You can become addicted, you know."

Motors promised bigger doses, and by the age of 10, Roush had remade his red wagon into a go-cart powered by a lawn-mower engine he'd figured out how to tear down and rebuild. Then came the mid-1950s, when America's highways growled with cast-iron V-8s, the muscle of high Industrial Age Detroit. Lacking wealth, but overflowing with ambition, the teenage Roush scoured junkyards and fields for rusted hulks that he transformed into fast, powerful machines. He then raced his creations, against friends on dusty back roads at first, and later on organized drag strips in straight-line duels. Too slight to prevail in sports played with a ball, Roush had found one where ingenuity and nerve counted for more than brawn, a sport where he could win, which mattered deeply from an early age. "I've always been competitive," Roush said, "maybe because I'm small."

Business demands kept him from racing full-time when he went to work at Ford Motor Co. and, later, established the Michigan-based Roush Industries. But he could build engines and cars, and he became an owner, with his racers competing on oval tracks, road courses, and 24-hour endurance events. Actor Paul Newman and Olympian Bruce Jenner are among those who drove for Roush in the 1970s and 1980s, when his teams won national championships in leagues with initialisms such as NHRA and IMSA.

Impressive in their own right, Roush's titles came in the relative obscurity of the racing purist's universe. But by the late '80s, that universe was expanding. NASCAR was pulling away from all other forms of automobile racing to become one of America's most popular spectator sports and, eventually, one of the most popular on TV.

Roush fielded his first team in NASCAR in 1988. Within a decade, he had more cars in NASCAR competition than anyone.

William H.G. France was operating a service station in Daytona Beach, Fla., in 1947 when he founded the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, a sanctioning body for a sport that until then had been loosely organized. France had been competing part-time on the hard-packed sands of Daytona Beach -- the so-called Birthplace of Speed, home to auto racing since the turn of the century. He raced American stock cars -- vehicles that an ordinary fellow with a degree of mechanical aptitude and a compulsion to go fast could buy off the showroom floor, then soup up with modified engines and racing suspensions. France believed that fans would relate better to cars that looked like the ones they drove than funny-looking purebred racing machines, such as those in Grand Prix racing. His marketing instincts were sound.

NASCAR took root in the rural South, where moonshiners skilled at outrunning federal agents ranked among the best early competitors. But France envisioned a sport that would rival the big three of football, baseball, and basketball in national prominence -- and in profit, which he and his family would share because he controlled NASCAR. France and his sons, Bill Jr., who succeeded him as chairman in 1972, and Jim, executive vice president and secretary, worked ambitiously at broadening NASCAR's regional base. They arranged live national network coverage of the 1979 Daytona 500, an exciting race that Richard Petty won, and two years later the new cable network ESPN began televising stock-car racing. The Frances moved their annual banquet to The Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York, and in 1985, a NASCAR driver, Bill Elliott, graced the cover of Sports Illustrated. A sport perceived as the exclusive province of rural Southerners was going mainstream.

The appeal derived, in part, from the raw excitement of oval-track racing, in which tens of thousands of spectators surround dozens of racecars circling for three hours or more at speeds that can approach 200 mph. The unrelenting thunder of so many high-powered machines, the strangely intoxicating smells of burning rubber and high-octane exhaust, the hurricane-like feel of air suddenly cleft by iron -- a TV tube cannot adequately convey the sensation, which thrills on a primal level. Another attraction, of course, is danger, and the danger is real, unlike in professional wrestling. Drivers die in racing, untold dozens of them over the years.

"There's so much appeal to young people," Dale Earnhardt Jr., one of the sport's young rising stars, told Entertainment Weekly. "The sounds. The speed. The danger. Going to a race is like going to the biggest damn circus in the world, or a rock 'n' roll festival. It's like sensory overload."

The corporate suites are always full at Winston Cup races, but a larger, more colorful spectacle also unfolds. Thousands of predominantly blue-collar fans turn the race into a long weekend of partying, and they fill the infields and outlying areas with their recreational vehicles and tents.

