| | I wasn't going to write about Bobby Labonte, again, this week. But after what he accomplished on Sunday at Martinsville, I had to do it.
Besides, I wanted to tell you about one of the best days I've ever enjoyed as a reporter and the two stories tie together.
|  | | Bobby Labonte and members crew kiss the hallowed Indianapolis bricks after winning the Brickyard 400 -- one of several special moments this year for the No. 18 team.
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Last Wednesday we took an RPM 2Night crew up to the home of Joe Gibbs Racing just north of Charlotte, N.C. It's about a 30-minute drive from our ESPN home. We had an idea for a story: How are these guys dealing with the pressure of racing for the Winston Cup Championship?
We couldn't talk to everyone on the team, so we picked six guys on the crew, along with crew chief Jimmy Makar. These are really great guys, and I know that is an over-used term, but they really are. And it was a blast to listen to them talk about the season and the possibilities that lie ahead. I don't have the space to tell you everything we talked about, but here is a taste of it.
As it turns out, these guys aren't feeling any pressure. It's all about performance for them. Actually, they are feeling some pressure, but it is the same pressure they felt at the Daytona 500, or Rockingham, or Las Vegas -- the pressure to win the next race.
All the good Winston Cup teams feel that pressure heading into Martinsville or Michigan. Daytona or Darlington.
In fact, one story I was told by the No. 18 guys was after the team had the car on the grid Sunday morning for the race at Dover.
Several of them were eating lunch in the lounge inside the team hauler. They happened to be watching NASCAR 2Day (Okay, and some of the "other" pre-race shows, too). Those guys on TV (now who could that be?) were talking about the pressure the team had to be "feeling". Inside that lounge, those guys were all thinking, "What pressure? It's the same today as it was in February, and will be in Atlanta come November."
"We're trying really hard to keep it a business-as-usual type of atmosphere," said Makar. "We want to focus on our jobs. Focus on the day at hand and not get caught up in the things that could possibly distract you from doing your job. To me, the worse thing you can do is put pressure on yourself to produce, because then you don't have time to enjoy what you're doing."
Makar says he didn't take time to enjoy the chase for the championship when he helped lead Rusty Wallace to the Winston Cup title in 1989.
"You need to really savor everything we're doing here," Makar said. "Win or lose. It doesn't matter how it comes out. You need to be able to look back on these days in the year 2000 and have good memories of them. You need to be able to say it was fun to do this. To run this way this year."
"It's really weird that we're doing this interview this week," said engine specialist Mark Cronquist. "Because last week, I had somebody come up to me and say, 'Hey, is the pressure on you?' and I said. 'Yeah, there's pressure but it's no different than it's been all year, to go and win races.'
"I even went to Jimmy afterward and said Jimmy, are we suppose to be doing something different than we've been doing this year? He said no, just keep doing what you're doing. That's what got us here and that is what is going to get us the rest of the way."
The "rest of the way" is the path to the championship. As we have talked about, the Interstate Batteries team has done it by performing extremely well week after week.
"Pressure is what you make of it," said Peter Jellen, the team's gas man, and in my opinion, the number one cheerleader in the bunch. "You make your own pressure, make your own stress. The fun is still there. It's not all brain surgery, but we have to do our jobs and do them right."
"How you got there is the whole part of winning a championship," said Makar. "It's not when you win it, it's all the things that led up to it. All the heartaches, the disappointments, the achievements, the obstacles you overcome. Those are the things that you need to be able to put inside you, so when these days are gone, ten years from now, you can look back and recall those memories and remember those things."
It's a safe bet that when it is over, and these guys do look back at the 2000 season in the year 2010, or maybe just 10 weeks from now, they'll remember the October race at Martinsville.
They were doing just fine on Sunday, then on the racing world's most ridiculous pit road (too narrow, too long and terribly shaped), Labonte got squeezed in post-pit stop traffic and ripped open the right front fender of his Pontiac. What happened?
"Everybody else stopped, I didn't," Labonte told me after the race.
But once again the team recovered from near disaster, finishing 10th on a day when that kind of wreck should have left them 21st.
"There's a little bit of luck involved, so you can be the best team and not win this thing," car chief Butch Hylton said on that Wednesday before Martinsville. "As far as the everyday pressure at the race track, I don't think it is any different. You race from the minute you walk in the gate to the minute you walk out of the gate. That's the fun part of this deal. The hard part is making sure everyone is doing what their suppose to be doing at the right time."
"It's fun to let yourself think about it (the possibility of winning the championship) for a minute, but then you think, 'I'm going to jinx it, and I can't do that."
After he dodged trouble Sunday at Martinsville, Labonte fans may find themselves thinking about "it" for a moment or two this week. But, come Sunday, they'll be focused on the same thing the team is thinking about, winning another Winston Cup race at Charlotte on an October afternoon.
After all, that's why they are racing, to win. And you know something, finally the series comes to a track that people can go up to Bobby Labonte and remind him that this is a place he does run well at.
Then again, maybe you shouldn't do that. After all, you wouldn't want to jinx him. | |
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