Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 23, 1993 TAG: 9305230137
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: D-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BOB ZELLER
DATELINE: CONCORD, N.C. LENGTH: Medium
Their cars are considered low-budget but still cost $15,000 and up.
And they know the only way they will make the evening news is if they manage to destroy their machines in spectacular fashion.
Welcome to the NASCAR Sportsman Division, the most maligned and misunderstood group of racers competing this month at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
Stock-car racing teams depend on good public relations to help generate the sponsorship money that drives the sport.
But the biggest story in the Sportsman Division last year was the horrifying death of South Carolina driver Gary Batson, who burned to death in front of the main grandstand at the track.
On the eve of Friday night's Winston Sportsman 100, not a single Sportsman driver had so much as bent a quarterpanel against the walls of the 1.5-mile speedway, but no one expected that good-news streak to survive the 67-lap race.
Behind the crash-and-burn facade, however, exists a most dedicated group of racers, most of whom compete at small tracks near their hometowns.
Even at this low rung in the sport, almost everyone harbors an ambition to go Winston Cup racing.
For nearly all, it never will happen. But they're still willing to spend the money and the long hours the sport demands. And although they are the bottom-dwellers at this speedway, they do get bragging rights at their home tracks.
As Tim Bender put it Saturday, "Where else can we go and race before 130,000 people like we will here tonight?"
Bender, a 35-year-old driver from upstate New York, started from the pole in Friday night's race in a Chevrolet Monte Carlo that boasted a handful of sponsors including Northeast Collision, Carolina Fire Control Inc. and the News 36 television station.
Cynics would say that fits the Sportsman stereotype: Crash, burn and videotape.
Bender is probably less likely to crash than almost anyone in the division. He won the first two Sportsman races at the track in 1989 and has 11 snowmobile world championships. He has paid his dues and has a good chance to move up to Grand National or even Winston Cup racing.
Bender, in fact, actually has a tractor-trailer hauler for his Sportsman team. Most of the other competitors still use trailers that are almost too short to stand up in.
If you want to catch the flavor of the sport's earliest days, the only place you will find it at a glamour track like Charlotte is in the Sportsman garage.
The money for these cars comes from sponsors like Waycrazy's Barbeque, Milpak Tags and Labels, and Freda Flooring Systems.
It's small-time, to be sure, but Ronnie Sewell, 36, a commercial building contractor from Shelby, N.C., would be only too happy to have some of that money.
He was one of eight or 10 Sportsman drivers who had no sponsorship at all going into Friday night's race. Sewell already has about $10,000 and months of work invested in a race that will pay perhaps a fourth of that if he wins.
"In the last four months, I probably made 100 calls" trying to secure a sponsor, Sewell said. Not one paid off.
"That's what gets so depressing - to get so many doors slammed in your face," he said.
He's still here, though, spending the equivalent of a down payment on a house to go round and round 67 times, if he makes it that far.
To Sewell, the rationale is simple: "I don't want to be in the construction business. I want to be in the racing business. I get more out of this than anything I can do."
And so it is for the rest of the Sportsman drivers. They may be crazy. They may get maligned as no-driving novices. But there are few racers more dedicated - or helpful - than this bunch.
When John J. Schumann III, a 36-year-old grapefruit grower from Vero Beach, Fla., began practicing Thursday, he could hardly keep his car between the walls until another driver, Russell Phillips, wandered over and told him how to set up the chassis of his car. And Schumann never even learned his last name.
"I think the Sportsman name is really fitting," Schumann said. "If it wasn't for the guy in the No. 57 car [Phillips], I don't think I'd be in this race."
Across the garage sat the car of Ron Cox Hixson, 26, of Soddy-Daisy, Tenn. One of the many decals on the car read: "Thanks to Mike Harris and students."
You take help where you can get it in this division, and a good portion of Hixson's help came from crew chief Mike Harris' automotive students at Sequoyah Vocational School in Soddy-Daisy. The race car, it seems, is a learning tool.
The car owner, Wayne Hixson, 46, who is Ron's father, has raced for almost 25 years. He came home from Vietnam in 1969 with three Purple Hearts, and a buddy put him in a race car.
by CNB