Nascar

04.10.02
Day Four
Fathers and Sons

Many racers consider Bristol Motor Speedway, in the hills of eastern Tennessee, the nastiest track on the Winston Cup circuit.

Bristol features 16-degree straightaways and turns banked at 36 degrees, so steep that track workers can get winded just walking to the top. Drivers reach obscene speeds at Bristol, and with 43 cars aiming to circle the unforgiving concrete 500 times, mayhem is inevitable. Many drivers never finish a race, and even a victor rarely goes home with his car intact. Some compare the track to the Colosseum, with cars instead of chariots, and 146,000 spectators watching from stands that reach almost to the sky.

Kurt Busch had never raced at Bristol, but he knew its forbidding reputation, and on the day before the Food City 500, held on Sunday, March 25, 2001, he was worried. He sat in his hauler listening to advice from a crew member and from Buddy Parrott, a seasoned former crew chief whom Jack Roush had asked to help develop the rookie driver's skills. Roush had too many other responsibilities to personally devote the time that was needed.

Parrott compared racing at Bristol to a folk tale in which a tiger goes around and around, faster and faster, until it turns to butter. "You won't even have time to think," he said.

"This is all foreign to me," Busch said.

"This is where everybody wants to be, man," said the crew member. "You wouldn't be here if you weren't the best."

JACK ROUSH, owner of NASCAR's largest racing team, checks drivers' lap times during practice at the Talledega Superspeedway in Alabama. View today's slideshow View today's gallery: Money A money maker

"I remember I made a mistake when I was a kid," he said. "I was learning how to swim. I was 4 or 5. I had done my laps in the shallow end to prove that I could go in the deep end. I got the approval of the lifeguard that I was OK to go in the deep end. I jumped in, and I expected my feet to hit the bottom, like they did in the shallow end. They didn't; I went straight down. And I had to figure out how to get back up. Usually I could use my feet to push myself up from the bottom of the pool to get back above the surface. It caught me by surprise. I can't remember how I got up, but I ended up getting up by myself."

Busch smiled.

"Soon we'll be springing off the high dive, though, right?"

SUNDAY DAWNED, and by noon, 43 racecars were lined up on the track. An Air Force drill team marched; Miss Food City paraded across the stage; the spectators remembered Dale Earnhardt with a moment of silence followed by three cannon blasts; a minister recited the invocation; country singer Billy Ray Cyrus sang the national anthem; and, at 1:05 p.m., the drivers started their engines.

Six laps in, the race's first wreck damaged two cars and sent Kurt Busch spinning, but he regained control, and continued on. Barely a dozen laps later, another wreck caught Jeff Burton, who sustained minor damage to the rear end of his car and fell to 41st. The race was only 5 percent complete, and already Bristol was living up to its notorious reputation.

After the third wreck, drivers avoided contact for almost 50 laps. Then, coming down the backstretch on the 79th lap, Busch spun into the wall. He was unhurt, but the impact ripped apart the front of his car. Busch unstrapped himself and sought the seclusion of his hauler as his crew began repairs. No one knew if they could finish in time to rejoin the race.

For the next nearly 200 laps, Roush's other drivers avoided mayhem. Mark Martin ran near the front, and Burton moved up -- until his right front tire blew, sending him into the wall, and consigning him to a 40th-place showing (after finishing 18th the previous week at the Darlington race, for which he had qualified despite his fear). "You're a crash dummy this year!" Roush joked to Burton when he climbed out of his car, shaken but unhurt.

It took more than half the race, but by lap 374, Busch's crew had fixed his car. Busch reentered the race.

Six laps later, a line of cars ahead of him crashed, and he had no place to go but into the heart of the mess. The flagman waved the yellow caution flag, and an official dispatched a tow truck to haul Busch's beaten car -- and the driver himself -- away, as a national TV audience and 146,000 spectators watched. Busch would record a 42nd-place finish, next to last.

Uninjured, the 22-year-old stepped off the tow truck, swept past his girlfriend into his hauler, packed a duffle bag with his clothes, and walked alone toward the exit gate. Unlike the larger tracks, Bristol features no access tunnel, and everyone inside the infield remains trapped until a race ends. Busch wanted to be the first out when this one did.

As he walked, the scoreboard proclaimed the new race leader.

It was No. 29, Kevin Harvick, who drove Dale Earnhardt's cars now, and who was Busch's main rival for Rookie of the Year.

