Compound – The rubber mixture for tires.
When I think about racing, a lot of things come to mind. Mostly my dad and grandpa but there were others that influenced me, too.
I don’t remember how old I was but I was sitting on the wing of my grandpa’s sprint car watching my dad and him talking about racing and setups wondering when I could do the same. I wanted to be part of those conversations with them and their buddies.
I’ve always wanted that. I wanted the connection between them and racing.
School never mattered. I barely graduated with a passing GPA but I did and from then on it has been racing. Now at eighteen, almost nineteen, racing was still the only thing that mattered. Only now, it was my profession. I had never held the 8-5 job nor would I ever, that wasn’t me.
What did matter outside of racing was my family, including Lily. That was one very important part about all of this that I learned from my parents and our family.
My dad once told me it’s hard to see past the speed when you are going 200 mph.
Boy was it. Since stepping into grandpa’s car at the beginning of the season, I was in a different city, different track each night. The Outlaws ran an 82-race schedule over ten months. That was a lot of racing and time away. When we went to the live out on West Coast and run those tracks, I didn’t see my own bed for three months.
Soon I had a motor coach of my own and was traveling around just as my dad and grandpa did; only I never felt like them. I wasn’t sure why, but I just didn’t feel like I had what they had. They were legends. Me, I was just a rookie trying to fill big shoes.
After Williams Grove, I flew home to see Lily. We were living together now in a condo on Lake Norman a few miles from my parent’s house. Since it was a day off, we spent the greater part of the day on the lake wakeboarding with Casten and some chick he was seeing. I was sure they wouldn’t last past this weekend, but I was kind to her regardless.
While I was a one-woman man, my little brother had other ideas about that. He didn’t disrespect them, was nice to them, but he still wasn’t a one-woman man. At fourteen, he wasn’t a man but he had other ideas about that, too.
All the stress was getting to me so it was nice to just hang out with my brother. Arie would have come too but she was visiting Lucas in Texas for the week with Lexi and Macy, Van’s daughter.
“Do you think Arie will be home next week?” Kale, Lily’s younger brother asked while Casten took his turn wakeboarding.
Kale was in love with Arie but she had no feelings toward him. Since we all grew up around each other, she looked at him as though he was her little brother.
Kale was not accepting that though. I also didn’t tell him that since Brian, Arie had absolutely no plans of dating any time soon. I was okay with that. I wasn’t wild about Arie dating anyway, and since Brian, I was even more against this.
“She should be,” I told him as I guided the boat through the rippled waves the other boats created, pulling Casten on the rope.
He sucked by the way. He spent entirely too much time trying to impress this Erin girl than actually attempting to wakeboard. The thing about my brother was he didn’t care about competition. Where I strived to be the best, Casten was just happy and content being himself. He didn’t care whether he won or lost, just as long as he was having a good time.
I was sure by his loud cackling every time he fell that he was, in fact, having a great time.
After a full day out there getting sunburnt, we headed back to our parent’s house where the food was. Mom did a good job keeping the house full of food with all the boys in the family. I was also sure she had some aloe for my aching skin. I did not tan, I don’t know why but I just didn’t. I burned.
“I hope she got those jalapeño chips again,” Casten said, jumping from my truck when we pulled into the driveway.
At any given time on the weekends, my parent’s house was empty. During the week, it was scrambling with people from various team members’ and family. We were all very close and usually never went a week without seeing each other, but sometimes it happened. Like this week, mom flew to Washington, then to Martinsville, and then back home to Mooresville for a day, and now she was heading back to Martinsville to watch dad there on Sunday.
We saw her for a brief moment and then she was out the door in a mad scramble to catch Roger, my dad’s pilot. Lane and Cole snuck in just as she was walking out the door.
“Do you guys have food here? Our house doesn’t have shit,” Cole announced slumping on the couch in just a pair of board shorts. My brother and Cole were constantly running around half-dressed. It was as though they thought nothing was wrong with this.
Casten’s little playmate for the weekend walked inside in just her bikini causing Lane and Cole to both watch her walk by. Casten smirked. I quickly averted my eyes the other direction to avoid the questions I would later be asked. Lily wasn’t exactly confident in my popularity. She was constantly asking if I thought other women were pretty or not. At least once a month I got asked if I was sleeping with someone else. It got old really quick but I also loved Lily and wanted to prove to her my intentions.
