Bench Racing: Where Will A Team Find The Next Big Thing?

NFL day will be here soon. Teams do unbelievable amounts of testing to try to figure out who will be the next Peyton Manning and who might be the next Ryan Leaf. They have scouting combines, personality tests and a whole battery of ways to try to measure that.

So what about NASCAR? Is it really possible to identify the next Jeff Gordon or Kyle Busch? What made folks like the Gibbs’ and Mark Martin so sure that Joey Logano would be the greatest thing since “slice bread”? 

The question has been posed to former NASCAR Nationwide team mechanic Patrick Reynolds, whose also turned a few laps himself in his native Conneticut. Here’s his post entitled:

                               OPPORTUNITIES

The 2009 auto racing season is just barely getting underway. NASCAR’s national touring series are out of the gates. Several short track divisions competed in Daytona Speedweek satellite events. The Rolex sports car series started their campaign in January with the big 24-hour bash. NHRA drag racing has started. Formula 1, Indy cars, and many grassroots level tours and racetracks are within weeks of throwing their first green flag of the year.

A short time ago several motorsports journalists were busy with off-season news and predictions for what 2009 might bring. The veterans and newcomers were under the microscope.

Rookies and young guns get plenty of critiquing. There is sometimes a blank piece of paper, or at least a thin one, associated with their resume at a major league level. This makes for good material to make a prediction. There is very little background to make a forecast on performance. One could go off a driver’s career on what he built up in feeder series and lower echelons of racing. But the fun part is that there is no data from years of top ranking competition.

So how does one get a chance at the top of the heap? The answer with stick and ball sports is very plain. If you are good enough, you will get a shot. The rosters in major league baseball are made up of the best baseball players in the country, period. The motorsports answer is not nearly as clear. Any driver in the top levels of racing competition is very good, but many talented people never get the one thing they need. That is opportunity.

Where does opportunity come from? Why does any one driver at a Saturday night bullring get a shot at the big time while a driver in the very next pit stall will eventually realize that he is as far as he is ever going to get? There is no one definitive answer. For every Joey Logano, David Ragan, and Scott Speed, there is a Clay Rogers, L.W. Miller, and Steve Carlson.

The latter three are talented, winning short track drivers that don’t have big league rides. Rogers is a Hooters Pro Cup Series champion, Miller a NASCAR Southern Modified Tour champion, and Carlson is a NASCAR Whelen All American Series national champion. All boast championship hardware. None have a Sprint Cup Series ride. They represent literally thousands of racers just like them.

Opportunities come in different forms to different folks. Ragan is someone who, among the preseason predictors, was a popular choice to be Cup’s next first time winner, myself included. He has shown steady progress over the past two years in his finishing positions, in just finishing itself, and a reduction in mistakes that a lot of rookies make. If that same rate of progress continues I think he will find a way to victory lane. Looking back a bit to 2006 he made his Cup debut with Roush Racing, with little full size stock car experience comparable to the competition he was against. There were Bandolero wins and a championship, but his stock car statistics thereafter consisted of starts rather than wins.

David’s father Ken was a Cup Series competitor in the 1980s with his own independent team. He participated in limited schedules each year and his best finish was an eleventh place at Talladega in 1984. The on track finishes were modest but respectable. David was born during this time frame and had the opportunity; there is that word again, to grow up in the sport with a father who was a driver. Much can be learned from an earlier generation especially when that view of the sport was from behind a windshield.

I stand by my guess that David will get a victory lane beverage shower this season. He has shown steady improvement and that same rate will land him a win. He could potentially be Cup racing’s next breakout big winner. Fact of the matter is based on his record at the time I would not have put him in a Cup car. I have to admit Jack Roush and his staff was much better judges of him than I was.

The right people also need to be met which is extremely beneficial. Who gets the nod to climb through a car window at a test session is not as simple as the NFL combine where future players can be timed in the forty yard dash and you immediately have your results. In grass field sports tryouts the only variable is the athlete themselves. A wide receiver can step up to a yard marker, run, the stopwatch clicks, and an assessment is made. Next receiver up and repeat. It is comparing apples to apples. Auto racing is not as simple.

A race team rents a track for a day for multiple driver evaluation. The first driver straps in for a twenty lap run, returns to the garage, readings are taken off the car and he climbs out. The second driver climbs in, makes a twenty lap run, returns to the garage, readings are taken off the car, and he climbs out. This situation was apples to oranges. Similar in both being fruit, but not identical. The pair of twenty lap runs was alike but not the same. Each driver has just participated in two different sets of circumstances.