Harvick led Busch in that contest.

ONE DAY in 1958, Jack Roush put on his finest pink shirt, leather jacket, and penny loafers, and got behind the wheel of his 1951 Ford, which he had equipped with a souped-up V-8 engine. Roush was 16, and he had a date.

Roush left his home in Manchester, Ohio, the farming community southeast of Cincinnati where he grew up. He was rounding a corner when he happened on Jim Bob Jenkins, who worked with him at the Chevrolet dealership where he fixed and painted cars. Jenkins was a year older, and he drove a '41 Ford that he'd souped up with a truck engine.

"So I'm going up the road and not going fast," Roush said, "and I come around kind of a bend, and there he is, going 30, 40 miles per hour. And the road is a road you'd be very comfortable on at 50 miles per hour: a wide secondary road that winded up out of the Ohio River Valley to the top of the ridge there. I pulled out to pass him -- and he sped up. So I slowed down to get back behind him -- and he slowed down. He wanted to race me bad. So then I got after it, he got after it, and the race was on."

They were on a turn and Roush was trying to squeeze by when the cars collided, sending Roush toward the bottom of a ravine. "I'm going 80, 85 miles an hour -- I don't think I'd been going 90 by then, but at least 85 -- and so the car's spinning in the air and I'm just hanging on like a squirrel in a cage. And I said: `This car is going to hit on its roof!' So I put both hands as hard as I could on the roof and forced myself into the seat." The car hit the ravine bottom and rolled along the creek bed, flattening the roof, tearing off a door, and sending glass and battery acid flying. Roush lost his penny loafers in the smoking wreck, and he never made it to his date.

"But I didn't have a scratch. I didn't have a bruise. I didn't have a sore hand; my head hadn't hit anything. I had stayed pinned in that seat. I got out of it and Jim Bob backed up and he asked me, `Are you all right?' from the top of the hill. I said, `I'm doing just fine, but if you're still up there when I finish climbing this bank, you're going to be in bad shape!' So he drove off -- left me standing in the creek."

Rather than dissuade Roush from racing, the wreck motivated him to get another car. He saved his earnings from his car-dealership job (he fixed and painted wrecks) and a short while later a relative sold him a '51 Plymouth that had been abandoned in a field after its engine had blown. Roush found another engine in a junkyard, and brought it home, where he rebuilt it.

Roush was a good student, and his parents, Georgetta and Charles, a former millwright who was by turns a businessman and a farmer, impressed on him and his younger brother the value of hard work. Charles was gifted with his hands, and Roush's first exposure to engines came as a little boy, when he watched his father tear down and rebuild truck motors.

After high school, Roush enrolled as a math major at Kentucky's Berea College, leaving his street-racing Plymouth to his brother, Frank. But by his junior year, he was back to his old tricks with a '54 Dodge, which he had salvaged from a junkyard and equipped with a large Chrysler V-8 engine to boost the power. Roush street-raced the Dodge, and also competed formally for the first time, in drag races at a track near Berea College. He drove on used snow tires, beating competitors who could afford racing tires that were new.

When Roush was an upperclassman, he opened a business fixing and selling used cars. Lacking a garage, he worked under a shade tree next to the mobile home where he lived, but his talent for resurrecting old cars was substantial and his business became lucrative. By the time he graduated, in 1964, he had saved enough to pay cash for a new car and an apartment's worth of furniture. He moved to Detroit with his wife, Pauline, whom he'd met and married in his third year at Berea, and their baby daughter, Susan.

Detroit in 1964 monopolized the domestic automobile market, and Roush took a job at Ford, which had recruited him while he was at Berea College. He worked as an assembly-plant quality-control supervisor, but hoped for a promotion to a research department dedicated to the development of internal-combustion systems -- engines.

Told that he could improve his chances by earning an advanced degree, Roush entered a master's program in the mathematics department at Eastern Michigan University; attending classes at night and then during a year's sabbatical from the automaker, he graduated in 1970. Roush had his diploma, but no offer of a position in research. Instead, Ford executives wanted to steer him toward plant management. So Roush left Ford for a research job at Chrysler. But he didn't like Chrysler's corporate culture or his long commute, and he quit after a year.

