Bearing – A bearing is an insert composed of several layers of such metals as lead, tin, and antimony.
Axel was doing well, with sixteen races in he’d landed four top five’s and nine second place finishes but had yet to pull off a feature win. The pressure to win from sponsors was the same in any series you race but I hoped that he would stay focused on the bigger picture … consistency. He had that.
He also had support behind him. Between my four drivers with JAR Racing and now Axel racing for my dad, we shared information about setups, team members swapped back and forth, and drivers interacted. We had a good program going and a good group of guys willing to do everything they could for us.
Tommy was still heavily involved with Axel and was doing everything he could to get that poor kid a feature win but he was also the crew chief for Justin. He did an amazing job at dividing his time equally between everyone.
That first win for Axel came at the biggest race on the Outlaw schedule, Knoxville Nationals. With the Cup series having a bye week in between Bristol and Atlanta, I was able to sneak away to Iowa and it was a good thing. Axel needed me that weekend.
Noah and Charlie were working on Axel’s Outlaw team doing odd jobs when they were at the shop. Most of the time they were kept at the shop because, it never failed, they found trouble at the track. Being dangerously inclined when it came to engines, we had to supervise them at all times. I will admit, the kids knew their shit when it came to an engine though and made CST Engines what it was today. Currently they were the only engines used by the World of Outlaw series and most of the USAC sprint car teams. We also provided the engines to our Cup teams and leased a handful of them to other teams.
During hot laps the final day, Axel mentioned a vibration he couldn’t place.
“I can go in hard into three and four but come back around to one and two and it’s vibrating so bad I can barely hold on.” He looked over the car as the boys went to work and then looked at me, wide grass green eyes looking for reassurance. “Am I doing something wrong?”
“Nah, I don’t think it’s you,” I assured him and went to work with Tommy trying to decipher what could be wrong.
Having Charlie and Noah around ended up being a good thing but Aiden warned them if they caused any trouble, they were off the team. Aiden’s threats never weighed on their decision making in the past. I don’t know what would have caused him to think this was any different. But he was confident this wouldn’t be a problem.
I, and a handful of others, was not so confident.
I knew these little assholes well. After all, they had set more than one of my cars on fire and managed to drain all the oil out of my truck four times.
Axel ended up blowing the engine in the trophy dash so Noah and Charlie decided to steal an engine. The problem there was they didn’t steal just an engine. They decided while they were at it, they’d steal an entire car. Only problem, they stole another driver’s back-up car. I think they did it as a joke because there was no way in hell we would have actually used that. But it did take the Travis Edward’s team an hour to figure out where their back-up car had disappeared.
“It’s nothing their mom hasn’t done,” Jimi said to Aiden when we found out what they did. “Where were you on that one?”
Aiden looked to me for support. I had nothing. “Don’t look at me,” I told him stepping back. “I can’t even control my own kids.”
Willie appeared for the first time that night looking slightly worn out. Willie was a fucking goofball but fit in well. He could also grow a beard in days. He stood there next to the hauler with a cigar hanging from his lips, shaking hands and slapping backs like he owned the place, weirdo.
“He’s comfortable,” Dad laughed watching Willie.
“You ain’t kidding.” My stare caught his and he winked at me. “There are times when I think Willie should sleep on his decisions before he makes ‘em.” I wasn’t referring to his poker night attitude tonight but more so as to his decisions on the road that had led to a handful of arrests within the last few months.
“You ain’t kidding.”
About that time, when everyone was in a panic about the engine, my favorite smart ass showed up: Brody Williams. He brought with him Easton Levi. I will say Easton lost a little respect from me hanging out with Williams.
Most of the crew had gathered around the hauler setting up the cars for the main when Brody approached with his friends.
“Hey, beautiful,” he said to Lexi. His buddy, Brian Tyler, approached Arie standing near Rager’s car.
I didn’t like Brian either. He was a smart-mouthed little shit and had no respect for anyone.
I knew there was something going on between Arie and Brian but my secretive little girl kept her distance when I was around.
Arie, who had shown up around time trials this afternoon was a complete fucking brat all night. And now she was hanging out with Brian … even better.
Willie stood next to me looking over Axel’s car and then nodded to the hauler. “We need to talk later.” His eyes focused in the distance on Noah and Charlie arguing. “It seems that a few thousand dollars’ worth of shocks is missing from inventory.”
I nodded. Last week I noticed a drop in inventory but didn’t want to deal with it tonight. “We’ll talk about that Tuesday.”
