Once Around the Track

CHAPTER II

ENGINE NOISE

Your Online Source for NASCAR News & Views

Wonder Women? Engine Noise is hearing that a new team is being formed in NASCAR-with a twist. The crew chief and pit crew will all be female. An all-woman group of investors, spearheaded by chemical heiress Christine Berenson, is supposed to be putting together this Ladies’ Team for NASCAR Cup racing with the intention of running a full season beginning next year. The wheel man will be a guy, though, because they need a veteran Cup driver to add some experience to this novice team. Who will they choose as their token man? Berenson isn’t ready to announce yet, and since EN ’s prognostication skills are rusty, we might miss the mark, so to ward off all your questions, we say: “Don’t badger us for an answer!”

#30

Christine Berenson tapped her computer screen with one perfectly manicured nail. “That last bit is in code somehow, isn’t it?” she asked her visitor.

The big man leaned across the desk to read the Engine Noise article with its vastly premature, yet accurate, assessment of the new NASCAR team. Then he settled back in the leather visitor’s chair with an enigmatic smile. “Of course, it is. In that last sentence the writer managed to work in the names of Rusty Wallace, Mark Martin, and Ward Burton-all veteran drivers who might conceivably be lured back into Cup racing if the right deal came along. Oh, and Badger Jenkins, of course. So they hedged their bets a little on who the driver would be, but they did come up with the right answer. They usually do.”

She frowned. “How do they find out these things?”

Her visitor shrugged, seemingly unperturbed by this security leak. In the world of motorsports, the man was a cross between a rock star and the secretary of state. He knew everything and everyone, and in another sphere of influence, he had been an acquaintance of Christine Berenson for twenty years. They had served on several advisory boards together and had exchanged pleasantries at the usual charity events that pass for a social life among the moneyed classes. The man’s current role was that of a friendly expert, giving her advice out of the goodness of his heart, because of their longstanding association. She thought of him as the Big Wheel.

“I wouldn’t worry about it, Christine,” he said. “Engine Noise just reports rumors, which means that word about your team has already leaked out from somewhere. At least this way you know that the news is in the wind. And it isn’t such a worrying disclosure, after all, is it? You were planning to announce it soon anyhow.”

“But how did they know?”

He shrugged. “People call in tips to the Web site, just for the hell of it, I guess. The people at Engine Noise talk to hauler drivers, waitresses, shop people. You’ve been looking for a place around Mooresville to locate your operation, aren’t you? Maybe your real-estate agent blabbed. Or someone could have overheard your dinner conversation in a restaurant. But it will be common knowledge soon enough, once your NASCAR application is formally approved, so why fret about it?”

Christine sighed. “NASCAR application. You have to apply to join this sport, as if it were a country club.”

“It is, in a way. NASCAR is the only privately owned sport in the world. You should be fine, though. They are chiefly interested in whether you intend to play by the rules and whether you can afford to compete. I don’t think there’s any question of that.”

“No, I suppose not,” said Christine. “But it is a rather unsettling feeling to know that one is being watched.”

The man laughed. “Get used to it then! NASCAR is such a small world that you can dial a wrong number and still talk. But by and large, they’re nice people, and if you need any advice, most of them will be glad to help you.”

“Will they give me recommendations? Our biggest problem is that we don’t know anybody. How do we find mechanics and fabricators and all the rest of the people we need?”

He raised his eyebrows. “Mechanics and fabricators. All female?”

“That won’t be possible,” she said, with the air of someone rehearsing a sound bite. “Behind the scenes we need good, qualified people regardless of who they are. I just need to know how to find them.”

“Then hire a team manager who does know the sport, Christine, and then trust that team manager’s judgment. The less you meddle, the better, I’d say, until you get a better sense of what you’re doing. And don’t expect to do a lot of winning in your first year of competition. It will take a while for all the components to jell, you know.”

“But surely if we hire top-notch people…?”

