In the Blink of an Eye (11 page)

CHAPTER 32
GOING FORWARD

Y
ou are never really ready to go to the races, I have learned. It’s just time to go.

And that’s what time it was. February 2007. I was finishing up a few last-minute details at the shop before heading to the airport. On my way out of the shop that night, I met a guy making a late delivery.

“What do you have there, bud?” I asked.

“It’s your copy machine, Mister Waltrip,” he said.

“Cool. We need one of those.”

As I drove toward the airport that night, the late delivery of my new copy machine started bothering me. I was thinking, “Shouldn’t we already have one of those? What else don’t we have? And who’s supposed to be in charge of getting it? Is it me?”

I mean, seriously. We just got our copy machine! That handy device just showed up? How did we make it this far without one of those? All the top organizations had probably had their copy machines for twenty-five years. It was about a half hour’s drive to the Statesville airport, where we kept our airplanes, and that dumb piece of office equipment had me all torn up the whole way.

You have to understand. We were undefeated. We hadn’t lost a race yet. There was so much positive talk around the NASCAR world about what we were building. I’d never heard so many things said about me. But the time to talk was about over. We were one plane ride away from the whole world seeing what we had. I was really nervous about that. I couldn’t handle going to Daytona and being embarrassed. In typical Mikey fashion, I had gone all in. No one in the history of NASCAR had ever started a new team with a new manufacturer and three cars. Most were just one-car teams at the beginning.

Was that a good idea? A little late to wonder that now.

I had bet the farm that we could succeed. Literally. My lovely hundred-acre farm out in Sherrills Ford. What happened next made that a bad bet.

It was qualifying day,
and I was up early, eagerly anticipating my team’s official NASCAR debut. When the cars hit the track in Daytona, race fans everywhere wanted to see how Toyota would stack up in NASCAR against Ford, Chevy, and Dodge. People were also eager to see how Michael Waltrip Racing would fare. Our new team was big news in Daytona. I was proud of what we had built. I was happy that all three cars had performed well in pre-qualifying practice. I was also happy because I was in Daytona again. But this time I felt different being there, more like a proud new father—except this father was doting over three cars, not three babies.

All cars must pass NASCAR’s technical inspection prior to getting onto the track to qualify. This was a routine that NASCAR teams go through before every race. It’s usually just that, routine.

So when the phone rang that morning, I had no reason to be concerned. I answered. It was Ty. He didn’t sound right.

“We’ve got a problem,” he said. “NASCAR has found something in our fuel.”

“Something in our fuel?” I asked him. That didn’t make any sense.

“Yeah,” Ty said. “They have impounded our car.”

“Well, Ty. We’ll be needing that car. How long do they plan to keep it?”

Turned out they were thinking “forever.”

News like that could be devastating for any team, especially a young race team like ours. I immediately thought the worst. We’re cheaters? We’re doomed! What am I going to tell Toyota? What am I going to tell NAPA? What are the fans going to think?

Over the years in NASCAR, we’ve seen some very creative interpretations of the rules. Okay, cheating. But nobody messes with the fuel or the engine. Everyone knows that.

“No way, Ty,” I insisted. “This has got to be some kind of mistake. I’m gonna go find Mike Helton and see what’s going on.”

When I walked into the trailer where the NASCAR president has his office, I could tell immediately he didn’t think this was any mistake. Mike has an intimidating presence, and he was focusing it all on me.

“There’s something in your fuel we haven’t ever seen before,” he informed me. “But don’t worry, we’ll find out what it is.”

Worry, my butt! I was scared to death. This could be the end of my team before it officially began.

I had a great relationship with Mike. He was one of Dale’s best friends. Mike would go fishing with us sometimes. In the years after Dale’s death, Mike was the guy I turned to for advice. Like Dale and I had, Mike and I talked about life, cars, almost anything. As I contemplated my new role as a car owner in the NASCAR world, I sought direction from Mike. I also asked him if he agreed with some of the business decisions I was making. At the same time, being married wasn’t going so well for Mrs. Waltrip and me. Mike heard a lot about that as well.

So I asked him as a friend, not as the NASCAR president: “What should I do? You think I should load my car up and get out of here? I love the Daytona 500. I don’t want me being here to scar it.”

Mike shook his head.

“I don’t think you should leave,” he said. “You should do what you’ve done your whole career. Push ahead. You’re not a quitter.”

It’s funny, my dad would have said the same thing in different words. Dad would have told me, “Face the music, son.”

“I have to warn you,” Mike added as I got up to leave. “If whatever’s in your fuel doesn’t belong——and I don’t think it does——it’s going to be expensive.”

I could sort of already tell by the way he was acting that that was going to be the case.

Mike didn’t say so, but I don’t believe he thought I had any knowledge about whatever was wrong with my fuel. That made me feel better.

By the time I left Mike Helton’s office, my whole world had been turned upside down. Face the music, you say, Leroy? Well, the music was all cued up and ready to play as soon as I walked out of that trailer. Media types ten folks deep were ready to jump on me.

Fantastic, I thought.

All the people who had been reporting the feel-good story of Michael Waltrip Racing were now focused on us for a much different reason. “What’s wrong with your fuel?” they were asking. “Is this a Toyota issue?” Oh, great. Now I’ve dragged Toyota into this with me.

I’d never been faced with questions like this before, and I didn’t have the answers. I didn’t know. I told the reporters that as soon as I did know something, I would tell them. As I went to investigate, I thought: How could this be happening to us? Imagine. Even before we started our first race, we managed to alienate our fans. We were labeled cheaters by the media.

Later that week, the analysis came back from NASCAR. They informed us and the whole world our gas had rocket fuel in it. Really? Rocket fuel? How do you even
get
rocket fuel? We were fined $100,000 and had a couple of our key crew members suspended. Our promising start could not have gone more dramatically wrong.

