Turn In – As a car reaches a corner, this is the moment in which a driver begins to turn the wheel.
“What is this?” I asked examining the documents set in front of me.
I was sitting in a large conference room in downtown Charlotte with my dad, my uncle Randy, and Alley going over the sponsorship for our new team, Riley Simplex Racing.
“It’s your prohibited activities,” Melissa Childers, Simplex’s representative stated.
I was silent.
They can’t be serious... no sprint cars? I must be reading this wrong.
Melissa continued. “You can’t do things like skiing, motorcycles, or... any other form of racing outside of the car we sponsor.”
“I can’t drive sprint cars?”
Marcus Harding, the President of Simplex Springs and Shocks, and Melissa, exchanged a glance. I think they knew I was moments away from walking out.
“It’s the only way for us to protect you and us,” Melissa added. I understood but I wasn’t about to agree to something like that. Sprint cars are where I came from.
I went to stand when my dad glared and cleared his throat. “Can we have a few days to think about it? Racing sprint cars is not something I’m willing to give up,” I gritted, moving my leg away from him. I had a feeling his was about to kick me any minute.
Marcus seemed to contemplate what I just said but before I made it to the door, he spoke again. “I think we can work with you on that one.” I turned around to look at him. “You have to understand where we are coming from, Jameson,” he paused, his eyes focusing on me. “We are offering up a large amount of money here for you to race. If, by chance, you are injured, well, we don’t get the exposure we are paying for. We expect you to take that into consideration.”
I went to speak but was silenced by my uncle Randy. “I think Jameson would just like the opportunity to still race sprint cars on occasion and, I assure you,” he shot me a warning glance, “he will be careful.”
“Careful?” I thought to myself. Was I careful in a sprint car?
Not really. How can anyone be careful racing?
In some ways, I signed my life away that morning as a puppet for Simplex and my dad. It felt different from the times with Bowman Oil and Bucky. For one, this was bigger, millions of dollars to be exact, and they weren’t just paying for me to run a limited USAC schedule. I’d be running a full season in the Busch Grand National series next year. It was different. I still felt like a puppet but I’d like to think I grew up a little in the last four years and realized that this dream of mine wasn’t possible without playing by their rules to an extent.
I HAD ONLY been back from Australia for about three weeks. It was mid-January and I had missed the Chili Bowl. I wasn’t thrilled by that but I had more important things to deal with now, like the testing of our Busch Grand National car.
I walked inside my dad’s race shop in Mooresville. It was freezing that morning, I felt like my eyes were even frozen. An involuntary shiver ran through me when I stepped out of my truck and walked toward the shop. My eyes focused on the sign above the door that said: Staff Only.
Chuckling to myself that I was an employee of my dad’s now, I opened the door to the shop.
I’d been in this shop countless times but there were new additions. Amongst the sprint cars, chassis were lined up in rows, engines lined up in front of them. Racks of metal tubing hung on the walls beside axles, front clips, shocks, springs... basically, anything to build a car from the ground up.
Harry met me at the door with Tony Eldon, the tire specialist who I met last night.
Tony smiled, “You’ve met Harry, right?”
“Yeah,” I reached out and shook Harry’s hand again. “We met a while back and then again this morning at the meeting.” Dad had put together a breakfast this morning to get the team together. Right now, we were all just pieced together and in the development stages, but slowly the Riley Racing team was being formed.
“Great, you guys will be working together today. We need to get everything setup for these engines and what feels right for you,” Tony smiled at Harry, patting his back. “Harry here can’t drive in a straight line to save his life but he could build an engine in the dark with a screw driver and a pair of pliers.”
I chuckled and leaned back against the wall. “So, we’re testing tomorrow at Homestead?”
“That’s the plan,” Harry told me with his own smile.
Harry Sampson was the one to show me my way around a stock car, besides Tate. Tate Harris had become a vital part of all this, he got Simplex for us and, well, he was there when I had questions.
Harry was similar to Hitler but he had his own form of punishment for me. He’d send me to the hauler when he felt I was out of line. This had me spending most of my time inside that damn hauler.
I came from open wheel racing so I knew jack shit about how to handle the cars and Harry, well he had these strict rules that he felt I needed to abide by in order to learn them. Like listening to him.
Not being one to follow the rules all that often, I tested him. Often.
It took me a while to get the hang of the cars so Harry had me running laps during the week to get seat time. The only problem was, he wanted me to run lap times that were the exact same each lap. I wasn’t real sure why but Harry scared the shit out of me so I never asked why.
At Daytona, my curiosity got the best of me and I tested out the speed despite what Harry wanted me to do.
After I got my adrenaline rush, Harry signaled to come in.
And when I say signaled, he held up a sign written in black Sharpie on a piece of cardboard that said: “What the fuck was that?”
That was when I knew I was in trouble.
I pulled onto pit lane to have him standing there looking down at me with his trusty red stopwatch in his hand.
