Once Around the Track

CHAPTER IV

In her more fanciful moments, Rosalind Manning sometimes pictured herself being interviewed by an earnest television journalist, who was leaning forward breathlessly and asking her, “But why, of all things, did you join a NASCAR team?” And Rosalind, perched on the black vinyl sofa under hot studio lights, would stare into camera number two and say, “Because I hate my mother.”

Daydreams aside, Rosalind knew that such an interview would probably never take place, except possibly on the SPEED Channel where no one her mother knew would ever see it, and even then Rosalind would not be so forthright about her motives. She was, after all, her mother’s daughter, with several centuries of patrician reticence bred in the bone. No matter how much she might resent her relatives, in many ways she was just like them. The family never discussed its personal conflicts with outsiders, much less on-air to the immediate world, but the fact that she would not broadcast her resentment did not make the statement any less true. She did hate her mother, and for precisely that reason she planned to deal the woman the ultimate insult: She would join the world of stock car racing.

Not that her mother had anything against sports. Rosalind had been taught to ride a Shetland pony before she could walk, and she had the requisite number of tarnished silver cups stashed in a closet somewhere, attesting to a youth spent competing in local horse shows. The family had several friends who were followers of Formula One racing, which was considered quite respectable, even in the best circles, probably because there was a large European contingent to the sport, or because the cars bore no resemblance to anything one might actually drive. Upper-class pursuits had to be archaic or frivolous to be acceptable; practicality was for the proletariat.

And American stock car racing? Her mother equated it with competitive bowling or even professional wrestling. She thought it wasn’t a sport, and that the cars looked too much like personal vehicles to be interesting. Surely anybody could drive one? Rosalind, who knew quite a bit about the sport, could have set her mother straight on that. She had the little speech down pat for when the subject came up in conversation with acquaintances.

“Oh, so you think stock car racing isn’t a sport, do you? You think that because you can drive a Chevrolet it’s easy, huh? Fine. Let’s see you get in your car and drive for five hundred miles without getting out, and the longest you can stop is thirteen seconds. You have to watch beside and behind you all the time, because forty-two other cars are coming at you at a speed of three miles per minute. And the temperature in your car is over a hundred degrees. The g-forces pull your body to the right while you are trying to turn the wheel to the left to make the turns; if you’re not strong enough to maintain control, you go into the wall at one hundred eighty miles per hour, and if you are strong enough not to wreck, your body will feel like you spent three hours tumbling in a clothes dryer. At the end of every race the heels of both your hands will be solid blisters from fighting the wheel, and you may have burns on your feet as well if your suit doesn’t protect you enough. You need the hand-eye coordination of a bomb technician, the depth perception of a sniper, the courage of a smoke jumper, and the strength and stamina of a rock climber. Oh, yeah, it’s a sport.”

She seldom got to deliver this speech in its entirety before her listeners’ eyes glazed over, but she enjoyed the self-righteous glow it gave her to defend the downtrodden. She had never attempted to enlighten her mother with this lecture, however. Listening was not Mother’s forte. She would let you rattle on until you ran out of steam, and then she would favor you with that superior little smile of hers and solemnly agree with everything you had said, in tones suggesting that you lined your hat with tin foil.

You couldn’t tell Mother anything she didn’t already know.

“Really, Rosalind,” she would have said. “You might as well go off and join the circus.”

Well, thought Rosalind, so she had. Joined the circus. Exactly. NASCAR: Brightly colored haulers assemble each week in an arena in a different town, a different state. Then on Saturday night or Sunday afternoon the “greatest show on earth” is performed for a cheering crowd of thousands, and when it is over, the workers break it all down and move it to another place to begin all over again the next week. The circus, indeed. Rosalind would like to have seen her mother try to explain that to the ladies in her club.

As satisfying as it was to horrify Mrs. Manning with her career decision, Rosalind wasn’t joining a NASCAR team only to spite her mother. That was just the icing on the cake. Thanks to her father, she really was interested in the mechanics of the sport. From the time she could walk, “Daddy’s girl” had preferred wrenches and pliers to dolls. Daddy had always been tinkering with some machine in his spare time-a remote-controlled airplane, the motor of his sports car, even a broken kitchen appliance. If it had gears or moving parts, it was fair game for Clifton Manning. Early on Rosalind had learned that the way to Daddy’s heart was via a stream of alternating current.

