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Saturday, April 7
Donlavey 77 years young on Sunday
By Jerry Bonkowski
ESPN.com
MARTINSVILLE, Va. - He's the grizzled old man of Winston Cup, a guy who fondly likes to say that he's as old as dirt and older than NASCAR itself.
To him, guys like Richard Petty and Junior Johnson are still kids. And even with the greatness those NASCAR veterans have earned in their own right over their careers, they still bow down to him as if he's royalty.
|  | | Dick Trickle drove the No. 90 for Donlavey from 1996-98. |
He's the longest-surviving and still-active original member of NASCAR, a guy who has done things his way for 77 years - and he's not going to stop now.
Happy 77th birthday, Junie Donlavey.
The veteran owner of the No. 90 Hills Brothers Coffee Taurus, who has outlasted virtually everyone else on the Winston Cup scene, was hoping for one heck of a birthday present in Sunday's Virginia 500 at Martinsville Speedway.
It's too bad his driver, Hut Stricklin, failed to qualify for Sunday's event.
Even so, Donlavey waxed philosophically Saturday about his life and career.
"I couldn't foresee anything like this. And it takes a lot of people with good thoughts to bring it to what it is today. I look back and see what they (NASCAR) started with, and although it was crude back then, it was the best that we had. Once they got started, then it was a whole lot easier to improve on it and bring it up to the state of the art it is today - and who knows what it's going to look like in another 20, 30 years."
There's no question Donlavey likes to do things his own way. While virtually every other Winston Cup team is based in and around the Charlotte, N.C. area, Donlavey has stubbornly refused for over 50 years to leave his home base in Richmond, Va.
"I like being off to myself," Donlavey said. "What it is, if you go to Charlotte and you do not have any experience with these cars, it's kind of hard to get anybody to talk to you. But we seem to be a spot where you can stop off, get some experience, then go on to Charlotte.
"We must do a pretty good decent job because the boys that we sent down there are really first-class workers."
Although his team hasn't been truly competitive in years, it doesn't seem to bother Donlavey that he has built such an informal training program where drivers and crew members can gain experience and then move on to bigger and better things in the Charlotte area.
"I've enjoyed working with the new boys coming in, and these guys coming from north and south both, stopping in the shop, spending a year or two," Donlavey said. "I see them later on and it really makes me proud."
Donlavey has shepherded his NASCAR team through 808 career starts over the years, earning a handsome sum of $7,691,393. Yet even with all those starts, Donlavey has visited Victory Lane just ONE TIME in his fabled 50-plus years of team ownership.
You did not read that wrong. Donlavey has been the winning car owner just once in his storied career, with the highest point being in 1981 when Jody Ridley captured the checkered flag at Dover, Del.
A lot of guys would have left racing a long time ago with that kind of scorecard, but not Donlavey. Sure, he'd love to be a winner each and every Sunday, but while winning may be everything in today's Winston Cup competition, that's not the case with Donlavey: he is a true throwback, remaining in the game because he, well, simply loves the chase and race.
More than anything, it's not whether Donlavey wins or loses, it's how he plays the game. And after more than 50 years, he still plays and enjoys the game the same way he did when he first started out in 1950.
"It's still enjoyable for me because I'm more of a people person," Donlavey said. "I never took racing that seriously. We love to run in the race, be competitive. I never put everything into ruining a good day if we didn't win it.
"The fans we have today are more knowledgeable, they're fun to be around, and the competitors, every one of them are fine, fine guys."
This season has been a regular campaign by Donlavey's normal standards. The team, with Stricklin behind the wheel, has failed to qualify in three of the season's first eight races (Daytona, Bristol and now Martinsville). Stricklin's highest finish in 2001 came last week at Texas, where he wound up 26th.
While he'd certainly like to be watching Stricklin in Sunday's race, Donlavey will still enjoy himself at Martinsville Speedway, taking in the action and being surrounded by friends from his home state, as well as the regular contingent of NASCAR friends he sees each and every week at the various racing venues.
What's more, Martinsville is as much a throwback to old-time NASCAR racing as Donlavey is ... and he sure loves it that way.
"I look at all of (the tracks) that we go to and it means that I was there when they all first started, and to look at them and to see the changes, it has special meaning, more than if you just come in and say, 'Hey, it's a beautiful track,'" said Donlavey. "You got to have the short tracks, if you don't you have nothing to compare the superspeedways with, and I think if you had nothing but superspeedways, I wouldn't be able to relate with the shorts through the bigs. I don't know whether it would get boring on just the big ones (tracks), because you don't have boring races, they're all very exciting. But when you compare them, it makes them a whole lot better.
"It was more by the seat of your pants back in those days (when he first started out), and you had some very, very smart crew chiefs and mechanics, and I can see where they blazed the trail for these boys to be able to fine-tune it. So, these guys can thank those old boys a whole lot for bringing it up to this moment."
And right at the top of the list of "those old boys" to be thanked is W.C. "Junie" Donlavey.
Pit notes
Jerry Nadeau, who claimed his first Cup victory in Atlanta at the end of last season, turned the quickest time in Saturday's practice, covering the .526-mile Martinsville bullring in 20.440 seconds (at 92.642 mph). Tony Stewart was the second quickest (20.488 seconds, 92.515 mph), followed by Jimmy Spencer, Kenny Schrader and Jeremy Mayfield.
Six-time Martinsville winner Rusty Wallace was the ninth fastest, while Jeff Gordon, who is a three-time winner here and who grabbed the pole during Friday's qualifying, coasted around the track with the 19th best time on Saturday.
Don't be surprised if Jeff Burton wins Sunday's race. Having struggled much of this season, Burton, a native of nearby South Boston, Va., cut his racing teeth at Martinsville Speedway early in his career. If there's anyone who knows his way around the track, it's Burton.
If Saturday's Advance Auto Parts 250 Craftsman Truck Series race was any indication, there's going to be a lot of yellow caution flags during Sunday's Cup race. A total of 9 caution periods (for 52 laps) occurred during the truck event. Scott Riggs won his first career truck race, leading the final 108 laps of the 250-lap event, with a winning time of 1:51.23 at 70.836 mph. Rookie Travis Kvapil finished second, .874 of a second behind Riggs.
During last year's Cup race, there were 17 caution periods for 116 total laps, making for a very long afternoon for drivers and fans (total race time was 3 hours, 41 minutes, 45 seconds). Mark Martin won last year's early-season race at Martinsville with a speed more akin to one you'd drive yourself on the interstate (71.161 mph).
Veteran motorsports writer Jerry Bonkowski covers NASCAR Winston Cup, CART and NHRA for ESPN.com.
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