A fleeting look at any NASCAR speedway on a race weekend, and one might wonder if the clock has been turned back to the 1950s, when fuel crises, ozone alerts, and surgeon general's warnings were years in the future. By noon, fans are already drinking (domestic beer, mostly), hotdogs and steaks cook over barbecue grills, and on the midway, business is brisk at the Winston booths, where adult smokers receive free half-cartons of cigarettes and racing videos in return for disclosing their names and addresses to R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Holdings Inc., which sponsors the Winston Cup Series. It is OK at a NASCAR race to drop your chicken bones and beer cans wherever you are, and also for men, and even women, to remove their T-shirts to be turned lobster-red in the midday sun. And Confederate flags can still be spotted at races, a link to the sport's roots.

AS NASCAR GREW, so did the money involved.

Purses got bigger -- and costs rose. No longer could a guy tinker with his car weekdays in his garage, then go racing on Saturday night. At the Winston Cup level, stock cars evolved into $150,000 hand-built machines designed with computers, tested in wind tunnels, and only vaguely resembling a Ford, Chevrolet, Pontiac, or Dodge that a consumer could buy off the lot. A close look at a stock car reveals that the lights are decals, and the tires lack tread, a smooth surface providing better grip because more rubber touches the pavement. Stock cars also lack windshield wipers and doors (drivers crawl in and out through a narrow window). And the interior -- with its fire extinguisher, toggle switches on the dash, single cocoon-like seat, and steering wheel that detaches to let a driver in -- looks nothing like a regular automobile.

Personnel expenses rose along with the costs of the vehicles. A support crew that once might have included a driver's brother-in-law and a good drinking buddy became a highly specialized team of more than a dozen men (and the occasional woman) who have to be paid, housed, fed, and transported around the country for most of a year. Only corporate America can bankroll such an expensive enterprise, and NASCAR's popularity attracted Fortune 500 companies such as Coca-Cola, McDonald's, and Kellogg's. For $10 million or more a year today, a primary car sponsor buys the right to put its name on cars, uniforms, hats, Web sites, and just about anywhere else a logo might fit. NASCAR also sells the rights to individual races and series, and companies like R.J. Reynolds take advantage.

Unlike football, baseball, and basketball, where team owners collectively rule the sanctioning body -- and thus their sport -- the France family runs NASCAR as a benevolent dictatorship, maintaining sole control of its finances, rules, and participants. No drivers' unions exist, nor do car owners have formal representation. "My way or the highway" is a phrase used to describe the management style of Bill Sr., who died in 1992, and that of his son Bill Jr., chairman at the start of the millennium.

It happened to be the way to fabulous wealth. The Frances earn income from TV rights, sanctioning fees, licensing, and their controlling interest in the publicly traded International Speedway Corporation. A profitable entity, the corporation is comprised of a radio network, a merchandise business, and 13 large tracks, including Daytona International Speedway, stock-car racing's crown jewel. Forbes magazine listed billionaires Bill Jr. and his brother Jim, NASCAR executive vice president, among last year's 400 richest Americans.

Owners and drivers share in the riches. Even a modestly successful racer at the Cup level can become a millionaire. And the sport's biggest star, Dale Earnhardt Sr., amassed a fortune estimated at tens of millions of dollars.

Only eight months before the July 2000 thatlook.com in New Hampshire, few knew who Kurt Busch was. He lived with his parents and worked as a repairman on the Las Vegas Valley Water District's graveyard shift, an arrangement that allowed him time and money for his passion, speed. Busch had dominated the local tracks, but back East, no one had heard of him, certainly not Jack Roush.