How cute she had been in a little pink overall, with a socket wrench in each chubby fist, and an axle grease moustache. When she was in fourth grade, Rosalind’s father had died of a stroke, and she had burrowed into her grief for a while by sitting out in Daddy’s workshop, straightening the tools, and keeping the place swept, as if by doing so she could entice him into coming back.

By the time she recovered from her loss, Rosalind was as hooked on machinery as her father had been, or perhaps her interest was the result of a genetic legacy from him. She had stuck with her obsession through years of ballet classes, pony club meets, dancing lessons, and four years in an all-girls boarding school, where “shop” meant “Bloomingdale’s” and “auto mechanics” was not an option in the curriculum. Despite her mother’s best efforts at molding her into a young lady of culture and refinement, Rosalind’s interests were unwavering. She used her allowance to subscribe to Road and Track.

It wasn’t just her “unladylike” interest in machines that had caused the rift between parent and child. Rosalind felt that her entire existence was an affront to her mother’s expectations. In perfect conformity to the corporeal dress code of her social circle, Mrs. Manning was a slender and elegant swan. Rosalind herself was more of a pouter pigeon: dumpy and neckless, with stubby legs and a matronly shape that resisted every program of diet and exercise her mother had imposed upon her in an effort to battle the inevitable. Even her mother’s indomitable will had not been able to conquer heredity: Rosalind got her looks from her father’s side of the family, but also her brains.

Her mother might not have minded so much about her intellectual pursuits if she had been able to look the part of her debutante. In a graceful and beautiful young woman, such an unlikely pastime as auto mechanics might even have passed for an amusing eccentricity. But dumpy little Rosalind was too earnest and awkward for anything she did to be fashionable. She didn’t know what was worse: her mother’s constant belittling efforts to change her throughout her adolescence, or the feeling of reproach and failure that she got when those maternal efforts finally ceased. She was not the daughter her mother had wanted. She hoped she might be the child her father would have approved of, but she would never know. She could only please herself and be satisfied with that.

When it came time for college, Rosalind had resisted her mother’s halfhearted efforts to send her to a genteel finishing school. She had the grades and the aptitude for engineering and a trust fund to finance her independence, so off she went to MIT, where presumably ugly ducklings would be recognized as swans.

Okay, maybe even MIT didn’t recognize her as a swan, but they did confirm her assumption that she was a damned smart duck. She aced her automotive engineering classes, and she seemed to understand motors in the same instinctive way that her Virginia forebears once understood their thoroughbred horses. Her mother had not been able to make it to graduation, because she had been on an antiques-buying tour in southern France that month, but she had sent Rosalind flowers, a card, and a graduation present: a gift certificate for a spa and diet ranch in Arizona. Rosalind sent a careful thank-you note to her mother, a somewhat more sincere letter to the administrator of her trust fund, and she resolved never to go home again.

She had moved to Mooresville shortly after graduation on the advice of some of her fellow students, North Carolinians who assured her that if she wanted a job with race cars, Mooresville was the place to go. She liked the town well enough, once she got over the urge to reach for an English/Mooresville dictionary every time she had to talk to somebody. It was easy enough to find people to talk to about things mechanical, which was about all Rosalind could talk about without self-consciousness, but she found that the employment prospects were another matter altogether. Despite her stellar qualifications-a stratospheric GPA from MIT-she found that race teams were not eager to employ an overeducated young woman as a member of the crew. In many ways stock car racing was still an old boys’ network and a family business, where second-and third-generation family members worked in a sport they had been raised in. Rosalind found it difficult even to get people to talk to her, much less consider hiring her. A rich girl from Michigan with a fancy college degree was nobody’s idea of a chief engineer.

Aside from her gender, her lack of experience was the most telling deficit she had. Book learning did not impress the powers-that-be in racing, many of whom had learned on the job without any higher education at all. In recent years that had changed dramatically, and now there was even a community college in Mooresville that taught people some of the jobs associated with a racing team, but experience still trumped diplomas in this world.

