Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 13, 1994 TAG: 9403130089
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: E-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Bob Zeller
DATELINE: HAMPTON, GA. LENGTH: Medium
In the world of NASCAR, what you hear is not always as it seems. And as I discovered, that goes for radio conversations, too.
It started on lap 241, during a yellow flag. Rick Mast was in third place. He was driving one of the best races of his Winston Cup career. As I listened, he was talking about a very unusual problem.
Simply put, Mast had to go to the bathroom. "Like a Russian race horse," he told his crew.
This was an interesting dilemma. Would Mast, in one of the finest performances of his career, be foiled by a runaway bladder? What do you do in a situation like this?
Several years ago, a fan had asked me to make the same inquiry of Dale Earnhardt: What do you do if you have to go during a race?
"You hold it," Earnhardt said.
Now Mast was suffering the same problem. So I locked onto his radio channel to listen.
In a few seconds, a crewman suggested a solution. He told Mast he ought to relieve himself right there behind the wheel. "You'll feel a lot better," the crewman said.
That's what I'd tell him, too, I thought. Here's a driver who has suffered every type of bad luck a driver can suffer. And now this, when he is finally running great.
There was a long pause. Then Mast came back on the radio and said, "Whatever it was a while ago, boys, it's empty now."
An instant later, Mast's spotter said: "Earnhardt's spotter just said you were leaking something."
It was the insider story of the week. It got a lot of laughs. When my editors heard it, they wanted it in the paper.
So at Richmond last weekend, I went to Mast to confirm the story.
"Oh, it was terrible!" he said. "I loosened the belts. I shifted around in the seat. I stretched my legs out as far as they would go. And I'm telling you, Bob, no matter what you do, you can't go!"
Now I was plenty confused.
"Are you telling me you didn't go in your car?" I asked.
"That's what I'm saying," he said. "The way you're jammed in the driver's seat, you simply can't go. There's no way! I was dying."
Mast said when he finished the race (in third place) and rushed to the men's room, he found Ernie Irvan there, gasping with relief.
"He had the same problem," Mast said. "You know, you drink a lot of fluids before the race and you usually sweat it out. But it was pretty cold at Rockingham, so I didn't get hot. I guess I drank a little too much."
"Wait a minute," I said. "Here's the entire conversation I heard on the radio." And I related it to him, word for word.
"Oh, that," he said. "That was the rear end. I think we packed it a little too full of grease, and some of it was blowing out the overflow. It was coming out inside the car. I could look over and see it on the floorboard.
"No, we'd had that problem for a while. And I guess Earnhardt's spotter saw it coming out of the car."
It just goes to show you can't always believe what you hear.
\ INDY POWER PLAY: Friday's bombshell announcement that Indianapolis Motor Speedway President Tony George is planning a new Indy car series was the talk of the Winston Cup garage Saturday among those who ran, or still run, Indy cars.
George, frustrated by his inability to exert any influence over the series, announced Friday that the speedway, in effect, was ditching the IndyCar organization, which is dominated by car owners Roger Penske and Carl Haas.
George said the speedway and the United States Auto Club will establish a new Indy car series as early as 1996. He said details may be ready in June.
"I have come to the conclusion that the speedway and the current car owner organization are simply going in different directions," he said in a statement.
"Tony is holding the trump card," said Indy car veteran John Andretti, who is doing surprisingly well in the Winston Cup Series with the unsponsored Billy Hagan team. "What are you going to do? You've got to run the Indy 500."
Andretti said the Indy car series "should be just like NASCAR, where the competitors aren't running the series."
"It's really hard to run any series when you're competing," he said. "I know I would never vote for anything that would make me go slower, even if it helped the show. I want to win. And that's the way everybody is."
by CNB