Roush by then fielded five drivers in Winston Cup competition, NASCAR's highest division (the majors, were it baseball); two in the Anheuser-Busch-sponsored Busch Grand National Series (Triple A, so to speak); and two in the Sears, Roebuck and Co.-sponsored Craftsman Truck Series (Double A). Since Roush began competing in NASCAR, his drivers had won $62.5 million in Winston Cup racing alone, second on the all-time list. Only a Winston Cup championship had eluded him.

Roush had not created racing's biggest operation on luck, although luck was always a factor when men with machines competed. An engineering mind proceeds deliberately, and Roush had decided that open auditions were a productive way to recruit new talent. He called his tryouts "Gong Shows," after a 1970s TV program. Kurt Busch won the 1999 show, and Roush signed him to compete in the Craftsman Truck Series starting in 2000. A promising racer ordinarily might spend two or three years in the Truck Series (where the racecars resemble pickup trucks), and then another couple of years in Grand National before driving a Cup car. Then, too, a promising racer might never drive a Cup car. The story of stock-car racing is written with broken dreams.

Kurt Busch debuted as a Roush driver in February 2000 at Daytona. He hardly inspired confidence.

On the third lap of the first round of practice for the Daytona 250, the Craftsman Truck counterpart to the longer and more prestigious Daytona 500, he wrecked his racecar. Jack Roush's mechanics could not repair it at the track, and Busch was forced into a backup vehicle. He drove it during qualifying, the time-trial laps that determine the starting order of a race -- and his engine blew. Unable to complete qualifying, Busch was forced to start the race 34th in the 36-car field. Now a third engine was powering his backup car.

But Busch was not deterred. Thirty laps into the race, he had charged to second place when his teammate, Greg Biffle, accidentally bumped him and sent him sideways through the infield grass. Amazingly, Busch regained control, and he returned to the race having lost only a few positions. But somewhat later, another racer touched Busch, pushing him into a third racecar and precipitating a wreck the likes of which few had ever seen.

Thirteen racecars collided, and one driven by the 50-year-old Geoffrey Bodine, flipped, cartwheeled, and erupted into a screaming fireball.

Blinded by smoke and scorching flame, driver after driver crashed into the charred remains of Bodine's vehicle, reducing it in seconds to a battered skeleton. Flying debris injured nine spectators. Bodine suffered a broken back and wrist, and also cuts, bruises, and abrasions, but from his hospital bed he vowed to someday race again. A born-again Christian, Bodine credited God with saving him from his gasoline-stoked inferno. And he maintained that as he lay trapped unconscious in his smoldering heap, his dead father had appeared to foretell his survival.

Unscathed in the maelstrom he'd unwittingly ignited, Busch went on to place second in the Daytona 250 -- a finish no one except Busch and his new boss had imagined possible. Fewer than four months later -- at the Sears DieHard 200 in Milwaukee on July 1, 2000, one week before the thatlook.com 200 at New Hampshire -- Busch recorded his first Truck Series win.

Trouble arrived early in the thatlook.com 200.

On lap two, in the same turn where Petty and Irwin had lost their lives, a driver broke his shoulder blade in a four-racecar pileup. Kurt Busch was close by, but he managed to avoid wrecking, a tribute to uncanny prescience and superior reflexes. He dodged mayhem again on lap 39, when two second-rate drivers, perhaps settling an old grudge, mixed it up in a smoking tangle that sent both of them home early.

As the race continued, Busch stayed near the front of the pack, waiting to challenge for the lead. Patience was a virtue Roush had tried to impress upon the kid.

"Thirty laps to go. Pace yourself, pal," radioed Rich Reichenbach, Busch's spotter. Perched on a speedway's high point, often the top of the press box, spotters radio the position of nearby competitors to their racers, who have limited visibility to the side and rear.

Busch had advanced to second place now, and he was turning perfect laps. Irwin came to mind when he ripped through Turn Three, but Busch, whose worst racing injury had been a bruised knee, maintained his concentration. His most urgent concern was the race leader, an experienced driver who figured he knew how to keep a rookie in his rear view.