“I’ll be down a little later,” Casten told us following Erin upstairs to his room.
“That’s disgusting,” Bailey, Lane’s ex-girlfriend, snorted rummaging through the fridge beside Lily searching for food. “She’s seventeen, what’s she doing with Casten?”
“Maybe they’re just talking,” I suggested with a laugh.
Cole laughed getting in the way of the girls. “You should know by now he never sleeps within his age group. Besides,” he leaned back against the couch throwing his arms behind his head, “I’m pretty sure I would do just about anything to sleep with Erin.”
“You would.” Bailey shoved Cole out of her way.
I wasn’t sure who found my little brother’s sex life more interesting, Casten or our cousins.
Most people thought my brother was some kind of a dog when it came to women, but he was up front with them. They knew he wasn’t with just one of them and frequently had more than one at a time up there. He was also still good friends with all of them, even the ones he no longer fooled around with. He had quite the setup for a fourteen-year-old kid. Believe me when I say I thought he was entirely too young to be having sex but if you ever met Casten, you wouldn’t think that. He was probably the most respectful fourteen-year-old I knew and he went out of his way to treat all of them with respect and was careful, too.
I never understood it but I also never tried. We may be brothers and look identical to each other besides our heights, I was cheated on the whole height gene by the way, but, regardless, Casten was a ladies man. I’ve heard people in our family joke that he took after my Uncle Spencer in that manner but I also knew enough about my dad to know that he never had any problems in that department either.
I wasn’t a ladies man. I wouldn’t say I didn’t like women… because I did. I was eighteen. Sure I liked women but only one woman.
Casten returned downstairs about an hour later with Erin wrapped around his side. They stayed like that the entire night and eventually returned to his room while the rest of us just laid back and relaxed.
It was nice to have Lily with me. We ended up going back home around ten that night.
These days I was contemplating how to propose to her but chickened out any time I tried. I had a ring and everything but I still couldn’t do it. My dad put me to shame with his epic proposal on national television that was still played on Sports Center as the “Best Proposal” in sports history.
Try following that one.
I asked my mom what to do and her advice: “Don’t embarrass her. Lily is shy so nothing public.”
My dad’s advice: “It should be just the two of you.”
Lane’s advice: “Don’t get married.” Lane recently had Bailey, the girl of his dreams, break his heart. He was bitter.
Grandpa’s advice: “Don’t ask her after sex, that’s stupid.”
And, finally, my grandma’s advice: “Oh, sweetie, that’s exciting.” I hadn’t proposed but she was already excited just at the thought.
As you can see, I got nowhere with them, just slightly more confused.
Lily fell asleep soon after we got back to our condo whereas I stayed awake, staring at the ring in my hand. I must have lost track of time and fell asleep because when I woke up, her bright blue eyes were gazing at me.
Her long blonde hair was pulled back into a messy bun … it was an incredibly adorable bun on the top of her head as she lay on my bare stomach.
Her hand moved to mine, the one holding the ring and I panicked closing my fist tightly. I’d spent the entire night fretting over asking her that I forgot to put it away.
Lily giggled softly. “I already saw it.”
Still on my back, I threw my arm over my face and groaned, the velvet box smacking me in the face. “I’m such a fucking idiot.”
“No you’re not,” she assured me straddling my hips. Leaning forward, her hands rested on either side of my head against the mattress. “It’s beautiful.”
I reached up to stroke the side of her face. Her eyes closed and she leaned into my hand.
I hesitated and then just went for it.
Sitting up, I moved back against the headboard. Lily seemed to understand what I was going to do when I reached for her hand, holding it with my own.
“I wanted this to be romantic and perfect,” I stared at her, stunned by her natural beauty in the morning. “I wanted it to be perfect, everything you are to me but I got so worked up over it... well... nervous,” I shrugged. “It didn’t work out like that.”
She let out an adorable sigh. “Axel, just give me the ring.” She held out her hand.
“I should say something though, right?”
Lily rolled her eyes. “Yes, ask me!”
“Lily Anne West—” she started giggling. Her hand flew to her mouth to stop herself. “Are you going to let me finish?”
“Yes,” she squeaked wrapping her arms around her knees pulling them against her chest.
Laughing, I looked down at our hands again. “All right,” I inhaled with an embarrassingly shaky breath. “Lily Anne West... will you marry me?”