KURT BUSCH, competing for Winston Cup's Rookie of the Year, gets advice and encouragement from Jack Roush before the start of a race. View today's slideshow View today's gallery: Money A money maker

In partnership with Wayne Gapp, a Ford engineer with similar ambition, Roush in 1971 formed a company devoted to building engines and drag-race cars. They sold some, and raced some, winning championships around the country in the five years they were together. But by 1976, ego conflicts and disagreement over the future of their company prompted Gapp and Roush to split; Gapp kept the competition side of the business, and Roush the racecar- and engine-building division. Jack Roush Performance Engineering, based in the Detroit suburb of Livonia, achieved revenues of $800,000 in its first year.

By 1983, Roush was convinced that NASCAR was the future of American racing. Its audience was growing, and not only in the South, as drivers such as Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt were attracting millions of fans. But Roush in 1983 was not ready to compete. He had limited experience outside of drag racing, and while Jack Roush Performance Engineering continued to grow, he lacked the financial resources to mount a credible effort at the Winston Cup level.

So once more, Roush became a racecar owner.

With a new subsidiary, Roush Racing, he built his own engines and cars, and hired drivers to compete with them in the Sports Car Club of America's Trans-Am Series and the like. Roush Racing secured a manufacturer's title for Ford in the Trans-Am Series in 1984, and won the first of 10 24 Hours of Daytona races, some with celebrity drivers such as Paul Newman and Bruce Jenner taking a turn at the wheel, the next year. Roush was ready for NASCAR.

ROUSH'S DEVOTION to his work affected his family, including his and Pauline's third and final child, Jack Jr., born in 1972. The Roushes occasionally vacationed, but more often than not the father spent weekends at the track -- usually without his children or his wife, who did not share his passion. "With all my racing and building my business," Roush said, "I have not been an average family man."

But Roush decided to become more involved with his son when Jack was 61/2 years old; it was the late 1970s, and Roush had stopped drag racing, which freed up more of his weekends. He bought his son a go-cart, registered him in a carting league, and took the boy to a fenced area behind one of his shops, where he laid out a small practice course with pylons.

"Of course, Pauline thought this was wonderful," Roush said. "I hadn't spent much time with the girls up to that point. She figured that I might be turning over a new leaf."

Pauline joined Roush and young Jack the first evening of practice, and she liked what she saw: the little boy she still rocked to sleep in her arms every night noodling around on his go-cart. But the boy was a quick learner, and when Pauline next visited, two nights later, she witnessed something different -- a kid getting his first taste of real speed.

"Jack's got it up on two wheels," Roush said, "turning both left and right, sliding it back and forth. He's really got the hang of this thing. We'd gone through about five gallons of gas, and all but worn out a first set of tires. Pauline said something extraordinarily unpleasant to me -- I think it's the only time she ever showed anger with her disapproval -- and slammed the car door and left. She realized that she'd been duped, that really I was just getting ready to go racing again."

Jack Jr. was 10 when his father's work brought him back to the racetrack. Roush offered to hire someone to take his place with his son's go-cart program, but speed had not gotten its hooks into the son as deeply as the father. Music and computers were Jack Jr.'s love, and racing without dad lacked the appeal of the earlier days. "He didn't know if it would be as much fun without me," Roush said.

So Jack Jr. stopped racing to indulge his own passions, which led him as a young adult to found an Internet search-engine company with friends.

KURT BUSCH WAS the first child of a couple from suburban Chicago who had dated in high school and married soon thereafter. Gaye took a job as a secretary, Tom as an automobile mechanic. In his spare time, Tom built and restored hot rods, custom cars that are displayed, but not raced.

Weary of Illinois winters, the Busches moved to Las Vegas in 1977. An acquaintance at the dealership where Tom found work sought Tom's help in preparing a 1968 Mercury Cougar for small-time stock-car racing. Tom did not expect to drive it, but when the friend asked if he would, Tom figured why not? He won his first race at a quarter-mile track in Las Vegas in 1978, the year Kurt was born. Tom had tasted speed, and he liked it.

In the ensuing years, Tom enjoyed success driving cars he'd modified or built with parts from junkyards, dealers, friends, or whoever offered the best deal. He raced for love, not money. In some events, first place earned just $25 and a line of agate type in the local paper. Even with Gaye's income from her job in data processing, Tom, a traveling tools salesman now, could afford only the occasional race outside of Nevada. But he won state championships and a measure of Las Vegas renown.

Meanwhile, a growing boy became enchanted.