Busch figured otherwise.

But before he could make a move, the leader blew a tire and limped back to pit road, leaving Busch with the lead.

"Twenty to go," Reichenbach said. "You're doing a good job. Just keep squeezing it like that, kid."

But now Busch was sitting in the cross hairs: another seasoned driver was crawling up his rear bumper. The veteran tried to pass high -- on the outside, or right of the racecar -- and Busch boxed him out. He went low, there on deadly Turn Three, and Busch hit the brakes, which slowed the pack and put the third-place driver on the veteran's tail. Busch then stood on the gas and sprinted to the checkered flag, winning by just a few feet. Just one race after his first win in the Craftsman Truck Series, Busch had won his second.

On pit road, his crew erupted. Under his signature fedora, Jack Roush was all grin.

"Good job, Buschster!" Reichenbach radioed. "Get to Victory Lane!"

But Busch couldn't find it. New to most of the racetracks this year, he'd never raced at the Loudon, N.H., track before.

"You missed the exit!" Reichenbach shouted. "Back up! Follow the 17! Turn right! Good job, kid! Remember to talk about Goodyear!"

Busch drove through the mob of reporters and photographers, parked his racecar, dropped the safety webbing on his window, crawled out, and jumped onto the stage as someone sprayed Coke like champagne. The young driver thanked his crew and his owner, and then a public-relations specialist guided him through a succession of poses in which he wore hats with the names of NASCAR; the race sponsor, thatlook.com; and the primary and many associate sponsors of his No. 99 Ford racecar. To sponsors, winning was everything.

FACING THE PRESS in the media room after Victory Lane, Busch initially acted overwhelmed, as if his confidence had evaporated when he walked into the glare of the TV lights. He didn't even acknowledge his girlfriend, Melissa Schaper, a high school senior from his hometown of Las Vegas, who stood shyly behind the cameras at the back of the room.

But Busch soon regained his composure. He attributed his second Craftsman Truck victory to the hard work of his crew and his crew chief, Matt Chambers, a bespectacled, studious young man who looked as if he belonged behind a college lectern, not with his head inside the engine compartment of a racecar. Busch also paid tribute to a dead colleague he'd never met.

"I think Kenny Irwin was with us today and he guided me through," Busch said. "And it was really a troublesome spot over there in Three."

In his comments to the reporters, Roush, who never praised lightly, spoke of his delight at the young driver's performance so far in the Craftsman Truck Series.

"I honestly hadn't expected that we would win two races this year," the car owner said. "I hadn't expected that we would be able to win as early as he has. And it's been just a really pleasant surprise that he hasn't torn up more equipment -- that he's been able to adapt to the racetracks. He's going to have a great future."

When they learned what he really meant by the future, some would wonder if Roush had gone soft.

Only a few days earlier -- on the eve of Busch's first Truck Series win in Milwaukee, in fact -- Roush had quietly asked Busch if he wanted to take the wheel of one of his Cup cars. Young as the kid was, Roush believed that he had what it took to someday be a Winston Cup champion.

"From a talent-potential point of view," Roush would say, "Kurt has been quicker to adapt to changes and to new things than anybody that I've ever worked with as a driver. This guy is just incredible."

But on that July afternoon in New Hampshire, only Roush's inner circle knew what the owner planned for Busch. Come autumn, he would let the kid compete in seven Cup races, and beginning with the Daytona 500 in February 2001, Busch would run the complete Cup schedule and compete for Rookie of the Year. Few, if any, NASCAR racers had ever traveled so quickly to the top. Had this been baseball, Busch would be a Double-A player suddenly asked to start for the New York Yankees.

Virtually overnight, Busch would become a celebrity, featured on the covers of magazines and profiled on TV. With his Roush Racing salary, his winnings, and income from merchandise royalties, he could soon become a wealthy young man. His would truly be a rags-to-riches story -- assuming, of course, that he could handle a life at extreme speed.