Lily was quiet for a moment before tears streamed down her flushed cheeks. “Yes.” She whispered launching forward into my arms. Wrapping them around her tightly, I buried my face into her neck breathing her in. “I love you.”
She pulled back, grinning widely. “I thought you were never going to ask me and I love you, too.”
“Why would you have thought that?”
“Casten told me when you bought the ring. I was beginning to think you bought it for someone else.”
“That fucking brat,” I was ready to kill him. He always did shit like this. One time my dad bought my mom a necklace for her birthday only to have Casten tell her two months earlier. He couldn’t keep secrets, but then again, neither could my mom.
“Oh, he’s cute,” Lily flipped her hand as if this was no big deal and focused on the ring, “leave him alone.”
“Not you, too ...” I groaned thoroughly annoyed with my brother and his way to captivate everyone including my girlfriend. “You do realize he was charged with starting a riot recently?”
“Me too what? And, no he wasn’t. That was Tommy. Casten was never formally charged with that.”
“Why does everyone think he’s cute?” Regardless of my little temper tantrum, I placed the ring on her finger, smiling. “And, he should have been charged with it. He destroyed my parent’s house.”
“Casten is cute. And his careless happy attitude for everything makes him adorable. But you ...” she took my face between her hands, “you are what I want. You’re sexy,” she bit down on her lip, “confident, staggeringly good in bed... and the love you have for racing makes me love you all the more.”
“Why would loving racing make you love me more?”
“Out of everything I just said leave it to you to focus on racing.”
“Naturally,” I grinned.
She shook her head amused. “Yet another reason why I love you, silly boy.”
Leaning back on my elbows, I grinned. “So you’ll be my wife?”
“Absolutely.”
So we planned a wedding. Or I should say the girls in the family planned the wedding. I just did what I was told. My only condition was that it happened in November during the break between the World Finals and my parent’s anniversary.
Planning a wedding and finishing up an 82-race season was not ideal for a number of reasons. If I had my choice, we’d be going to Vegas but Lily wanted a wedding, so that was what she got.
The weekend before the World Finals in Charlotte, I was at my wits end and looking for a private sanctuary, the sprint car shop was always a good idea.
I was frustrated by the time I reached the shop with all the wedding planning. I couldn’t understand why this was all so hard. I mean, it’s a fucking wedding. It’s supposed to be about two people in love and wanting to spend that time together. Why did we have to go through all this bullshit to do that?
I was relieved to see Lane’s truck parked outside the shop when I pulled into the parking lot. I needed someone normal to be around. For the last few weeks, he was helping us out in the sprint car shop since his season racing dirt bikes had ended for the winter.
Lane was in there changing out the gears for me so we could get the car loaded for Charlotte’s 4-night show. He was still racing on the GNCC (Grand National Cross Country) motocross series but just finished the final round last week.
The thing with Lane that I appreciated most was his willingness to help no matter what. All you had to say was “Hey, can you ...” you didn’t have to finish the sentence and he was already asking how he could help.
“Can you hand me that control arm?” I asked him setting my beer on the wing. I usually had a ton of guys here helping me but most of them, Tommy and Willie included, were with my dad in Texas.
Everyone in the shop loved to watch him at Texas. He owned that place on any given weekend just like he did Bristol and Richmond. I’ve never seen someone throw a 2400-pound Cup car sideways into the concrete corners and still manage to keep it under control as my dad did. There wasn’t anything he couldn’t do in a race car and he proved that countless times. Looking around the shop at all the trophies told you that.
“Yeah,” Lane placed it next to my feet. “You know ...” he began, his eyes on the wheel, “if you don’t want me to help you with the cars, I don’t have to.”
“I never said that.”
“I know... it’s just that I heard you with Jameson the other night.”
I knew what he was referring too. My exact statement to my dad was. “I’m frustrated with everyone. No one will leave me alone.” I wasn’t even referring to racing when I said that. Lane was sensitive though and only wanted to help.
“That wasn’t about you, Lane. That was about the wedding.” I looked over at him thinking of why I was so stressed out. It had nothing to do with the wedding. All of it was about racing. “I just don’t know if I can do it. I wanted to win the championship this season but that’s not happening. I feel like I let grandpa down. I feel like I let the sponsors down.”
I knew it was far-fetched to win the championship as a rookie but it wasn’t impossible. My dad did it. I felt bad that Lane mistook that as me not wanting his help. For this reason, we always got along.