I’ll admit my first instinct was to think Noah had stolen them, it wouldn’t be the first time but, then again, I would like to believe that family wouldn’t do that to me. I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt before I kicked his ass.
One of the Outlaw officials approached us, patted Jimi on the back and then looked at Tommy and Axel. “Travis wants his engine and car back,” his expression was amused.
Noah laughed and Axel lunged at him.
I could tell by my son’s expression that Axel was in no mood for Noah’s bullshit tonight.
I had to separate them for the third time tonight when Casten and Willie drove up in my truck with the spare engine. “Special CST delivery,” he announced yanking the tailgate down.
No one sat around and waited for an invitation, we all scrambled to get the engine inside his sprint car before the B-Feature was set to start.
I did, however, pull Casten aside to thank him. “Thanks for getting that, buddy.”
“No problem,” Casten shrugged shuffling his feet. “I want to see him win just as much as you do. He needs it.”
“Have you seen your mom around here?” I still hadn’t seen Sway tonight and, frankly, I was getting nervous as to where she was.
Casten looked over his shoulder noticing commotion. “She’s here somewhere.”
Raised voices around us drew my attention back to Brian’s hauler parked on the other side of Rager’s pit. Axel was in Brian’s face with Rager standing beside him, his arms crossed over his chest.
“Shut the fuck up!” Axel hollered and then spun around to walk away.
I wasn’t sure what it was about but I had a feeling it was just the tempers of Knoxville Nationals.
It’d been a rough adjustment for Axel this year coming from the midget series he dominated, and now he couldn’t pull off a feature win. Through my own struggles when racing in a new series, I understood his frustration completely.
His shoulders were slowly weighing on him and, in turn, he was questioning his ability.
Right before the A-Feature, I pulled Axel aside.
“Let’s take a walk,” I told him motioning with my head toward the track.
Most drivers walked the track prior to a feature just to see how the track had progressed throughout the night. Tonight it had that glazed over shiny look meaning it was dry and slick, just the way Axel preferred it. Whereas I preferred the tacky loose tracks, Axel dominated on the dry/slick when it resembled asphalt. Funny enough, Axel never liked racing asphalt.
“How ya feelin’ tonight?” I asked kicking up clay with the tip of my shoe and then packing it back down with my heel to test the moisture.
Axel didn’t say anything for a moment, his brow furrowed as he, too, checked the moisture content. He shrugged and looked at the direction of the pit bleachers where team members and the family usually watched the race.
Lily was standing over there with Axel’s buddy, Shane, watching us.
“It’s hard to believe I can come from winning nearly every feature of the season in USAC to this.” He kicked at the dirt before meeting my gaze. “You probably never had that problem, did you?”
Laughing, I remembered my second full-time season in USAC when I couldn’t pull off a feature win to save my ass.
“I’ve had dry spells just like any other driver. We can’t win them all.”
“But you do now.”
One would think with my fifteen championships that I won all the time. Well, yeah, I did. But there were dry spells as well and when that happened, we looked for an answer in the engines and all the way back to ourselves wondering what in the hell went wrong. I couldn’t tell you what it was but every racer knew the feeling well.
“My only advice is, don’t think about it. It gets to a point where you start to over analyze every move you make on the track thinking it’s something you’re doing, when it’s not. It’ll all come together eventually and you’ll get that first win, buddy. You gotta have patience.”
Casten pulled up on the 4-wheeler behind us. “They’re calling the drivers to their cars, Axel. We got the engine in.”
Axel nodded but didn’t look up at Casten.
Casten grinned and spun the ATV around to roost up clay at us.
“You guys should have stopped with me,” Axel noted brushing a few chunks of clay off his driver’s suit.
“You know,” I let out a laugh throwing my arm over his weighted shoulders, “I felt the same way about my siblings.”
When we got back to the pits, Casten was busy flirting with some girl standing in Rager’s pit. Before Axel got inside his car, he unscrewed the cap to a quart of oil sitting on the counter in the hauler and dumped it down the inside of Casten’s shirt, then climbed inside his car.
Casten, never wanting to compromise his chances with the girl by freaking out, just grinned at his brother and continued to nod at whatever the girl was saying to him.
Logan, Sway’s half-brother and part of JAR Racing these days, was standing with Willie on the other side of Axel’s car adjusting the timing for the track conditions. They both broke into a fit of laughter when Axel pulled one over on his brother.
Times never changed. It may be a different set of kids now, but they were still pulling the same shit we used to in the pits. I can’t tell you how many times I dumped oil down my brother’s back. It made me smile thinking back to the times when we did this at the local dirt tracks growing up. Thinking of that made me think of Sway. She was supposedly somewhere but had yet to show.