"I want to race with Dad," Kurt started saying before he was in first grade. When Kurt was 6, Tom bought him a used Herbie the Love Bug go-cart with a Briggs & Stratton engine, more commonly used to power lawn mowers. Tom considered Kurt too young to compete, but he encouraged him to drive a course they laid out with plastic buckets on the cul-de-sac where they lived. As his father timed him with a stopwatch, Kurt demonstrated fearlessness and precision. Uncommon instinct seemed to guide him, and speed thrilled him.

The year he turned 16, Busch became eligible to compete in a class of racing called Dwarf Cars. His first race was on a dirt track. He started dead last, and finished fifth behind the winner, Tom. The son's first victory came a few weeks later, on his initial race on asphalt, faster than dirt.

Busch realized his early promise, proving the master of every increasingly competitive class of car that he raced, winning Nevada Dwarf Car Rookie of the Year in 1994, Nevada Dwarf Car champion in 1995, Rookie of the Year in 1996 in the Legends Series, top rookie in NASCAR's Southwest Series in 1998. Cars in that division are nearly as large as Winston Cup cars, and the series brought Busch to tracks in Colorado, Arizona, and California. He hoped someday to race in NASCAR's big leagues, but until he won Jack Roush's 1999 national audition, the so-called Gong Show, he never imagined he would get his chance so fast.

BUSCH TRAVELED an uneven path after his stunning Craftsman Truck Series debut as a Roush racer in the February 2000 Daytona 250. Through the spring of 2000, he finished 2nd twice -- and also 13th, 21st, and 23rd.

Then came the catastrophic race of June 17, 2000, at Kentucky Speedway.

By now, frustration ate at the young man. He'd won consistently at every level of competition before, but here he was at almost the midpoint of the Truck Series season, winless. His Roush Racing teammate, Greg Biffle, meanwhile, had recorded two wins and seven top-five finishes, and was well on his way to the Series title -- in just his third year of driving in the Truck Series.

This is my weekend, Busch thought. I'm going to win.

But then he broke a motor and missed qualifying, which consigned him to starting last.

He still intended to win, and 23 laps into the race, he'd advanced to third, not with masterful racing, but by pushing beyond the edge. Busch was driving so aggressively that once he slid sideways, a misstep that required consummate skill -- and luck -- to keep from wrecking.

Returning from a pit stop in ninth place, Busch saw that Biffle had the lead. He's going to win another one! Busch thought. This is my race!

Busch charged, and -- rounding a turn at some 180 miles an hour -- he fishtailed. He tried to steer through it, but his front tires dug in, sending him spinning toward the wall.

Busch's body tensed, and motion seemed to slow. The impact with the concrete wall destroyed his racecar, but Busch did not hear a sound.

"It was like in the movies," he said, "when they have a scene and they take the sound and everything out."

Busch felt nothing. "No pain, no sound. I'm watching everything," he said. "I didn't know where my hands were. I didn't know where my feet were, or my body was. I didn't feel my knee hit the steering column. You're just in God's will, so to speak."

Mangled, the racecar finally stopped. Flames engulfed it.

"I looked to my left, I looked to my right, I guess I'm OK. It felt like an hour went by unbuckling the belt, taking the steering wheel off. I'm not in a rush at all. I'm just doing the motions and I climb out of the truck. Now this is all in slow mo, me getting out of the truck, but I watch the video and I am violent, throwing everything around, trying to get out."

Somehow, Busch's only injury was a bruised knee. But he was badly dazed, and during an interview after the crash, he babbled.

"My brain just got scrambled," he said. "I said some words that didn't even match what the interviewer was asking me. I looked like . . . an idiot. Terrible."

Far from discouraging Busch from racing, the wreck reminded him of the need for patience. Speed had an unshakable grip on the young man.

BUSCH COULDN'T HAVE guessed it at the time, but Jack Roush was increasingly impressed with his newest driver during that first part of the 2000 Truck Series season.

Roush valued Busch's quiet confidence, the respect he paid elders, the gratitude he showed his parents for their sacrifices, the fact that in his press kit, he had listed "My Dad, Tom," as his Favorite Person in History.

"He's a sweet, nice kid," Roush said. "You'd like to adopt him, you know. If you could pick him to be in your family or be one of your heirs that would certainly be less painful than raising your own!"