“Experience counts,” he reminded her. “You specified an all-female pit crew. That will put you a few laps short on experience right there. They’ll learn soon enough, I expect, but you mustn’t expect too much too soon.”

“What if the sponsors get impatient?”

He considered the point. “Winning is pleasant,” he conceded. “But all in all, most sponsors would rather have a personable driver who is popular with the fans than an obnoxious winner who endears himself to no one. Ideally, what you want is a handsome nice guy who wins.”

“Jeff Gordon.”

He smiled. She was learning fast. “Exactly. If you could afford him. Which you cannot.”

She sighed. “It would take the economy of a third-world country to afford him. Imagine our surprise when we discovered that.”

“It’s not like hiring a pilot, you know, Christine. You’re not hiring a high-speed chauffeur. There’s a lot more involved in the job than just driving the car. Your driver is a brand, an image. He can attract sponsors or scare them off. But tell me: Why Badger Jenkins?”

Christine stared. “Have you ever seen him?”

He laughed. “Almost all of him,” he said dryly. “I once saw him change into his firesuit before a race. I can’t say that the sight of any of them in skivvies does much for my blood pressure, but you might be favorably impressed.”

She thought it best to ignore that remark. “Badger is certainly personable. Photogenic. People seem to like him. To us he seemed an obvious choice.”

Her NASCAR mentor was silent for so long that she thought he wasn’t going to answer, but at last he said, “You know, Badger has had a hiatus in his career. Spent some time between rides, which isn’t a usual thing. Didn’t you ask yourself why that was?”

“No. We thought we were lucky to have a chance to hire him. I suppose we chalked it up to Fate. But since you brought it up, tell me: Why was he available?”

He hesitated. “Well, Badger is a nice young man…”

“Oh God! What is it? Drugs? Alcohol? Girl Scouts? Boy Scouts?”

“None of the above, Christine. The word around the garage is that he’s just a little laid-back, that’s all.”

“A race car driver? Laid-back? You mean he loses? He won’t take chances?”

“Not at all. On the track he’s a mad dog. He’ll try to put that car in places I wouldn’t try to fit a shoe horn. Oh, he’s brave enough, all right. Except that I’m not sure it really counts as brave if you’re so deep in denial that you think death is something that only happens to other people.”

“Never mind that. You admit he’s a good driver. I know for a fact that he’s gorgeous. So what’s the matter with him?”

The Big Wheel sighed. “Nothing is the matter with him-at least not by the standards of the old days in racing. But times change. Badger is an old-style Cup driver. Southern, fearless, and likable. If he had been around in the era of Cale Yarborough and Junior Johnson, he’d have been a champion. But now-”

“Now?”

“He just wants to race. He thinks that’s what his job is. Drive the car. Then he’d like to go home. He doesn’t work in the textile mill like some of the old-timers did on weekdays, but he definitely thinks he can have another life besides Cup racing. And he can’t.”

“He can’t?”

“Not in this day and age, Christine. He has to live and breathe racing. The team is his family. The job is his life. When he isn’t involved in the mechanics of racing, he ought to be giving interviews, doing charity work, filming commercials, and generally keeping himself on the map of celebrity. Dating a movie star would be a nice touch.”

She shuddered. “You make it sound as if we bought him, instead of just hiring him to race on Sundays.”

The Big Wheel considered it. “We pay them a lot of money,” he said at last. “And it isn’t forever, you know. The career of an athlete isn’t terribly long in most cases. Twenty years if he’s lucky. Anyhow, if he doesn’t want the job on those terms, there’s ten thousand other guys who would crawl over broken glass to get it. You’d be wise not to let him forget that.”

“Thanks. I’ll do my best. But he is a good driver, right?”

“He’s a natural. Now it’s up to you to help him win.”

“And how do I manage that?”

“Hire the best people you can find; pay them enough to keep them; don’t meddle too much; let them know you appreciate them; and give them the wherewithal to win.”

She smiled. “As simple as that, huh?”

