In the Blink of an Eye Page 5

  Humpy also cared about the sport. He made sure if there was young talent who needed a little help to get started, to provide that help. I know he helped Dale Earnhardt get his start. Tim Richmond too.

  Go see Humpy. That’s what I was gonna do.

  So I was off to see a man named Humpy. I wondered if I’d be able to work my way through the layers of people surrounding him. Would this Humpy man be willing to help me? Would he catch me on fire?

  As I drove toward the Charlotte Motor Speedway, I considered my options. I wondered how I should open the conversation with Humpy. Should I say, “Hello, I’m Michael Waltrip, Darrell’s little brother”? Or should I say, “Humpy, Michael Waltrip here, 1983 NASCAR Dash Series champion.”

  I liked the way that one sounded. And I knew I had in my pocket the fact that Richard Petty had sent me. I could use that if I needed it.

  When I got there, I decided to go with “Michael Waltrip, Darrell’s little brother.” I needed to use all the star power I could muster. And it worked. His secretary told Humpy I was there and he came right out.

  “Hello there, young man,” Humpy said, reaching his hand.

  Back then, I wasn’t quite the sophisticated, debonair gentleman that I am today. So I suppose when I reached out to shake Humpy’s hand, I must have kind of looked away. I was a bit nervous just being there. That nervousness got a lot worse during this handshake.

  Humpy grabbed my hand and wouldn’t let go. He squeezed it tighter and tighter. Humpy is quite athletic. He was a Golden Gloves boxer when he was growing up. His grip got my attention for sure, and he knew it.

  “Son,” he said, “look people in the eye when you shake hands.” He was serious.

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  To this day, that is something I’ve never forgotten. Every time I shake someone’s hand, I think of ol’ Humpy. Once we got that behind us, I explained to him why I was there. I wanted to race the World 600. “Richard Petty suggested I come see you,” I said.

  Humpy and I had a great conversation, and he directed me to go see a man named Dick Bahre. Like me, Dick had moved South. He came from Maine to pursue his dream of owning a NASCAR team. Dick had run a few races, so he had the cars and engines—just about everything you needed to race with. Just about everything. The one thing he was missing? Money.

  That seemed to be the theme here. Racing took money. And it seemed all the racers I met didn’t have any.

  But all the same, I gave Dick Bahre a call. I told him that Humpy Wheeler had suggested I come and see him and figure out if there was some way I could drive his car at Charlotte that month.

  I didn’t know what to expect from Dick. I’d never been to New England. But the man I met sure didn’t fit the stereotype I had in my mind. I was thinking about Nantucket and clamming and maybe sailing in khaki pants and one of those sweaters that doesn’t have any sleeves. Maybe this guy wasn’t Dick? But he had to be. He was the only one there, and his name was on his work shirt. On one pocket, it said: “Dick.” On the other it said: “Dick Bahre Racing.” So I put two and two together. Dick was working on a rear-end housing for one of his race cars. He had welded it up and was grinding the weld down with the biggest grinder I had ever seen. It looked like something you’d be grinding on a tank with, not on any race car I’d ever seen.

  Dick was a tall, lanky man, but with smoke rolling off the cigar in his mouth and sparks flying off the grinder, he looked like a character from one of the Terminator movies. I just stood there and waited for him to look up.

  When he finally noticed me, he shut the grinder down and turned his attention my way. “How ya doin’, there?” Dick asked. His sweet, friendly demeanor didn’t match the tough guy I was looking at. To this day, I’ve never met a nicer, kinder, gentler man.

  There were literally dozens of guys with shops and a race car I could have walked in on in the Charlotte area who would have said, “Yeah, you bring me a little bit of money and you can drive my car”—then taken the money and gone on to the next naïve, unsuspecting dreamer. Dick was exactly the opposite of that.

  Not only did he let me drive his car and tell me whatever help I could get was fine, he continued to invest in me, running race after race with way less sponsorship money than it cost to race.

  “Come up with whatever you can,” he told me that first day. “We’ll go over to Charlotte and give it a try.”

  Seriously? I thought. Sounds like I got the ride. Does that mean I’m a Cup driver now?