On the advice of one of the shop dogs she’d met in her job searches, Rosalind began volunteering with a Late Model Stock team at a small local speedway. The pay was nonexistent and the hours were long, but at least she got a chance to work with a race car. It was light-years from working on a Cup team, but, she reasoned, you had to start somewhere.

After months of interviews and applications, Rosalind had finally become discouraged, and she had begun to toy with the idea of packing up and going-well, not home, but elsewhere, anyhow-when Team Vagenya announced its intention of fielding an all-female team. The exceptions were noted in fine print. The driver would be male, as would most of the behind-the-scenes personnel, but Rosalind figured that at least the team had stated an intention of hiring women, which meant that they were her best chance at a job in Cup racing.

She had printed out yet another copy of her résumé, with its brand-new section of racing experience, and a few nonprofessorial references-the guys she had met at the little local speedway. Sure enough, a week after she’d submitted it, someone from Team Vagenya called to set up an interview, and Rosalind had calmly replied that she was available at their earliest convenience. She’d had to keep taking deep breaths to keep from squealing into the phone, which would have been a first for her, and perhaps the most feminine thing Rosalind Manning had ever done, except that she didn’t do it. As always, Rosalind was grave and deliberate. Grace under pressure was a prerequisite in this intense and dangerous sport.

She had been surprised and not overjoyed to find that the crew chief and team manager were the same person, and that the person was also female: Grace Tuggle, a bulldog of a woman who had both the bloodline and the experience to work for a NASCAR team.

In Rosalind’s experience, when it came to giving another woman a break, women were not as likely to do so as people might think. Perhaps they felt that being the exception made them special, or that favoring another woman would be taken as a sign of weakness. Whatever it was, Rosalind was cordial but wary of her interviewer. At first they had exchanged pleasantries, talking in general terms about Rosalind’s background and interests. Rosalind felt that she acquitted herself well enough during that initial phase. She was no good at small talk, but then neither was Grace Tuggle.

“MIT?” Tuggle had said, looking dubiously at the résumé as if she wanted to check the references of the references.

Rosalind decided not to apologize for attending MIT. She responded with a slight nod and tried to look as if she didn’t particularly care if Tuggle hired her or not. Well-bred indifference was a Manning family tradition, and generally it served them well.

Tuggle frowned at the neatly word-processed résumé. “You don’t think you’re a tad overqualified to jazz up cars?”

“I think practical experience is always valuable,” said Rosalind carefully. “You’ll see that I put in some time at the local speedway as well. I enjoyed it.” This was not entirely true. Physical dexterity did not come naturally to Rosalind, and like most people, she did not enjoy things she did not do well, but it had been educational, and she appreciated that aspect of the experience.

Tuggle’s answering grunt could have meant anything from wholehearted agreement to open skepticism. Then she said, “We already have a chief engineer. Two of them, really. Julie Carmichael got that job. She’s an engineer, too, but she has more racing chops than you do. And on an unofficial basis, she’ll be working with Jay Bird. Do you know that name?”

Rosalind nodded. A year ago she might not have known who Jay Bird was, but after months of hearing NASCAR junkies talk about the sport, past and present, the name registered with her like an electric shock. The man was the patron saint of jackleg mechanics-not a formally trained engineer, but someone who had grown up in the Carolinas with stock car racing and who knew motors as instinctively as a migrating bird knows south. He had been a force to be reckoned with in NASCAR garages for three decades, and more than one Cup champion owed a debt of gratitude to the mechanical genius of Jay Bird Thomas.

“But he’d have to be nearly eighty!” said Rosalind, blurting out her last thought instead of all the reverent ones that preceded it.

Tuggle nodded. “He is, but he still knows more about race car engines than all the diploma jockeys in the world. And I didn’t say he was the chief engineer. He’s strictly around to advise us in an informal capacity-and we’re damned lucky to get him.”

“Yes, of course you are. How did you get him?”

“He’s Julie Carmichael’s godfather. Courtesy title, you understand. Neither one of them is the type to go to christenings, but he was her dad’s best friend, so he’s been like family to her all her life. Hell, on the strength of that I’d have hired her if she didn’t know a socket wrench from a nail file.”