He shrugged. “Well, it’s like diet and exercise. Everybody knows how to do it. The question is: Can you make yourself do what it takes even when it isn’t easy?”

“I guess I’ll find out,” she said.

Ralph Earnhardt. Marvin Panch. Benny Parsons. Bobby Allison. She had it now.

Julie Carmichael stuffed the scrap of newspaper back into the pocket of her jeans. She wondered how other people remembered phone numbers. Or license plates. Street addresses. It was the only advantage she could think of to her unconventional upbringing: every number to her was a NASCAR name and face, which meant that she seldom forgot a number or transposed the digits. The difference between 12 and 21 was Ryan Newman versus Ricky Rudd-you weren’t likely to mix up those two. Her skill at remembering numbers was certainly useful, but it didn’t make up for the rest of her bleak childhood.

She remembered all the Spam and pinto bean dinners…the smell of motor oil and gasoline that pervaded the small frame house and never quite went away…the bill collectors she’d been sent to the door to deal with, in hopes that a wide-eyed little girl could convince them to leave. Those were hard times, but Daddy always said they would get better. Prosperity was just around the next turn in the track, he used to say. Only it wasn’t.

She had been an only child back in Rowan County, but she hadn’t felt like one. The real child of the household had been Daddy’s pride and joy-a hulking steel monster with a room of its own: the garage. For as long as Julie could remember, that car, or one of its predecessors, had taken precedence over her. All the spare time that Daddy could steal from his day job went into his relationship with that car-tinkering with it, racing it, repairing it. The car always got fed, got new shoes, got “doctored”-whether she did or not. Like some revered male heir, to whom its parents sacrificed everything in hopes that it would someday support them, the car was catered to, and the family often went without so that the monster’s needs could be met. The car was their hope of prosperity. That had been the plan, certainly. That hunk of steel and plastic was supposed to win races, and ultimately carry them all away to some happily-ever-after beyond Victory Lane, and from there onto bigger tracks and grander rides, until finally they’d have a fancy house and enough money so that everybody could have new shoes and a second helping of meat.

Well, it hadn’t worked like that.

Despite all the sacrifices, Big Brother the Car had never lived up to its promise, and Daddy had died too young to make it work or to wise up and try to do something else with his life. Julie decided that it was up to her to even the score between humans and machines, and she figured that cars owed her something to make up for the lousy childhood she’d had. Early on she had worked out a strategy to succeed. She treated herself like a car. She stayed as pretty as she could, because paint schemes matter, and she made excellent grades in high school to streamline her path to greater things. She stayed away from roughneck boys who would have constituted a detour in her life plan, and finally, she won a scholarship to Virginia Tech, where she’d studied automotive engineering with a fierce determination that allowed her no time for socializing or extracurricular activities. She graduated from Tech with highest honors, because she had pursued car knowledge like a bounty hunter going after a fugitive, which in a way she was. After graduation she had her pick of job offers, but instead of heading for a research and development job with one of the big car manufacturers, she had chosen to devote her talents to NASCAR.

Her advisor’s jaw had dropped when she told him. “NASCAR, Julie?” he’d said. “How could you possibly choose that over an industry job?”

She’d smiled and said that she thought it might be an adventure, which was true. Industry jobs would always be there, but she thought she’d like to try stock car racing first. “Daddy would have been proud,” she’d said primly, speaking of her family’s racing tradition with a nostalgic pride she did not feel.

She still had nightmares about standing on the roof of an old sedan with a stopwatch in her hand, ready to time a car that hurtled past her at breakneck speed. She could still feel the dust in her throat and the chill of the night air on her bare legs. Carmichael.

Her father’s folks had been of Irish descent. Maybe in an earlier time they would have been horse crazy, instead of obsessed with cars. Maybe this obsession with speed was bred in the bone. Sometimes she could feel it, too, but mostly she felt the rage of the slighted child toward the hated favorite. Now, though, she would be in charge.