“You can. Everyone knows that.” Lane smiled that same smile Uncle Spencer had, bright with dimples. The kind that made you feel like everything would be okay. “You’ve got both their talents combined. There would be some who would kill to have an ounce of the talent that you possess in a race car and you act as though it’s not there. You don’t believe in yourself, Axel.”
“That’s not it. I know I have talent, but fuck, look at who my dad is or grandpa.” I threw my arms up in the air. “How can I possibly live up to those two?”
“Don’t feel like you need to live up to them. That’s not what it’s about.” Lane smiled and looked contemplative for a minute. “It’s like tires. Some of us have harder compounds and don’t provide grip. Then there are the softer compounds that provide more grip but wear quicker. We’re all different.”
Lane was right. That wasn’t what it was about.
I shouldn’t feel like I need to live up to them but I did. If you understood who they were in the racing community, you would understand my constant comparison. To everyone else, I was nearly fated to be this legendary racer.
But could I be?
This season sure wasn’t proving to be it. I was running ninth in the standings and only pulled through with thirteen feature wins so far.
Last season, my grandpa won forty-five of the eighty-two feature races. Stacking up against my thirteen, that wasn’t exactly a confidence builder right there.
“I was really young when your dad made history and pulled off the championship in his first season but no one will ever forget that, Axel. They won’t because he continues to make history every time he pulls onto a track. That’s Jameson though, that’s not you.”
I nodded and took a seat on a stack of tires beside him. He handed me a beer. Though I wasn’t twenty-one, I grew up at a dirt track and beer came with that.
Lane adjusted his hat and sat next to me. Raising his beer to his lips, he paused and then looked over at me. “You have it. You just have to believe in it like he does. I’m not sure that there has ever been a time in his life when he didn’t believe in himself.”
Trying to believe in myself has always been my problem. I felt that without that constant encouragement from my dad, I couldn’t do it.
Lane and I finished up the control arms and gears on my sprint car. We then went through the checklist making sure the bolt on parts of the car and engine were secured and nothing else needed to be replaced. We then went through all the fluids and tire pressures for Charlotte. We kept logs from each race so that we knew what worked at each track. The problem was what worked one night in April didn’t work in November for the simple fact that the moisture was now gone from the track. You basically needed to start over and figure out what would work now. You couldn’t do that until you were there.
Grandpa helped us, but what worked as a setup for him didn’t work for me with the different driving styles and weight difference.
When we were ready to leave, we loaded the car into the hauler for Craig to pick up in the morning and then locked up. In the morning, we drove to Charlotte for the final week of racing.
I knew one thing, regardless of the fact that we all had different tire variations, I was ready for a break.
After the World Finals in Charlotte, I was determined to get to Jameson. I needed my dirty heathen badly by the time Homestead rolled around that year.
Between all the fan clubs, Jameson’s sponsor obligations, and three kids who frequently needed Mama Wizard, this Mama Wizard didn’t have much time to herself.
In fact, I hadn’t been able to see Jameson in close to two weeks and I knew it was time when I caught myself getting emotional when he Skyped me last night.
My flight was delayed in Homestead and I had yet to fly to or from Homestead without a delay. That wasn’t going to stop me. I was getting my dirty heathen naked before that damn race.
When I finally made it through traffic, to the hotel, and through the mob of fans outside, I barely got through the door before his mouth was on mine and he was pushing me toward the bed.
We had clothes strung all over the room and ended up with me on the bottom when we finally settled on the bed.
Just as I was pushing his jeans past his hips, someone knocked on the door. If my glare could have set fire to that door, it would have.
“Oh, for fucks sake,” Jameson grunted against my shoulder, panting.
Stopping wasn’t really what he had in mind. It definitely wasn’t what I wanted.
“Jameson, we need to leave for the track.” Aiden yelled through the door. “Be in the lobby in five minutes.”
His lips moved from my neck and then my forehead and I knew he was pulling away.
Goddamn it.
“I need to go, honey,” he whispered with the regret laced in every word. I knew the feeling.
So we left for the track and our time alone was over. My poor crankcase was very mad.
Soon we would be at the track and the race weekend would be starting, but there was always later tonight. I knew enough about his schedule that come tonight, after qualifying and practice, I could convince him to leave.