The first driver had a race car with fluids warmed by heating probes and circulated in the garage area. Tires were cold and the weather conditions were whatever was dealt by Mother Nature. Driver two’s fluids were heated and cycled by the first test run. Tires were warmed and worn by laps. The weather can change by a few degrees and a single cloud can affect grip on the asphalt surface.

All of these small details add up and when qualifying results show differences in cars of thousandths of a second, every tiny factor can mean big time on a speedway. And big time on a speedway is three tenths of a second. Using the same car, it is still difficult to compare driver to driver. Comparing drivers between two totally different race teams with chassis, engine, and setup as variables is a best guess scenario.

I read a story in 1992 about a young driver moving to the then called Winston Cup circuit for the upcoming 1993 season. He was getting his big… say it with me… opportunity. He was well known in USAC competition and was in his second year of competition in the Busch Grand National Series. He sported just one victory so far and was by no means dominant. I remember bench racing at the time and stating aloud “He is not ready. He is going to get his (backside) handed to him”. That young driver’s name was Jeff Gordon. Lump that in with the afore mentioned David Ragan conclusion about my driving talent judgment. Rick Hendrick, like Jack Roush, knew what he was seeing.

A knock on Gordon as he ascended to success in Cup was that he had everything handed to him. A reference to the fact his parents funded his go cart and quarter midget efforts and helped get him quality USAC series rides. A twenty one year old rookie who could race near the front was unheard of at the time and he redefined what car owners were looking for.

An engine builder I knew and I had a talk that went something like this:

“I can’t stand Jeff Gordon.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because he had everything handed to him.”

“Who is your favorite driver then?” was my reply.

“Mark Martin.”

I then went on to explain to him how Mark Martin was an ASA winner as a teenager with a team his father owned.

Coming from a family with enough money to fund a racing effort is extremely helpful in creating… opportunity. Some choose to own their team on a grassroots level and hope to be successful enough to grab the attention of a professional level car owner. Others can use their resources to sponsor a big league effort while a young driver develops in that higher series.

There is nothing negative about being a racer born into a fortunate situation. Whether a lineage has finances to buy what is needed, or having a famous last name to help open doors. Circumstances can dictate who gets to go up on stage, but once there a driver has to perform to stay in the spotlight. To perform, equipment must be quality, and the people on the team must mesh well. Drivers are like NFL quarterbacks. Success brings a heavy dose of credit and failure serves up a high portion of blame.

Remember J.J. Yeley? He drove Joe Gibbs’ number eighteen Sprint Cup machine in 2006 and 2007 and was a mid pack runner. He finished twenty ninth and twenty first in driver standings those two years. Kyle Busch took over the reins in 2008 and his performance is well documented. It is one of the most coveted rides on the tour. To anyone who has seen Yeley compete in USAC, his talent is quite evident. Quite frankly I feel he is a very good race car driver. But different situations for different drivers breed different results. The eighteen car is a glaring example.

The Sprint Cup Series is the highest form of stock car racing in the United States. Thousands of racers of various ages and levels of experience would like an opportunity to be a success at it. The fact of the matter is there are only forty three starting positions each contest. Many talented wheelmen are left out every week.

The forty three are among the best drivers NASCAR has to offer. Are they the forty three best? To me, no. They are the current forty three best connected to take advantage of the opportunity presented. Nobody can compete in Cup if they are bad. All drivers on the grid are good. The top names are the best any of us will ever see. The ones near the back of the pack on a weekly basis have talent, but arguably a case can be made for giving an unknown driver their opportunity.

Juan Pablo Montoya, Paul Menard, Dale Earnhardt Jr., and Bobby Labonte each followed a distinctive path to where they are now. There is no one way to get that opportunity. Talent, family, connections, and money are avenues many different drivers over the years have taken to get to motorsport’s top levels. There is no right, wrong, or clearly defined way.

But with as complex as the ladder system is, in my opinion, this possibility exists: the best stock car racer around just might be driving a milk truck for a living in South Dakota, and he will never get his big time– opportunity.

PHOTO CREDITS- Logano with plqaue by Da Brain, Logano burnout by Johnny’s Photo, Ragan by plstt, Gordon car by Henderson Images, J.J. Yeley by XSPimages. Click on the hyperlinks or visit flickr.com to see more of their work.