We never found out for sure how it got there. But it is the crew chief’s responsibility to make sure the car passes NASCAR’s technical inspection. Obviously, with the addition of space-shuttle fuel, that didn’t happen.

So there I was again in Daytona without a crew chief. Only this time, in addition to that, NASCAR had taken my car and told me I couldn’t practice. That’s a lot to be faced with.

After calls to NAPA, Aaron’s, Toyota, and all my sponsors, we agreed with Mr. Helton and my dad, Leroy. We had to stay there and push forward. I was going to attempt to qualify my backup car into the 500 without a lap of practice.

I was able to do just that, racing my way through Thursday’s qualifying race. But so what? Such damage had been done to me personally that qualifying didn’t seem like a big deal. We had worked so hard to help Toyota gain acceptance in NASCAR, and I had invested every dollar I had to build our team. But because of what had happened with our fuel, driving my way into the 500 field hardly mattered to me.

I had gone from proud and happy when I arrived in Daytona to embarrassed and sad. Remember I said I couldn’t handle being embarrassed? Well, I was. The only thing people wanted to talk about was what had happened with our fuel. I wanted to do what I had always done when I was hurting. Bury it. Definitely don’t talk about it. But I was in Daytona. I couldn’t hide there like I do at home.

There was only one reason we survived what could have been that fatal rocket-fuel blow: the relationships I had with my sponsors. NAPA, Aaron’s, Coca-Cola, and Best Western had been with me since the Dale days. They knew I wouldn’t pull a stunt like that. I’d known the folks from Toyota for only a year or two. But they too had confidence in my integrity.

But we still paid a painful price. Our reputation was harmed. And after that, we had real trouble getting my car back on track. Literally. I left Daytona without a crew chief. And this time, I wasn’t driving for the mighty DEI. I was on a new team with a new car. A Toyota. None of the Toyotas were doing very well in their inaugural season either. Our aerodynamics were off, and our engines didn’t have the power they needed. Remember the copy machine that was getting on my nerves? The results—or lack of results would be a better way to put it—that it was printing had
FAILURE
stamped all over them.

The #55 NAPA Toyota did not qualify for another race until Dover that June, missing eleven races in a row. With each DNQ, it got harder and harder to show my face at the track, let alone at the race shop.

But I was the leader. Ty and my boys needed me. And more often than not, I wasn’t there.

Even though our sponsors stuck with us, the combination of the cheating scandal and us missing races was putting the financial squeeze on me, the team owner. My name was on the building. I was responsible for the bills. I’d borrowed all my banker, Hondo, could loan me. Ty and my finance guy explained to me in early April that we were in trouble. By the end of September, according to those two, we would be out of money.

The dream was falling apart.

The bank was nervous. And the vendors had begun kindly asking me if I had a plan to catch up my delinquent bills. I didn’t one hundred percent have a plan, but I had faith I would figure one out.

This was the kind of pressure I didn’t need. No one needed that. It was taking its toll on my personal life. At about that time Buffy and I had decided to separate. I knew the past year or so hadn’t been that smooth for us, and I guess the way I handled the start of the 2007 season was more than our relationship could bear. If I had been distant before, after I left Daytona that February I took it to a whole new level.

And if that wasn’t enough to deal with, I had a car wreck about that time that could have killed me.

One late night coming from a friend’s house, I fell asleep driving on a road near my home. My car flipped over and hit a telephone pole. I was uninjured but again embarrassed. I was only about a quarter mile or so from my house so I just walked home. The next day, I was contacted by the local sheriff about my accident. I explained to him it was late, there was no one around, and I just wanted to go home. And that’s what I did. I didn’t realize I had done anything wrong by leaving. Was I supposed to just sit there? Turns out, yes. There’s not a lot of traffic in Sherrills Ford at that time of night. Just sitting there didn’t occur to me.

So let’s summarize what was going on in my life at that point. My wife had left. I had a scary car wreck that made people question what I was doing out at that time of night. And then there was the minor detail of my financial situation. Everything I’d worked for my whole life was going down the drain because of my team’s inability to perform competitively.

People love to talk. And in the weeks and months that followed, they talked. But one thing I was thankful for: No one was talking about me and Buffy. She and I loved each other. We just found it harder and harder to live together. Our main focus was to make sure our beautiful daughter, Macy, knew we both loved her. So Buffy and I were nice to each other, and we always will be.

So I found myself in another quite difficult situation. Again, it was time to make some serious decisions. I never seem to go too long without moments like these. I was starting to learn from experience. I was figuring out what worked for me and what didn’t. It never seemed to happen quickly enough, but eventually I learned.

One thing I was quite confident about: There was only one person capable of pulling me out of where I was. That person was me. I’d had help with this twice before, when Dale got me going. One time, it was his idea, the you-will-win-in-my-car speech. The other time it was mine, because I didn’t want to let him down. And now, it was time to call on Big E for some of that help again.

Things weren’t going well for me. I didn’t like who I was or where I was. I made a decision. I was tired of sitting idly by.

I was home one evening all by myself. No Buffy. No Macy. I didn’t even have a dog. But I had a mirror, and I looked in that mirror. It made me look way deeper than the reflection I saw. I looked down inside myself. I thought about how Dale had taken a guy who had never won a race before and convinced him that he couldn’t lose. And when that guy needed to rescue his season, Dale had been there again.

Dale guided me in that direction, but I was the one who had to believe what he said. I couldn’t just go do it because Dale said I could. I had to believe I could. He had given me the coaching I needed. He pointed me there. But I had to take the journey for myself. And take it I did.

When it was time to snap my losing streak, when it was time to reclaim my season, whatever the challenge was, my motivation came from Dale. I felt like I was letting him down again and that was not acceptable.