Outside his hauler, my stomach tightened in a feeling mixed with arousal, anticipation and possessiveness as I took in every inch of my husband with my eyes. Watching him throughout the night, as woman after woman approached him, each one hoping to leave with him but he never looked.
There was no doubt in my mind women had imagined what it would be like having his talented hands move over their bodies, steering them like he did his car. I knew what it was like to have those large calloused hands bring me over the edge. I knew what it was like to hear him say, “I love you.”
That night, knowing we’d have tonight together, kept me sane in the Simplex hospitality tent. I smiled politely and shook hands with everyone but, really, I just wanted to be alone with him.
My dirty heathen was thinking the same thing. Every look, every touch and every sigh told me so. I could practically feel the possessiveness radiating from him. His eyes watched me, his hands never leaving my skin and annoyance he showed when another man got close also told me so. And just when I didn’t think I could take much more, his eyes would meet mine, and slowly travel down my body, stopping at all the places I knew he wanted to worship.
Just when I didn’t think I could take it much longer, feeling as though my grip was gone, he leaned into my neck and whispered, “We need to go.”
I felt him smile against my forehead, and in less than fifteen minutes we were back in the SUV, heading for the hotel.
We didn’t waste time, knowing we never had time. Although we did turn our cell phones off and locked the door. “No interruptions,” he whispered.
My fingers held onto his shoulders while his lips kissed across my neck and shoulders. When his mouth moved down, kissing as he went, they moved to my hair. His hands held my hips in place, keeping me from squirming away with the ecstasy that he brought me to.
He helped me from the floor to the bed, slowly crawling up my body, kissing his way to my lips. I let my hands slide from his hair, over his shoulders and down his ribs to rest on his hips.
“I’ve missed you, honey,” he panted scrambling for control. His body was trembling from weeks of being deprived. “Fuck, I missed you so much,”
Poor dirty heathen. It was evident he wasn’t lasting long.
We tried to take our time but the need was too strong. My legs wrapped around his hips, moving with him. I couldn’t get close enough and he seemed to be feeling the same way. He leaned away, pushing his upper body away and reached to balance himself on the headboard. I watched the muscles in his biceps and forearms flex as he held himself upright, the veins in his arms puffed up.
One hand slipped off to grasp my thigh, holding me against him. His head fell forward and I tried to memorize every inch of his face that was strained with pleasure.
“Jesus Christ, Sway,” he moaned, kissing and biting my neck, his whiskers brushing against my heated skin.
Leaning up on my elbows, I gently kissed his chin and then his lips.
“Don’t stop. For the love of God, do not stop,” I whispered arching into him, “Please.”
He didn’t. He leaned in pressing his lips hard against mine. His forceful movements pushed me against the headboard.
His breath fell against mine, hard and heavy, his grip tightened around my leg. It never failed to amaze me how absorbed I could become watching Jameson in the midst of an orgasm that I was bringing him to. His features tensed, his body wavering between still and shuddering. It was captivating and fascinating all at the same time.
When his body collapsed against mine and then rolled to the side, his hand fell against my stomach, tracing circles around my belly button. “I don’t think I can wait that long again. Ever.” he gasped trying to catch his breath.
“Me either.” I laughed. “But we say that every time.”
No matter how long the separation between us was, we had no problem cleaning off the tires and getting up to speed again.
If you would have told me at the beginning of this season that I would be emerged in the closest point battle in the NASCAR Cup Series history ever, I would have laughed in your face. Not only that, after Richmond, I would have told you that you were smoking crack because that wasn’t happening. Not this year, I was sure of that.
By the time the series rolled around to Pocono in August and I managed to destroy our tenth car in the last nine races, I got the message: This was not my year. Things seemed to turn around in Loudon and I started winning... a lot actually. So when I made it into the chase, I figured you know, let’s just stay out of trouble and finish out the season the best we can. Winning the Monster Million helped me, and my team’s confidence, but we struggled those last few races. With heavy hitters like Tate, Paul and Bobby all in contention, I honestly thought I had no chance. Thankfully, once in the chase, Brody had no consistency and proved to be an average rookie. He needed more experience.
I won at Loudon, Dover and Texas, putting me within one point of Tate going into Homestead. Turns out, I had a chance again at another championship. But there was only ten points separating the top four drivers. It was anyone’s championship.
The problem was that Tate was consistent and pulled through with top ten finishes in every race in the chase. He was going to be tough to beat.