We got him.

Christine Berenson held up the photo in front of her as if it were a mirror.

So this is Badger Jenkins.

As always with Christine Berenson, the professional reaction came before the personal one. She acknowledged that whatever his shortcomings educationally and socially, the camera obviously loved Badger Jenkins, definitely an asset in a world where money buys speed, because sponsors provide the money. Win or lose, a pretty boy in the driver’s seat could bring in corporate sponsors, not to mention selling a million tee shirts, coffee mugs, and other assorted ritual items to his besotted admirers. Her advisors said that Badger Jenkins was a good driver-a seat-of-the-pants driver, all nerves and instinct-but she was more pleased that the other end of him was marketable. For business reasons.

Well, mostly for business reasons.

The face that looked back at her from the photo looked nothing like hers. It was a strong, masculine face that seemed composed of sharp edges-prominent cheekbones, a blade of a nose, a jutting jaw-even the brown eyes were piercing. It wasn’t an angry face, though. Focused, perhaps. Determined.

Struggling to have a thought, Christine told herself with a wry smile, fighting the attraction of that face. He was, after all, just a race car driver. Imagine trying to make him sit through an opera.

She sighed. If their genders were reversed, she could keep him as a pet and no one would think twice about it, but women were denied that luxury. They were expected to marry someone even more powerful than themselves, and that usually meant someone older and more sharklike. This little one-trick pony would probably end his career in half a dozen years with two million dollars in the bank and four concussions, and think himself both rich and lucky. No, you couldn’t ally yourself with him on any formal basis. Idly, she ran her forefinger along the perfect jawline in the photo.

But he was undeniably handsome, in the same way that a thoroughbred or a Harrier jet is beautiful: perfection of design with no conscious desire to please. The man was looking away from the camera, absorbed in some private reverie of his own, indifferent to the effect those perfect features might have on the observer. He was too busy being himself to care what anybody thought about him-exactly like a stallion.

That’s what he reminded her of: her first horse. That little bundle of nerves that was so beautiful and so much stronger than she was. She had to learn, by sheer force of will, to get the better of him by out-thinking him. It was a lesson that had served her well, and one worth remembering now.

This man looked as if he didn’t care what anyone thought about him as long as he could do whatever it was he was determined to do. Win races, she supposed.

She wondered what it would feel like to be so unencumbered of the feelings of others. Certainly she had never known such self-possession. As far back as she could remember, the pressure had been there to be pretty, to be smart, to be pleasing to others. First Mummy had instilled in her the message that people only liked pretty girls, slender girls, smiling girls. And if she had doubted the truth of those early lessons, then half a dozen years of adolescence would have shown her the light, because to be an ugly duckling in the world of private schools and debutante parties was to experience hell on earth. The poor, chubby, frizzy-haired beast on her hall had swallowed a bottle of aspirin, had her stomach pumped, and then went away forever, giggling with relief and joy.

What would it feel like to exercise just because you enjoyed it, rather than in social self-defense? To befriend people because they were interesting, and not because they were useful? To live without second-guessing yourself every waking moment?

One might as well ask a thoroughbred. Certainly this pretty boy was not up to philosophical discussions. But that was all right. She would do the thinking for the team, and she would see that he was treated well and kept happy. Just as she would have looked after a thoroughbred had the other form of racing appealed to her instead.

“But why would you want to invest in a stock car?” Tate had asked her, in mild bewilderment, as if she’d ordered oysters in May.

She had given him a vague smile and a little shrug, trying to formulate a polite response. It wasn’t as if he actually cared. It was, after all, her money. “I don’t know,” she said. “Horses are so passé, I suppose.”

He nodded, not really interested in anything she did, but as unfailingly polite as six generations of inbreeding could possibly make him. “Yes, one does feel that the sport is somewhat quaint in this age of lasers and space shuttles.”