But character did not move a man faster than his competitors: uncommon talent and dedication did, and here, too, Roush considered Busch a rare find. The kid had never visited most of the speedways on the Truck Series circuit, never mind raced them. Nor had he ever raced against most of his competitors, some of whom were veterans not only of Truck Series racing, but the Winston Cup as well. Mindful of his deficiencies, Busch arrived early at each track to become acquainted with it alone and undisturbed. He walked the entire length, examining the composition of the paving, the angle of the banking, the sharpness of the turns, the grooves left by the racecars, the play of sunlight, which, as a race wore on, changed the track temperature, affecting the grip of the tires and necessitating changes in air pressure and suspension. Away from the track, Busch watched videos, replayed races in his mind, sought the advice of his mentor and his crew chief, and pondered. Like Roush, he forgot nothing.

And that was another quality that impressed the boss. Roush tolerated rookie mistakes; they were an essential part of learning, but he loathed seeing the same mistake twice. Busch never repeated a mistake. He'd crashed at Kentucky, but Roush was certain he wouldn't again, not for the same reason.

BUSCH REBOUNDED after his disastrous March 25, 2001, Winston Cup race at Bristol Motor Speedway, with a fourth-place finish at Texas Motor Speedway, on April 1. But he finished only 33rd at the race after that, at Martinsville, Va., on April 8. After the Easter Sunday break, one of only three weekends off during the long season, the Cup circuit visited Alabama's Talladega Superspeedway, a track similar to Daytona -- only faster.

As he strapped himself into his car for the start of the race, held on Sunday, April 22, Busch was mindful of his only other Cup race on a superspeedway. He hoped to redeem himself from his 41st-place finish in the season-opening Daytona 500.

"All right pardner, couple of deep breaths, make sure your belts are tight, and let's go do it," spotter Bruce Hayes said over the radio as the drivers started their engines.

Busch advanced through the field swiftly, reaching fifth place about a third of the way into the race. "I'm riding around with the top down," he radioed. "Feelin' good."

"Nice and smooth," Hayes said on the next lap, when Busch had reached fourth. "It's all single-file behind you. Just nice and smooth."

Three laps later, Busch was in second.

The next lap, 79, he took first.

"Clear all around," Hayes said. "How's she feel?"

It felt strange -- and terribly exciting. For the first time in his Winston Cup career, Busch was leading a race, the decal-covered cars of his every competitor visible only in his rearview mirror, the road ahead inviting pure speed. "What a sensational feeling to have all of the colors behind me!" Busch later reflected. "It was as if the world had changed to black and white. All that I could see was the asphalt and the concrete wall."

A few laps later, Busch lost the lead, but stayed near the front of the pack. With just 20 laps to go, he was running in second place, followed by Mark Martin in fourth and Jeff Burton in fifth. Sitting on her husband's pit cart, Kim Burton chewed a pen. But so far, no one had wrecked.

"You're doing great, Kurt," said crew chief Ben Leslie, who had replaced Matt Chambers. "Stay lined up and we'll burn some laps off."

"Just hold a pretty wheel," Hayes said.

With four laps remaining, Busch was running second. Watching from atop Martin's cart, Jack Roush thought his rookie could win.

But suddenly, the No. 55 car of Bobby Hamilton was closing in.

"He's coming!" Hayes said. "That 55's coming! Outside. Outside! Still there. Still there!"

Busch tried to hold off Hamilton, who was twice his age. The cars roared past pit road to begin the final lap. The flagman signalled a clear track.

"White flag -- white flag, my brother!" Hayes said. "Nice and easy. Fifty-five is charging, 8 on the outside. Two-wide. Watch that 10 car."

Hamilton beat Busch to the checkered flag, and Tony Stewart stole second place away. But Busch finished third, the best showing of his Cup career and better than any other rookie this day. He now stood only two points behind Kevin Harvick in the Rookie of the Year contest.

"Wonderful job, guys," Busch radioed to his crew.

Though no one had expected an accident-free race, the Talladega 500 amazingly had ended without a single wreck. For only the second time in superspeedway history, the caution flag never flew.

As the race's top-finishing rookie, Busch, accompanied by Roush, joined Hamilton and Stewart on the media-center stage. "He did a great job," Stewart said of Busch. "For a rookie, he drove like a veteran."

Busch overflowed with praise for his new crew chief, his new sponsor, and his mentor, Jack Roush. "It was just a great weekend," the rookie said.

Roush recounted a conversation he had the year before with a friend.

"We talked about what we might do," Roush said, "and we both agreed that Kurt coming in directly from one year in the Truck Series into the Winston Cup Series was probably the craziest thing we could do this year -- but we felt the need for speed."