The morning of the final race, I was in a good mood. Mostly because of my wife’s arrival and her taking care of some much needed pressure release to calm the nerves.
She stood by my side through all the race interviews and media appearances as she always did. My other mood boosting turn: it rained last night leaving the track green.
There was nothing better for me than a green track because any rubber that was tearing up your tires before was now gone leaving a fresh surface. It had its downsides sure, no grip, but with my dirt track skills, loose was okay with me. I liked having a softer tire and less grip.
Kyle was a nervous wreck though, having set the car up for a surface that had already been raced on, now we had to start over with wedge, tire pressures and spring adjustments.
I wasn’t worried so much about myself that morning as I was Kyle. He seemed on edge most of the weekend.
Over the years, Kyle hasn’t had much of a personal life and puts everything he has into this team along with Mason. Right there are two people who have dedicated their lives to Riley-Simplex Racing and stood by all of us through it all. They didn’t have family outside of us. Kyle got married once but that quickly ended when she realized being married to a crew chief was worse than being married to the hotheaded driver. You never see them. With Kyle being the best crew chief in the business, he had no life outside of racing. But he was okay with that.
The thing with Kyle was he was more than a crew chief to me. When I lost my cool, he anchored me to the tide so to speak. The rocks may have beaten the shit out of me but he kept me from going under. I like to think I provided him with the same but there were times when I wondered about his mental sanity. Let’s be real, I wasn’t exactly the easiest person to work with.
“You okay?” I asked him as we sat around the hauler eating breakfast that morning before introductions. “You don’t look so well.”
He didn’t answer right away, his eyes trained on the clipboard in front of him making sure everything was in order. When I kicked his foot under the table, he looked up. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he mumbled looking back at his clipboard chewing on the end of his pen.
Mason walked up after that and they got into fuel mileage and what each pit stop would do.
Fuel mileage played a huge role in race day strategy. Whether it was because of better tires, the new Ethanol-gasoline blend or the smaller fuel cells in the cars, teams, including us, were forced to take gambles and stretch fuel mileage as far as we could.
It went one of two ways and you can pretty much guess what they may be.
Personally, I think that it was a part of the sport and added to the whole aspect. It wasn’t just about talent anymore. It was about being consistent and making all aspects come together.
Your strategy is simple. Get better fuel mileage than anybody else and make the right pit calls, oh, and drive smart.
And every team has a secret. I don’t know ours. Kyle and Mason deal exclusively with that and refuse to share their secrets. I had no problem with that. The less I knew, the more focused I was on the track. I trusted them. After all, they guided me to championship after championship.
We’ve made some bad calls like we did in Michigan in late August when Kyle thought for sure we could make it on one can of fuel and I ran out on the last lap. It wasn’t an exact science but we won the gamble more often than not.
When it comes to winning races, it’s the combination of car and driver and what percentage they provide to the mix. When you add fuel mileage into the mix you add yet a third element, the crew chief.
Pit strategy could negate an advantage a faster car may have had on you. Crew chiefs like it or not, received little credit when calls go right and all the blame when they went wrong.
The key was consistency and being a champion was to know when to be aggressive and when to be cautious. Two things me and my team we very good at.
Homestead is a nasty racetrack and I mean that in a good way. It was hard both on drivers and equipment. There was never a break when you were in the car either. If you weren’t racing another driver, you were trying to keep your car out of the wall. For that reason, I loved Homestead just for the challenge.
My ritual before the race was the same: kiss Sway, and then Spencer raised the window net after telling me good luck. Tate even came by to wish me luck and let me know I was in for a battle; he wasn’t just laying it down. I knew that already and that was the last thing I wanted him to do. You never want to win a championship where the other guy just gave up without a fight. Tate should have retired by now but with thirteen championships under his belt, I had a feeling he was trying to match my fifteen before he retired.
I wasn’t having that, but I also wasn’t worried about it either. Of course I wanted to win but worrying about it wouldn’t help. I race my own races and that was all I could do.
Once the car rolled onto the track, it was all about finding my points on the track, getting familiar with the lines they were using and where my pit stall was. With being the last race to decide the championship, I needed to be focused and on my game one hundred percent.
“You got me, Aiden?” I adjusted the ear buds when the radio cracked.
“10-4,” he confirmed. “You’re coming up on pit entrance now. The white line is the brake point where the speed starts.”