  He didn’t even ask to see my résumé. Good thing, because I didn’t have one. My résumé, if I’d had one, would have consisted of me winning a Dash Series championship in little cars that were the polar opposite of a Cup car.

  I called Humpy and told him I had the ride for Charlotte. I asked him if he could help Dick out. Humpy agreed to help with the tire bill. And just like that, I became a Cup driver and a darn good hand-shaker—all in the same day.

  CHAPTER 7

  CUP DEBUT

  Richard Petty sent me to Humpy Wheeler, who sent me to Dick Bahre. Within a few days of moving in with Richard, I had a ride in the World 600.

  If it weren’t for the King, I might still be sitting around trying to follow my lame plan. Instead, I was going to be driving Dick Bahre’s 1985 Chevrolet Monte Carlo with #23 on the side. It was the Memorial Day weekend NASCAR race at the Charlotte Motor Speedway.

  My experience was admittedly minimal—okay, almost none—in a car like this one. This baby was big. It had a 358-cubic-inch V8 engine in it. It had maybe double the horsepower of anything I had ever driven anywhere.

  The mini-modifieds I’d raced back in Kentucky? They had little four-bangers in them. The Dash Series cars? Same thing. Small motor, no power. This was going to be a major step up for me. I’d be sitting in one of the most powerful race cars in the world, a NASCAR Winston Cup stock car. This was a man’s machine, and it felt like one too. I’m six-foot-five. Squeezing into those mini-modifieds and Dash cars was a pain in the neck. Literally. I had to tilt my head to the side to see through the windshield. But in that Cup car, I had plenty of room. Heck, Wilt Chamberlain would have had plenty of room.

  And oh, by the way, when I was sitting in that baby with all that room, looking out that windshield so clearly—I was going to be looking at Richard Petty, David Pearson, and Darrell Waltrip all racing on the same track with me. That was a little hard to comprehend. Barely a decade earlier, I was in the backseat of Mom and Dad’s Chevy heading south to watch these guys, dreaming of being one of them one day. That day was here. I was going to be racing with the greats in the World 600.

  If I could accomplish one thing.

  It was kind of a big thing.

  I needed to qualify for the race.

  Practice was on Wednesday. To say I was intimidated would be like saying the Titanic sprung a small leak. Think pulling onto the track that first time ever in Bobby’s go-kart was scary? This was way worse. No one was watching then.

  If I’d screwed up on Bobby’s go-kart, Bobby would have been mad. If I went out now and messed up and I took Richard Petty or Darrell Waltrip with me? The whole NASCAR world would be mad.

  But just like that day in Smyrna, Tennessee, when I hit the track, I wasn’t nervous anymore. I was just focused. When I got on the back straightaway and put my right foot on the floorboard, the action picked up considerably. Suddenly I felt like I was in a wrestling match with somebody way bigger than me—maybe a couple of people. I felt like I’d driven the cars I’d raced prior to this one. But this car, with all its power and all its girth—mostly, I was along for the ride. That sucker had a mind of its own. As I wrestled that car around the track, it didn’t take but a lap or two for me to realize how much I had to learn.

  I really felt like a rookie. I hadn’t experienced anything like this. By the time most guys make their Cup debut, they’ve been racing big, powerful cars like this one on dirt tracks and short tracks all over the South. I was mad at that stupid Dash car now. I felt li
ke such a wimp. That wasn’t racing. Those cars were easy to drive. I thought I was somebody, winning those races and that championship. But that hadn’t done anything to prepare me for the path the King had put me on.

  Heck, Dale Earnhardt won a race in his rookie year. I’d be lucky to qualify.

  So I had to learn it quickly. Qualifying was just a couple of hours away. I thought I was a pretty good driver, but I was beginning to rethink that. I was having a hard time driving this car. It was driving me—crazy.

  By the time practice had ended, my crew told me I’d run some pretty good lap times. With my lack of experience and trying to understand this car, I was having trouble putting consistent laps together. But when I did it right, I was pretty fast. First-round qualifying for the 600 would lock in the first fifteen positions. The 600 was the only race during the season where qualifying consisted of four laps. They took all four of your laps and averaged them together. Whoever had the fastest four-lap average won the pole.

