Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, June 11, 1994 TAG: 9406140012
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
In her youth, Minter was a regular at Martinsville Speed- Minter way for NASCAR weekends. She watched Richard Petty and Cale Yarborough win most of the time on the hometown track her father had driven on years earlier in the same races.
She wondered whether she could drive like that, but then she graduated from Laurel Park High in 1977 and moved to Richmond and began working in state government and the business world. Still, she wanted a faster pace to part of her life.
Minter found it in a Monte Carlo. She has been successful on the NASCAR Sportsman circuit, a limited series that's been pretty much run only at Charlotte Motor Speedway. A couple of weeks ago, Minter won the pole for all three Sportsman events at what is now her hometown speedway.
This weekend, for the first time, she's racing on another surface, at Pocono International Raceway. She has competed only on big tracks, but how she got there is a story with more twists and turns than a road course.
Minter, 34, owns Racing Resources, a business "that allows me to pay the bills and survive." She writes, compiles and produces portfolios for drivers to use in seeking race-car sponsorship on the local and regional level. She's worked mostly in marketing sprint-car drivers to date, with a few stock cars in the mix.
She began her business in Harrisburg, N.C., after working for the Buck Baker Driving School as an instructor. She still teaches there part-time, a job that is sending her to Pocono for today's TGI Friday's/Coca-Cola 150. But that's another story.
After her high school graduation, Minter moved to Richmond and began working for the state in social services. In 1986 she changed jobs, and began selling computers and moved to the Charlotte area. She liked racing, and thought she could use her computer and sales experience to make a living. But there was something else she had to try.
"I enrolled in the Buck Baker Driving School," Minter said from her Racing Resources office. "Initially, I just took the basic course because I wanted to see what it was like. I wondered if I had any potential at all.
"I asked Buck to tell me the truth. He told me he thought I had some potential. It all started with a three-week class. In '88, he asked me to come to work there as an instructor. I did that for 3 1/2 years, before I had to decide whether I wanted to keep teaching or go race myself. I chose to start my own business and get into racing."
She still fills in at the driving school when Buddy Baker is away doing television commentary. She's met aspiring drivers who, when they finish the course, ask, "Now what do I do?" Minter tells them how Racing Resources can help find them a sponsor.
Minter's first NASCAR Sportsman race came in May 1991 at Charlotte. Steve Strader of Strader Contractors, in Wilson, N.C., bought the Monte Carlo for Minter to drive. Her major sponsor is Kerr Drug Stores, a Raleigh-based chain with about 100 outlets in the Carolinas.
Minter's best finish was a fourth last October in the Goody's 100 at Charlotte. She's done driving school instruction at Rockingham and Atlanta. Pocono is another step, and with another sponsor.
She will be driving the Linebacker Lounge Chevrolet.
That's the nationally known Linebacker Lounge, an institution of 32 years across the street from the Notre Dame campus in South Bend, Ind.
"A police captain from South Bend came to the driving school," Minter said. "We were talking and I told him I wanted to run Pocono but we didn't have a sponsor."
Greg Delinski, police captain of St. Joseph County (Ind.), told his wife, Al, the bar's owner, about Minter. When Al Delinski went to North Carolina for the last day of her husband's driving school stay, she met Minter. The Delinskis went home to South Bend and had no problem raising the $3,000 Minter needed for the one-time sponsorship.
"We came up with four tickets to the Florida State-Notre Dame game and raffled them off," Al Delinski said from the lounge earlier this week. "Needless to say, a lot of people wanted to see that game. We sold 500 tickets at $5 apiece and could have sold more. We also raffled some Linebacker Lounge racing caps."
Delinski said the bar may sponsor Minter again in the future. "My husband is trying to come up with tickets for this year's Notre Dame-Florida State game [in Orlando]," the lounge owner said. "If we get them, I don't think we'll have any problem raffling them, either."
If Minter goes to GN racing as planned, she'll need that kind of sponsorship enthusiasm. However, she knows that before she can try something bigger, she needs to try something smaller.
"All I've run so far is superspeedways," Minter said. "I came into NASCAR's Sportsman division at the right time, because it was just getting started. But I don't have any short-track experience. If I have any hopes of moving up to Busch Grand National or Winston Cup after that, I need that.
"I'm the type of person who if they do something, it's done at 100 percent. If it's meant to be, it will happen. So, I need that experience. And if I'm going to make the next step, I want to be able to qualify in the top 20 in Grand National. I just don't want to run to say I'm running. I don't want to make the step too soon."
Minter hopes to run Grand National at selected tracks in 1995. She's talking about getting a smaller car and "learning about trading paint on short tracks." Minter, her crew-chief husband, Tommy Johnson, and Strader have discussed running some weekends at Concord, Hickory or New River Valley Speedway.
What she'd eventually like is to do what her father did. Clyde Minter was one of NASCAR's pioneers. Minter drove Grand National - now Winston Cup - in its first years, 1949-55. He bumped fenders with Lee Petty, late Roanoke star Curtis Turner, Tim Flock, Red Byron, Herb Thomas, Speedy Thompson and Buck Baker.
Minter's first GN race was the first one at Martinsville Speedway, on Sept. 25, 1949. He finished fourth in a Ford 187. His best finish was a third on Charlotte's half-mile dirt track in April 1950. The NASCAR archives reveal Minter, in 39 starts, had five top-five finishes and 19 top 10s.
He ran in the first Southern 500 at Darlington, in 1950. His highest finish in the points standings was 14th, in 1949. Minter, an oil-truck driver, died of a heart attack in 1971, when he was 50 and Shari was 12. Now, his daughter wants to follow his legacy around the tracks at Daytona Beach, Darlington, Martinsville and North Wilkesboro.
"To be able to run some day at Martinsville would be absolutely wonderful," said Minter, whose mother, Jean Draper, still lives in Martinsville. "To be able to race in front of my family and friends in the place I was born and raised . . . it's hard to describe what that would mean."
It would mean Minter was driving Grand National or Winston Cup. It would mean she was really using her racing resources.
Keywords:
AUTO RACING
by CNB