There was no arguing with the logic of that. Rosalind thought she would have done the same, but she still wanted a job with Team Vagenya. “Okay,” she said, “Carmichael is going to be your chief engineer. I don’t blame you for that, but I still want to come on board. Just because I’m overqualified doesn’t mean you shouldn’t hire me in some other capacity.”

“Like what?”

“Engine builder? Engine specialist? I know my way around motors. I know how to read spark plugs. I know the gear ratios for most of the tracks. You’ll need a different setup every week, and your chief engineer might appreciate some expert assistance in other areas as well.”

Tuggle balanced a pencil lengthwise on the end of her forefinger. Rosalind wondered if the job hung in that balance. She willed herself not to breathe as the silence lengthened and the pencil wobbled. Finally, Tuggle said, “We can’t pay the fancy salaries that engineers would get in industry. I suppose you know that?”

Rosalind said, “Money is not the deciding factor.”

“Figured it wasn’t.” Tuggle wouldn’t have known a designer handbag if it bit her on the arm, but without even intending to, Rosalind exuded an unmistakable aura of expensive. She let the pencil fall from her outstretched finger to the desk; then she looked up. “Engine specialist, then,” she said. “You talk to Julie and Jay Bird. See if y’all get along. See if your skills mesh with theirs, and if you have the same sort of thoughts about what kinds of setups we need for each race. If you think you could be a productive part of that team, then come back and tell me, and we’ll put you on the payroll.”

Rosalind did not quite trust herself to speak. She nodded her thanks. Fortunately, she was not into personal power or ego trips about titles. She would be content to let Julie Carmichael oversee the shop dogs and do the interviews with sports journalists. Crew chiefs were celebrities in their own right in today’s NASCAR. Chad Knaus and Tony Eury, Jr. probably had more fans than some of the drivers. Rosalind didn’t want that kind of notoriety. She liked machines better than people anyhow. It was better this way.

On her way out, she remembered to thank Tuggle and to shake her hand. She was proud of that.

A couple of days later, Rosalind went to meet with Team Vagenya’s chief engineer and with the legendary Jay Bird Thomas, who had forgotten more about race car engines than most people would ever know. Working with him would be an honor. Rosalind hoped they would like her; in her experience, people mostly didn’t, but she intended to do her best to be agreeable. She did Google Julie Carmichael and Jay Bird, looking for some clues about their backgrounds and interests. How did people talk to strangers in the days before Googling?

They were expecting her. Rosalind walked into Julie Carmichael’s office at team headquarters with a brittle smile and ice water in the pit of her stomach. Julie Carmichael was a lanky woman about her own age, with horn-rimmed glasses and a hank of brown hair bound in a long braid. She wore designer running shoes, faded jeans, and a plaid flannel shirt over a vintage Davey Allison tee shirt. Beside her, with his nose buried in a technical manual, was a sweet-faced old man with jug ears and a fringe of white curls around a shiny bald pate. He peered up at Rosalind through rimless bifocals and twinkled a welcoming smile.

The small office, which had beige cinderblock walls, a tiled floor, and a curtainless metal window, looked as if it were a converted classroom, furnished from the Used Office Furniture Depot without much regard for style or ambiance: a faux wood and steel desk and table half buried under books and piles of paper, a large black-rimmed clock, and a collection of die-cast race cars from previous years in NASCAR. On a white erasable bulletin board was a photo of the 86 car (without Badger) and a computer-generated banner that read VAGENYA TECH.

Rosalind shook hands, belatedly remembered to smile, and nodded toward the sign. “Cute,” she said. “This is the engineering headquarters for Team Vagenya, but the sign is also a pun on your alma mater, isn’t it?”

Julie nodded. “Virginia Tech. Right. And Tuggle tells me that you graduated from MIT.”

Jay Bird Thomas looked up from the manual he had been reading, and said, “How do you spell that?”

Rosalind felt a ridiculous urge to curtsey, but she didn’t. “Same way they spelled it when you guest lectured there, sir.”