He leaned into the cockpit, motioning toward the time on the stopwatch with a particular sour edge to his flip. “What was that, boy?”
“I... just wanted to test it out,” I cringed internally thinking he was going to castrate me for doing this.
His eyes narrowed, looking over the car and then me again. “That’s not what I told you to do. Go sit in the hauler.”
I spent the remainder of the test session in that hauler.
Harry may have been a cranky old bastard, but he was the perfect bastard for me to learn from. He came from dirt track racing so we understood each other. We spoke the same language.
Once Kyle Wade, my crew chief, came on board, it was easier and the team dynamics were built from there. I liked Kyle and respected him. He was honest and you never wondered where you stood with him. If he didn’t like you, you knew it. Kind of like me.
Kyle also let me out of the reins a little more than Harry. We ran testing at Texas, Loudon, and Phoenix wide open. They let me get as comfortable with the car as I wanted. I bet he never said anything to Harry. If he knew, I’d still be in the hauler right now.
AS THE NEW team formed that winter, my spotter, Aiden Gomez, came on board. I liked Aiden from the moment I met him and the more we worked together, the more I realized he was just as insane as the rest of us, which worked out well for everyone.
We traveled around pretty much all of January testing and then it was off to Daytona for my first race.
I wanted Sway there badly but she was wrapped up in her classes with finals nearing and I was far too busy to sneak off to Bellingham to see her. I even went so far as having her text me a picture of her. It depressed me even more.
So, there I was testing stock cars, making sponsor appearances, press releases, commercials, meet and greets, oh, and occasionally I had time to sleep, but not much.
My dad was just as busy and for being the owner of this new team, you’d think we would get to see each other, but nope, the only people I saw on a regular basis these days were Kyle and Alley. Sounds ironic, but these days, a NASCAR driver needed a publicist. She also acted as our team manager and told us where we needed to be and when. Having to boss around Spencer and Lane, she had the right amount of training for the job.
Come February, I was at my first Busch Grand National race in Daytona.
The first fifty laps were good, not much activity but I was cruising around toward the rear of the field getting a feel for everything.
Aiden came on the radio a few laps later, “Cautions out, car slowing down low in turn four.”
“How’s it feel, bud?” Kyle asked.
“Um... I can’t... turn in as well into two and three but I can go high when I want in three and four.”
“All right so we can make air pressure adjustments and take a round out of the right rear. That could help.”
I nodded. Then I realized that he couldn’t see me and I needed to vocalize this, “Copy?” this was meant to be a statement but came out more of a question.
The only series I ran in prior to this that permitted the use of radios was the Silver Crown series but we only talked about cautions, not about setups or how my car was handling. NASCAR seemed to have its own language and I evidently did not know it.
For instance, loose in a sprint car was where you were comfortable. Loose in a stock car was not an experience you enjoy, particularly when you’re going two hundred miles an hour next to a concrete wall.
So we agreed on what was going to take place during the caution, it was time for the pit stop.
Yeah, right. “You want me to do what?” That was my first reaction.
Until now, I’d never had to make a real pit stop. Sure, I’d limped my car back to the pits with damaged midgets and sprints but to pull smoothly down pit road and squeeze into a pit stall surrounded by other cars was nerve racking. Not to mention, this shit was time sensitive!
“So, I’m supposed to fit in there with forty-two other cars speeding past me?” I asked. I’ll admit my voice was slightly alarmed.
“That’s the idea,” Kyle chuckled. He was eating this shit up.
I ended up spinning myself leaving pit road and the race didn’t go any better when I inadvertently caused a fifteen-car pileup.
I tried to make light of my mishaps by rattling off responses like, “Did you see that guy? He came out of nowhere.”
Kyle laughed. “Yeah, that black number nine is out of control.”
It was all in good fun and learning, but I had to admit I was frustrated that I was struggling.
After my first disastrous race where I ended up spinning myself on pit road, we did practice runs at the shop where I’d roll in, the crew did their jobs, and I’d roll out. Sooner or later, much later, we had it down, or I should say I had it down because clearly I was the one with the issues.
Now I just had to figure out how to do this with actual cars instead of orange cones.
When I raced sprints and midgets, I didn’t have to worry about much other than finding my line. I adjusted everything with either throttle control or the wing. Now I had a pit crew to do this. Only problem was I needed to explain what I needed them to do and nodding and shaking my head at them wasn’t working well.
In sprint cars, if you told me the car was pushing, you’re driving it in too hard. In stock cars, that was entirely different. It could mean a number of different things from tire pressure, wedge, camber... the list went on-and-on.
I got schooled my first few races on how little I actually knew about stock cars. It was embarrassing. But like any division I raced in, it was all about experience: logging laps. So I did. My experience was critical in all this. Every point counted, every turn, every pit stop. The difference between winning and losing was so small and it was easy to take for granted.