  Luckily, there was a second round of qualifying. Because round one didn’t go so well for me.

  The inconsistency I’d struggled with in practice was the issue again. My four-lap average wasn’t good because my second two laps were really slow.

  In second-round qualifying the next day, it was just straight up your fastest lap—one lap to get in the race. I felt confident about being able to run one lap fast enough to make the World 600 field. And I did. My speed locked me into twenty-fourth position. Heck, I even beat Richard Petty in my first Cup attempt!

  Richard came by and told me, “You done good there”—or something like that. Whatever it was, it made me smile. Then he said: “Make sure you get out of my way when they throw the green flag Sunday.”

  He walked off. I wondered if he was kidding or he was serious.

  Was he being Richard Petty, my landlord? Telling me if I liked where I lived, I’d get out of his way? Or was he being Richard Petty, the racer, who didn’t want this rookie holding him up?

  Whichever way it was, I was going to get out of the King’s way. He was the one who came up with this whole idea. I couldn’t believe that it was just a couple of weeks earlier I was lying on his couch with no idea what was coming next.

  Now the King had just congratulated me for, of all things, out-qualifying him. But he also left me with a little dose of reality, reminding me to get the hell out of his way.

  That’s how things were going for me, steady progress at breakneck speed. And here I was, qualified for my first NASCAR Winston Cup race.

  But for the very first time, I wasn’t thinking about winning. This Cup car had made me second-guess what I’d been doing career-wise up to this point.

  It was a different breed, this hotrod. I wasn’t going to win at Charlotte. But hopefully I’d catch on quick so I could continue my winning ways.

  I was trying to build myself back up. I must be pretty good, I thought. This is the first time I tried to qualify, and I did it.

  But I didn’t like the way that big ol’ car felt at all. I wished I’d learned to drive one of these when nobody was looking—instead of right on NASCAR’s center stage. A little late to be worrying about that now.

  Another thing that had never dawned on me: They didn’t call this race the World 600 just because they thought it sounded catchy. That 600 meant something—600 miles, my first race in NASCAR and the longest race of the year.

  That’s about how far it was from Owensboro to Daytona. That was a scary thought. And this time, I wouldn’t be able to listen to Roy Clark.

  Just four years earlier, I had run my first stock-car race, that twenty-five-lapper on a quarter-mile track. You do the math. That’s Aaron’s slogan: “Nobody beats Aaron’s.” Aw, man, there I go again. My first race was all of about six miles long. The Dash Series races were as long as a hundred and fifty miles. And I thought those were marathons. But we’re talking about six hundred miles on a hot afternoon in May with this beast of a race car while sharing the track with NASCAR’s greatest.

  What the heck was I doing here?

  I knew I had to focus on my goals, which were going to be very different this time.

  First goal: Stay out of the way.

  Second goal: Finish the race.

  I knew I had to stay out of Richard Petty’s way. He’d already told me so. And Kyle Petty’s. He’d been my landlord too. I also needed to give him extra room. And my brother DW, of course. We hadn’t really talked, but I figured I’d better give him some space. And Bill Elliott would be racing for a million dollars that day, a bonus offered by series sponsor Winston for winning three of the four biggest races of the year. Bill had already won two of them. If he won today, he’d have one million dollars. What if I screwed that up?

  So as the race started I had these four guys on my brain. And that was messing with me. It seemed like about every lap, one of them was either passing me or catching me. I was driving looking in the mirror. That isn’t any way to go about racing a car. I needed to be looking ahead to learn, not looking back.

  My speed was suffering, too. I couldn’t even keep up with the guys I was used to seeing run last. That was getting frustrating. Everyone was passing me.

  But I stayed reasonably focused and remembered my goals. Stay out of the way and finish the race. So I pushed on, every lap trying to learn more about this car and how to drive it. As those laps ticked by, I actually started getting better. I started to improve. Finally, I was beginning to keep up with some of those guys. I actually almost passed one of them.