She nodded. They vaguely knew of people in northern Virginia who kept polo teams, and certainly Indy racing was fashionably daring in their social circle, but she rather fancied the idea of cars that looked like actual street vehicles and the reverse snob appeal of stock car racing. NASCAR was indeed a millionaire’s sport, even if few people realized that fact. It was different. Christine liked being different, as long as she did not incur any social punishment for it. Stock car racing promised not to be boring. The other women with whom she had formed this venture all sounded so idealistic, talking about opportunities for women and automotive safety research, and she had murmured agreement with all these lofty goals, but really her motives were much more basic than that.

And it was her money.

Tate, making a noble effort to keep the conversational ball rolling, said, “Well, I suppose cars are easier to repair than horses.”

She nodded, as if this had been a consideration. Then, amusing herself by coming as close to the truth as she dared, Christine had said, “And after all, darling, what is the point of owning a horse if you can’t ride it?”

Badger Jenkins. Oh, yes.

Christine Berenson looked at the stack of reports on her desk and sighed. Who knew that starting a sports venture could be so…well…corporate?

She supposed that it made sense, really. Everyone knew that NASCAR was a multibillion-dollar business. The only family-owned sport in the world. But somehow the idea of investing in a form of entertainment obscured the fact that it was simply a business like anything else. With a grimace, she pictured the operators of the Roman Colosseum toting up their expenses for lion upkeep and arena personnel against the projected gate receipts of the games.

First, they’d had to line up sponsors, because you couldn’t even play the game without twenty million dollars or so to bankroll the operation. It was amazing how many months of planning and meeting and schmoozing had to take place before the gentleman could start his engine. The race may go at 180 mph, but the preliminary phase went at a snail’s pace. So much to plan and negotiate.

Find a suitable property to use as a race shop. They had decided to rent one in the vicinity of Mooresville rather than go to the extra expense of new construction, because, after all, one never knew whether the venture would turn out to be successful or not. Most of the race shops were within hailing distance of Mooresville anyhow, which meant that finding some suitable but vacant garage space was a feasible plan, and the personnel to run the operation would also be available locally.

She sighed, looking at the morass of papers on her desk. Stacks of job applications and résumés and letters of recommendation. Who knew how many people were required to run even a one-car racing team? She marveled at the figures before her. Anyone who thought that stock car racing was one man driving one car was decades out of the loop. The venture was beginning to remind her of the space program: a few people going up in high-tech machines, backed by a small army of engineers and technicians on the ground. Same with racing, apparently. The race shop, once established and outfitted, would house dozens of support personnel who would never even go to the speedways themselves. These “shop dogs” built the cars, refurbished old or damaged ones, engineered the motors, tinkered with body design to gain the best advantage for a given track, and did a dozen other things to ensure that the driver had the best car the team could afford to field. Engineers…fabricators…mechanics…secretaries…janitors…publicists…It added up to a lot of salaries. Who knew?

She had been vaguely aware of the need for a pit crew for the race itself-people to change tires and put fuel in the car-but this behind-the-scenes infrastructure of personnel had taken her by surprise, although she didn’t know why it should have. Everything was complex these days. How naive they had been back when they had thought that securing the services of Badger Jenkins was the answer to all their problems. Now, she sometimes found herself thinking that he hardly mattered at all. Certainly his talent could not compensate for poor engineering, bad equipment, or a lack of research and development. That face would sell a lot of tee shirts, though. And it ought to lure in a fair number of sponsors that wanted a good-looking athlete to personify their products.

Every day she was finding out that she needed answers to questions that had never even occurred to her when the project began. Fortunately, she had seasoned advisors on board to answer those questions, but still it gave her pause to think of how little they had known about the logistics of it all when they began. There were questions that had never even occurred to them at the outset.

How does the pit crew get to far-flung race tracks like Sonoma or Phoenix or New Hampshire? And most of the races these days were well beyond driving distance from the greater Charlotte area, home of the majority of race teams. Where do you house them for race weekends, and who feeds them?