Part of me was worried but I also knew if there were a problem, Clint or Van, our bodyguards, would have called me. The paranoid part of me checked my phone to make sure nothing was wrong.
Turns out she was stuck at the merchandise hauler but made it just as the cars were performing the 4-wide salute to the fans.
Kissing my shoulder, her tiny arms wrapped around my waist as the announcer said that famous World of Outlaws saying. The cars lined up four-wide coming out of three. “Knoxville Speedway, you wanted the best, you got ‘em abreast. Often imitated, never duplicated, the greatest show on dirt... the World of Outlaws!”
She screamed and clapped her hands just like every other proud mother of their son when he waved to the crowd.
Throwing my arm around her, I pulled her close to my side and whispered in her ear. “I love you.”
The rumbling of twenty-four sprint cars shook the stands we were standing in as she smiled up at me.
“You better,” she said leaning into my side watching the cars pass by. “Your daughter told me to fuck off tonight.”
“Is that why you were late getting to the track?”
“Yeah, I had to put her in her place.”
As they passed by the start finish line, they shot down the front stretch for four hot laps before filling back in to two wide for the start.
I looked over at Sway again. “He’s nervous.”
“He’ll be fine. I can feel it. This will be his night.”
It felt somewhat strange to me standing in the stands at Knoxville when every other year I was on the track.
Axel started mid-pack in eighth position and had some heavy hitters in front of him like Tyler and Justin (two of my guys racing for JAR Racing). Cody Bowman, my other driver, missed the feature when he got tangled with another driver out of Australia during the heat races.
That night, Axel did exactly what I told him to do. He stopped caring about the win and had fun. I watched as he messed with Justin, bumping his right rear just enough to cause him to slip on entry and then would pull back to let him take his position back. I knew at any given moment Axel’s car was faster but he was relaxing and getting comfortable again. This meant fucking with Justin and it was something they both enjoyed doing.
The Knoxville Nationals was a four-day show with the final event on Saturday night being a fifty-lap feature. With twenty to go in the fifty-lap main, Axel was sitting in third with Justin and Tyler in front of him. It looked like Tyler was going to pull off his fifth Knoxville Nationals win when Axel took three and four high and shot past both of them. There was no way his car was that much faster than the others, so immediately I thought something was wrong and ran down to Tommy and Willie standing near the wall watching. Tommy pulled his headset aside when he noticed me.
“What’s going on?” I threw my hands up. “Did something break?”
There were times just before an engine blew that you got the most power out of the engine before disaster struck. It’s exactly what I thought had happened.
Tommy smiled, his orange curls stood on end as the cars roared back. The sound was almost deafening this close to the track. When they got in to turn one and two, Axel was spreading his lead to a five-car cushion. Smooth, not jerky, lines indicated the car seemed fine.
“You know what the problem has been all along?” Tommy’s eyes shifted from mine to the lap times on his watch. “It was never the car or the set-up.”
“What?” Willie started bouncing beside us with the rest of the crew knowing this could be the kid’s first win. His hands clasped in front of his face, his head bobbing as he continued to bounce with excitement. Casten leaned forward over the wall watching closely.
“You,” Tommy replied.
“Me?” I balked. “What the fuck did I do?”
“You weren’t here with him,” his eyes glanced at the track momentarily, and then back to me. “He needed you to calm him down. That kid depends on your advice. I tried in Lincoln. Jimi tried in Williams Grove when he nearly won but it’s you for some reason who puts him at ease out there.”
Was it me?
It was true. I had yet to see a feature race with the way our schedules collided constantly. Looking back over the years, you never realize the impact you have on your children until someone else points it out. I only told him to relax. How would that be the advice he needed?
“He needed to hear it from you,” Tommy answered though I hadn’t said the words out-loud.
I stood there dumbfounded when Tommy leaned into my shoulder as the white flag waved. “You might want to pay attention. History is being made.”
History was being made again. Two years ago, I won Knoxville Nationals when I came out here for fun. Last year, in his final season, my dad won. This year, coming into three and four, was my son flying out of two with a ten-car lead. He threw the car hard into three, clay roosted up spraying the wall we stood next to as the powerful rumble of his car popped as he lifted. He blipped the throttle to slide into the slick corner nearly bumping the wall before dipping down on the inside to take the checkered flag.
History had been made.
Axel Riley was a third generation driver and now the third consecutive win for our family here at Knoxville Nationals.