“The thin one or the thick one? There are two.”
“Oh... uh... they look the same from up here. Can you see them Kyle?”
“Thick.” Kyle told us. “The thick white line is where you should be slowed. What’s your RPMs?”
“4300.”
“All right, that’s your pit road speed. Remember to get some heat in those brakes on these pace laps.”
“10-4.”
“One to go at the line. They’re calling a green yellow start,” Aiden told me. “Watch your shifts and keep distance between you and third.
“What’s a green yellow?”
“They’re gonna start logging laps here on the next time by but you’ll stay at speed,” Kyle said.
“They’re doing what?” I was confused about the format. Since the rain, they changed it again.
“They are trying to dry the track so they will wave the green but stay at pit road speed, single file with no passing. When the pace car picks up speed, you do. Eventually it will pull off and they will wave the green again letting you know when to go full speed.”
“10-4.”
I took a deep breath and hoped my car held out for me as I pulled on my belts one last time before taking the green flag. I was worried about being too tight, but once the race started I had no grip.
Some cars stayed on the high line whereas I was down low on the line. I knew if I ventured up there I’d be kissing the wall. There was no way the car could hang on up there with the green surface we had.
“When I’m not loose, I’m tight,” I told Kyle once I could have a minute to relax.
“We’ll get it, bud. You’re doing great. Do you need lap times?”
“No, not right now. It’s all I can do to keep it out of the wall.”
I was all over the place, brushed the wall every fifty laps or so and was running sixth with Tate running twelfth. If the race ended now, I’d win by one point.
That made me happy but my car wasn’t happy.
“What’s your temps bud?”
“210-240,”
“Keep an eye on that,” Kyle said concerned, “how’s it feel?”
“It doesn’t feel like I have the power I did in the beginning.” I shifted into third. “It’s vibrating in every gear. When I come out of four, it lags bad.”
With fifty laps to go, that was when I felt the vibration shaking the car down the backstretch. I closed my eyes knowing it was the end.
“Goddamn it!” I shouted slamming my fists down on the wheel. “Of all the fucking luck!”
You want so badly for each win that the letdown can be just as fretting as the buildup.
By the time I entered three it let go completely. I didn’t say anything knowing Aiden would call it out when he saw the smoke and fluid being sprayed from the tower.
“Engine let go in turn three,” he said moments later.
There was really no point with fifty laps to go to try to fix it at this point with it being the last race of the season, it didn’t matter anymore.
“Take it to the truck,” Kyle said. I could hear the disappointment in his voice even through the radio.
“Sorry, guys,” I said. “Great season. Way to battle back and pull off a good season.”
It turned out later that we had a few rockers that weren’t torched back at the shop back home. That bent the push rod, held open the valve and allowed the piston to hit it. Everything came apart after that.
Disappointed and frustrated, I took the car to the truck. Sway met me at the hauler and we snuck over to Tate’s pit box to watch with his crew chief, Jeb.
On the way there, she leaned into my shoulder. “Sorry.”
Leaning into her side, I whispered into her ear pulling her into my side. “You can’t win them all, honey.”
She giggled tucking nicely under my arm. “Where’s my husband?”
By now, we were at Tate’s pit so I just laughed at her.
“What’s the points look like?” I asked Jeb pulling Sway on my lap up on the pit box
He smiled. “He needs to get third or higher or you will win by one point.”
“Really?” I thought for sure that I was mathematically out of it now but I also scored five points for leading a few laps so that apparently gave me a small advantage.
If anyone was going to beat me for the championship, I wanted it to be Tate.
I thought back to when Tyler won Turkey Night back in ‘98 and I how I felt then. Like I said then, you want to win so badly but then you think about the other guy who wanted it just as badly. Over time, you gain an appreciation for every racer out there knowing that their drive and variation is just as strong as yours or else they wouldn’t be here. It has to be because why else would they risk everything to do this?
I’ll admit, when he took over third with one lap to go, I was disappointed but it was a bittersweet moment.
And when he won, I was the first to congratulate him on pit road. I told him exactly what he told me back when I won my fifth championship over him. “It feels just as gratifying watching you win as it does winning.”
I wasn’t lying either. I was proud of Tate. Over the years he had become more than a mentor on the track, he was one of my best friends.
When you’re constantly pulled in different directions it’s the relationships inside of that tire variation you value the most. Over those years, I valued that the most.