  Goal one was being accomplished. I was staying out of the way. In addition to that, I was learning, and I was starting to like what was going on. But just then, about four hundred and fifty miles in, my transmission went—and with it went goal number two.

  My day had its share of frustration in the World 600. But all things considered, I was happy with what I’d achieved. I wound up being scored twenty-eighth in the finishing order. I’d run my first Cup race. And I hadn’t made anyone mad.

  And guess who won that day?

  Ol’ DW.

  Darrell, our mom and dad, and Darrell’s team were celebrating in Victory Lane just a couple of hundred yards from where my team and I were staring at a broken transmission. I knew DW was smelling and tasting NASCAR’s finest champagne. Brut, I suspect. But all I could smell was burnt transmission fluid. Sunoco, I suspect.

  We were literally only a couple hundred yards apart. But the distance between Margaret and Leroy’s two Cup drivers might as well have been a million miles. There’s a lot of difference between a Cup driver and a Cup winner. I was just beginning my journey.

  The first step was recapping with my team the 600 week in Charlotte. Everybody involved agreed: My first Cup start was a success. I did a good job out there, making the race and running most of it. I logged laps, and I logged a lot of experience. More important, I earned the respect of some of my heroes on the track. But the main guy I needed to impress was my car owner, Dick Bahre. He was paying the bills, all of them except for the help Humpy gave us. If Dick was happy, maybe we could do this again. And Dick was happy.

  I remember him chewing on cigar in his trademark cowboy boots and work shirt, smiling, and saying: “We turned some heads out there today. Let’s do that again.”

  And that’s exactly what we did. We ran four more races in 1985. We performed a little bit better each week.

  My best finish came at Michigan, where I ended up eighteenth. Dick and I were able to secure a bit of sponsorship for the 1986 season, and we ran the whole year. That was the first of twenty-four straight years of me racing in the NASCAR Cup Series full-time.

  Thanks to what I’d learned from my dad, I was able to network my way right into Cup. From Bill Borden to Kyle to Richard to Humpy to Dick. That was the path to my first Cup race.

  Even today, twenty-five years later, all those people hold special places in my heart.

  CHAPTER 8

  MEETING DALE

  We were in Darling
ton, South Carolina, in 1986. The Darlington Raceway was tough. This track even had nicknames: “Too Tough to Tame” and the “Lady in Black.”

  Late in the going, Dale Earnhardt, the Man in Black, was leading the Southern 500. Those two made a pretty good pair. If anyone could tame her, it would have been Dale. I was having a pretty good run for a rookie that day, as long as you didn’t compare my rookie season to Dale’s.

  I was running up in the top ten with just twenty or thirty laps to go in the 367-lap, 500-mile race. It was hot, I was tired, the end was near, and I was glad. I came off turn two, swung out to the wall, and made my way down the backstretch for what seemed like about the thousandth time.

  Suddenly, out of nowhere, Dale was right beside me, looking over and pointing his finger at me. Back then you could totally see into another guy’s car, and I could see Dale wasn’t happy. I had cut him off coming out of turn two. Dale had cut me a break and didn’t wipe me out. He could probably tell by the sloppy way I was driving that I wasn’t exactly as focused in the final laps as I should have been.

  I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Darlington in September. But if you have, you know it gets a little toasty there. I’d had about all the racing I wanted for the day. I didn’t know Dale that well yet. But I knew the Intimidator, the driver who had just pointed his finger at me and driven off toward turn three.

  I could imagine him saying: “You don’t know how lucky you are, boy. I coulda just busted your butt. Keep your shit together. These races are five hundred miles. This ain’t one of those sissy-ass Dash races. This is the big time.”

  I met Dale Earnhardt when I first showed up in 1983. By then, Dale was already a giant personality and a NASCAR champion. In the racing world, most everybody lived in awe of Dale, including me. We definitely didn’t become instant friends or anything. Like a lot of people, he probably only knew who I was because of Darrell. Dale and Darrell didn’t like each other too much. That was obvious. But I figured Dale knew Darrell hadn’t exactly gone out of his way to help me get started, yet somehow there I was, making my way through the lower divisions of NASCAR. He probably appreciated that.