The old man looked pleased. “That was back before your time up there,” he said. “Nice bunch of fellas. After my lecture a bunch of us spent half the night in a bar trying to figure out an alternative to restrictor plates. Wore out the batteries on my calculator.”

“Wish I’d been there to hear that discussion,” said Rosalind.

“What would your solution be?” asked Julie. She pulled out a chair and indicated that Rosalind should sit down.

An alternative to restrictor plates. Rosalind had given some thought to that question already. Everybody in racing groused about restrictor plates, the metal plates that restricted the air flow to the carburetor preventing the car from going over 200 mph, in an attempt to keep the cars from going airborne. It was a safety precaution, enacted in the 80s after Bobby Allison’s car achieved lift-off at Talladega and nearly took out a grandstand full of spectators. The plates served their purpose of restricting speed on super speedways of Talladega and Daytona, but they also prevented cars from pulling away from the rest of the field, so that a race tended to be a clump of closely packed cars all going about 190 mph: If any driver lost control or tapped another car, the result could be a chain reaction wreck that could take out half the competitors. Finding a safe, workable alternative to restrictor plates was the holy grail of racing engineering.

“What would I propose as an alternative to restrictor plates?” said Rosalind. “Well, there are a lot of alternatives that would produce the same results. You could mandate a smaller carburetor, or an engine with less horsepower, but those changes wouldn’t solve the problems. I might go to the speedway package they’re using on Busch cars. The blade across the top of the car, and then set the spoiler at about seventy degrees instead of the fifty-something setting that Cup is running. It makes the car more stable and knocks the engine down about twenty-five horsepower.” Too much information. Rosalind stopped short and tried to gauge their expressions. Was she being a knowledgeable professional or a hopeless geek? “Er-what would you do?” she asked Julie.

“I might reduce tire size,” said the team’s chief engineer. “Cup, Busch, and Truck all run on twelve-inch wide slicks that are normally pretty sticky. It seems to me that if you reduced the tire size to eight or ten inches, then the cars could not negotiate the turns at two hundred miles per hour. That would make driver skill a greater factor in super speedway racing again.”

“Yeah, but it would be easy to overdrive the tires,” said Rosalind. “Might even increase wrecks.”

Jay Bird shook his head. “If they go to smaller tires, the teams would have to put more downforce in the cars. Plus, drivers would have to brake going into the turns. I’m not saying it wouldn’t work, I’m just saying it would tee-totally change the way they race those super speedways, and I’m not sure that’s what anybody wants. Seems to me, if you do all that, you’re just duplicating the truck series-big heavy clunkers with no restrictor plates-’cause they can’t go fast enough in the first place to need ’em. Neutering the cars.”

Julie nodded. “Well, there are no easy answers. So what would you do, Jay Bird?”

The old man didn’t bat an eye. “Considering the current crop of Cup drivers? I believe I would sedate every driver whose last name starts with B. That ought’a do it.”

Julie shrugged. “Couldn’t hurt.” She grinned at Rosalind. “So what do you think? Do you want to join this wacko team?”

“Yeah, I do,” said Rosalind.

Jay Bird peered at her over the top of his bifocals. “Why? Start-up team full of amateurs. You’re not one of those Badger groupies, are you?”

“No, sir. He’s a decent driver, and I respect him for that, but personally? No. Handsome jocks are not my thing. I want to join this team because I want the experience, and to be honest with you, NASCAR is still largely an old boys’ club, so it’s hard for a newcomer to break in. And if the newcomer is a woman, then breaking in is next to impossible. I thought this team was my best shot. I didn’t care who your driver was. I just figured this is the one place that my gender would be an asset rather than a liability.”

“Fair enough,” said Julie.

“But it’s really an honor to be able to work with Jay Bird Thomas, too.”

The old man waggled his eyebrows. “So you’ll work for free then, will you?”

“No. But it’s not your money anyway, so I doubt if you care,” said Rosalind.

“You’re right, he doesn’t,” said Julie. “He just wants us to pull at least one victory out of the hat to show that old boys’ club what we can do. Now how do you suggest we do that?”

Rosalind shrugged. “Same way the old boys do it. Cheat.”