THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 5, 1995 TAG: 9503050173
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C13 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BOB ZELLER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium: 99 lines
On a race weekend like this one, when the clouds hang low, cold air nips at the ears and wet stuff falls from the sky, a race driver and his team spend a lot of time holed up in their hauler.
And it's a comfortable place to hang out, compared to a few years ago, when one looked for a spare tire or a toolbox on which to sit.
The state-of-the-art NASCAR hauler in 1995 has a lounge at one end with leather couches, a four-speaker stereo, a cellular phone and a satellite television; and a kitchenette at the other end, with a microwave and refrigerator. In between is a mini-race shop.
Someone is always coming up with a better mousetrap, and that someone at the moment is Bobby Labonte, who had a rig built for his Grand National team that is the talk of the garage when the talk is about haulers. Crew chiefs and drivers have been dropping by on a regular basis to see what he's done.
Labonte's situation is somewhat unusual in NASCAR racing because he drives for someone else - Joe Gibbs on the Winston Cup circuit - but has someone else (David Green) driving his Grand National car.
Though Labonte is but 30 years old and is starting only his third full year in Winston Cup, a tour of his Hi-Tech brand race hauler shows just how serious he is about the details of running a race team.
``I figure if you're going to do it, you may as well do it right,'' Labonte said while preparing for today's Pontiac 400 at Richmond International Raceway.
Instead of ordering a full-sized lounge, Labonte had a long counter top installed and converted half of the lounge area into an office, complete with space for a computer. And the lounge's leather couch not only includes a fold-out bed, but also pull-out drawers for son Tyler's toys.
And instead of having two rear axles with four tires each, Labonte had three rear axles installed with only two tires each. That cleared room for a wider center aisle. And if anything is cramped in a race hauler, it's usually the aisle. Labonte's seems positively spacious.
``It only added about 3 inches of aisle space on either side, but 6 inches seems like it makes a big difference,'' he said.
The typical 53-foot customized race hauler costs about $185,000 to $200,000, without the diesel tractor. But Labonte's cost more because of all the extra touches.
Building custom haulers and transporters is becoming a thriving business.
Featherlite, an Iowa company, is the leading manufacturer. Building customized race haulers is 9 percent of the firm's overall business, Featherlite field representative Bob Janelle said, and it takes the company about eight or nine weeks to complete one. Featherlite builds about 10 a year.
``Five years ago, our company had 67 employees,'' Janelle said. ``Now we've got 800 employees. We're just now getting into rollovers, where teams are trading in trailers and upgrading.
``Teams are putting in a lot more personal touches. We haven't built the same trailer twice. The Heilig-Meyers team (owned by Junie Donlavey), for instance, had their head of interior design pick all the colors for their lounge.''
A casual garage visitor can get a sense for a team's personality just by looking at the back of its hauler.
The Wood Brothers, for instance, have French doors at the back of their hauler, while Michael Waltrip's team has mini-blinds.
Ted Musgrave's team, which is sponsored by The Family Channel, has two television sets mounted in the back of its hauler. The race is usually televised on these monitors during the event, and reporters and other garage hounds will often gather to keep track of what's going on. On Friday, the TV sets were tuned to The Weather Channel.
Bill Elliott's team, sponsored by McDonald's, has a sign that reads: ``The McDonald's food is for the members of this team.'' It further advises visitors to ``please be sure'' team members have eaten before snatching any Big Macs.
Dale Earnhardt's hauler has a sign that says: ``PLEASE! No autographs during practice.''
Just a few years ago, the door to the lounge was at the end of the aisle and it was easy to see which drivers were in their lounges.
``It used to be that you could look straight up the aisle of the hauler and see whether or not a driver was there just by his shoes,'' said Wayne Estes, Ford's public relations representative for the Winston Cup series.
A couple of years ago, however, Featherlite came out with a design that placed the door to the right of the aisle, which means more privacy for the driver. Earnhardt, naturally, was the first to have that type of hauler.
To service the teams with Featherlite haulers, there is someone from Featherlite at every race. But these rigs are well-built. There's not a lot of maintenance required, aside from replacing a broken cabinet latch here and there.
In fact, perhaps the most frequent service call, Janelle said, is request for help with the satellite dish.
``They either don't know how to operate the satellite dish correctly or they won't take the time to learn how,'' he said.
And when it's cold, wet and miserable outside, you just gotta have TV. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
PAUL AIKEN/Staff
Bobby Labonte uses a shock dynamometer linked to a computer to check
a shock absorber in his state-of-the-art hauler. ``I figure if
you're going to do it, you may as well do it right,'' he said.
by CNB