None of these minor problems of logistics had occurred to them when they began the team, but little by little, practicality had intruded upon the daydream of owning a human racehorse, and one by one, questions were asked and answered, often by courtly old gentlemen who seemed within a syllable of using the term “little lady” in their discourse. But however antiquated the men’s world views, their advice had been eminently practical, and little by little, the answers fell into place, so that now, many months later, they could actually say that the team existed; that it was housed in adequate, if not luxurious, quarters, in Cabarrus County; and that it was staffed by competent professional engineers, mechanics, and other support persons necessary to the running of a race team.

This behind-the-scenes crew was, necessarily, predominantly male. This gender bias was unfortunate but essential, Christine thought with a sigh. Fielding an all-female team sounded charming and democratic on the face of it, but the truth was: one simply could not fill all the behind-the-scenes technical positions with women. Racing had for too long been an all-male domain, so that most of the current expertise, the hands-on experience of stock car racing, resided in male brains, and the fact was that one simply could not do without them. After a brief meeting and a careful examination of the cold, hard facts, the investors agreed that there was no choice in the matter. The behind-the-scenes personnel would have to be mostly male, and that’s all there was to it. But the pit crew was the most visible part of the operation, anyhow, aside from the driver, and in that area they did have an element of choice.

She had called a meeting of her fellow investors to, the cliché made her smile, bring them up to speed. Technically, they were owners, too, but she was really the one in charge. Some of them just chipped in their money for a lark, believing that her venture was a good investment, and certainly were able to afford the loss if it wasn’t. It was fun. A couple of the others were interested in the sport as fans, but they had promised to give her a free hand in the running of the team. But they enjoyed getting together, hearing about her adventures in this brave new world. Sometimes she felt like the star of a private reality show for millionaires: Survivor: NASCAR. But she didn’t mind entertaining them, considering how much money they’d entrusted her with. And if she learned the sport well, and if luck was on her side, then in a little while nobody would be laughing at her. That was the important part of the enterprise. Badger was just a side bet with herself. The icing on the cake.

“I’m working on assembling a pit crew,” Christine told the assembled gathering. “How hard can that be? Change the tires, put gas in the car, clean the windshield-”

One of the younger women raised her hand. “Actually, Christine, I read that race car windshields are tear-off sheets of-”

“I know,” said Christine through clenched teeth. After all these months and all this work, how could they think she wouldn’t know that? She forced a smile. “I was simply making a point. Thank you, Faye. But the premise is sound. Anyone of reasonable strength and agility can be trained to perform those tasks in a relatively short time-unlike the intricacies of engineering and mechanics, which take years of study and experience. Fortunately, people at the race and television viewers will see the pit crew and not the shop personnel, so in accordance with our intended goal, to the casual observer, the team will still look all female.”

“Well, except for Badger,” said Diane Hodges, the former Miss Texas who had married into Oil. “He could make my toes curl through a locked door.”

A large framed poster of Badger Jenkins in his firesuit hung on the wall of the office. With one accord, the investors turned to study it. One or two smiled approvingly, and one of them said, “He reminds me of my grandson.”

“Perhaps we should have tried harder to find a female race car driver,” said the investor from Winnetka. “There’s that girl at Indy-”

“We can’t afford her,” Christine replied with the assurance of one who has had this argument so many times that her response was a sound bite. “There are half a dozen women in the lower echelons of stock car racing as well, but either they are under contract to one of the big teams in development programs or they are out of our price range. Or both.”

“I like Badger just fine,” said Miss Texas.

“I’m sure that a lot of women will agree with you,” said Christine. “That bodes well for our recruiting of new secondary sponsors. Companies who sell primarily to women will want an image that appeals to them.”

“Oh, honey, he does.”

“And remember that souvenir merchandising is a significant source of income in motorsports. Pretty faces sell tee shirts…hats…coffee mugs. The potential is huge. Even if he loses, we’ll still win. But, of course, we want to win.”