I wasn’t sure who was louder, the screams from the fans or the screams from our family, my wife in particular. I’d never heard her cheer so loud but, then again, I was always racing. Maybe she was always this loud.
With the thick crowd I couldn’t get down to the infield where Axel had pulled himself from the car to celebrate his win. I could see him though, on the screen, smiling, standing on the rear tires to do the wing dance.
When he climbed down, the announcer shoved the microphone in his face after he hugged Casten who managed to make it to him along with Lily and Sway. How they got down there was beyond me because I literally couldn’t move with all the people swarming the track.
With that same contagious smile I saw when he won the Chili Bowl Midget Nationals, Axel looked up at the tower seeing that double zero in the number one spot. The same number Jimi had throughout his entire career in the Outlaw series, Axel was now driving. The number hadn’t seen that position in fifty-one races. Flickering in the night, it was finally there.
He must have stared at that number for close to a minute before he smiled and looked back at the announcer. “I wasn’t sure I could get it there again.”
“You did though,” Jeff, the ESPN announcer, said to him with an encouraging smile. “How’d you do it?”
“Honestly, it had nothing to do with me.” He ran his shaking hands over his face wiping away sweat and confetti. “I just drove. It was my brother Casten, Tommy, Willie, my grandpa and my mom, but most of all... my dad. He told me what I needed to hear.”
“What was that, win?” Jeff teased.
Axel threw his head back with laughter.
“Yeah,” he nodded, “basically.”
“The champ knows what to say?”
“That he does.” Axel held the trophy over his head with one hand. “This one’s for you, Dad!”
I kept it together, for now, but it was yet another time in my life when breaking down and bawling like a baby was threatening.
Later, alone, I couldn’t guarantee my stability.
An hour later, the guys were all parked outside the haulers and throwing back beers in celebration of the kid’s first win. These were the celebrations I enjoyed the most. In the highly publicized world of NASCAR, a win is never a win anymore but it is a way to promote your sponsors. Sure you get to celebrate but everything about it is commercialized. You have to get out of your car at the exact moment they say, flash your sponsor’s name to the camera and present yourself in a manner they approve. I would say that was a bad thing. I would say that for me, how I liked to celebrate, was there at the dirt track throwing back beers with my friends.
Sway and I stood side-by-side watching them celebrate. Soon she said she was tired and we collected Arie and Casten to take them back to the hotel. Of course, Arie threw a fit.
“You’re coming with us whether you want to or not. I’ll drag you kicking and screaming.”
Arie, true to her nature, rolled her eyes, “Whatever, Dad.”
“Whatever?” I mouthed to Sway.
Sway laughed hugging my waist. “I should have taken notice back when her pediatrician was trying to sell me books on spirited children.”
“What’s her problem these days? She acts like we’re not cool. We’re cool people.”
Sway shrugged. “She’s sixteen.”
Even with her fit throwing, she was asleep right along with Sway before we even reached the freeway.
Casten sat up front with me and provided the entertainment, but soon he too started to yawn.
“You ever think of racing again?” I asked making conversation.
“I don’t want to race anymore,” Casten replied as though I shouldn’t question him. “It’s not the same for me.”
“I can understand that.”
I could understand. A lot wasn’t the same after the plane crash but it was even stranger being at a place like Knoxville Nationals and not seeing Ryder. Casten had taken to the USAC series when he raced, which was the series Ryder had always raced. I wasn’t around enough to teach Casten what he needed to know but Ryder was. In turn, they were very close.
“Do you ever think about racing sprint cars again?”
“Yeah, I do all the time.”
It was quiet for about ten minutes as Casten’s phone held most of his attention before he asked. “Do you ever get scared racing?”
“No, well, there are times when I think, shit, this is gonna hurt but I’m not scared of wrecking. The safety is much more advanced these days. I guess I think if it’s your time to go then it was meant to be.”
Casten tucked his phone inside his jacket. “Do you think Ryder was scared?”
“No, Ryder wouldn’t have been scared. He knew the dangers very well. In fact, much like you and him, his mentor, Ron Walker was killed racing, too. We all know it’s possible.”
Casten seemed to think about that for a moment and then looked down at his phone that beeped.
Nothing would take the place of Ryder being gone no more than it would having guys like Andy and Colin gone or a more dedicated crew member than Gentry. I missed Cal’s cooking and Wes, I missed his crazy war stories. My point was, any time you lose someone, it hurts and nothing takes that pain away.
Casten yawned with a chuckle adjusting his sweatshirt against the window. “I miss that crazy asshole, Ryder.”
“We all do, buddy.”