“We’ve got a problem,” he said. “NASCAR has found something in our fuel.”
“Something in our fuel?” I asked him. That didn’t make any sense.
“Yeah,” Ty said. “They have impounded our car.”
“Well, Ty. We’ll be needing that car. How long do they plan to keep it?”
Turned out they were thinking “forever.”
News like that could be devastating for any team, especially a young race team like ours. I immediately thought the worst. We’re cheaters? We’re doomed! What am I going to tell Toyota? What am I going to tell NAPA? What are the fans going to think?
Over the years in NASCAR, we’ve seen some very creative interpretations of the rules. Okay, cheating. But nobody messes with the fuel or the engine. Everyone knows that.
“No way, Ty,” I insisted. “This has got to be some kind of mistake. I’m gonna go find Mike Helton and see what’s going on.”
When I walked into the trailer where the NASCAR president has his office, I could tell immediately he didn’t think this was any mistake. Mike has an intimidating presence, and he was focusing it all on me.
“There’s something in your fuel we haven’t ever seen before,” he informed me. “But don’t worry, we’ll find out what it is.”
Worry, my butt! I was scared to death. This could be the end of my team before it officially began.
I had a great relationship with Mike. He was one of Dale’s best friends. Mike would go fishing with us sometimes. In the years after Dale’s death, Mike was the guy I turned to for advice. Like Dale and I had, Mike and I talked about life, cars, almost anything. As I contemplated my new role as a car owner in the NASCAR world, I sought direction from Mike. I also asked him if he agreed with some of the business decisions I was making. At the same time, being married wasn’t going so well for Mrs. Waltrip and me. Mike heard a lot about that as well.
So I asked him as a friend, not as the NASCAR president: “What should I do? You think I should load my car up and get out of here? I love the Daytona 500. I don’t want me being here to scar it.”
Mike shook his head.
“I don’t think you should leave,” he said. “You should do what you’ve done your whole career. Push ahead. You’re not a quitter.”
It’s funny, my dad would have said the same thing in different words. Dad would have told me, “Face the music, son.”
“I have to warn you,” Mike added as I got up to leave. “If whatever’s in your fuel doesn’t belong——and I don’t think it does——it’s going to be expensive.”
I could sort of already tell by the way he was acting that that was going to be the case.
Mike didn’t say so, but I don’t believe he thought I had any knowledge about whatever was wrong with my fuel. That made me feel better.
By the time I left Mike Helton’s office, my whole world had been turned upside down. Face the music, you say, Leroy? Well, the music was all cued up and ready to play as soon as I walked out of that trailer. Media types ten folks deep were ready to jump on me.
Fantastic, I thought.
All the people who had been reporting the feel-good story of Michael Waltrip Racing were now focused on us for a much different reason. “What’s wrong with your fuel?” they were asking. “Is this a Toyota issue?” Oh, great. Now I’ve dragged Toyota into this with me.
I’d never been faced with questions like this before, and I didn’t have the answers. I didn’t know. I told the reporters that as soon as I did know something, I would tell them. As I went to investigate, I thought: How could this be happening to us? Imagine. Even before we started our first race, we managed to alienate our fans. We were labeled cheaters by the media.
Later that week, the analysis came back from NASCAR. They informed us and the whole world our gas had rocket fuel in it. Really? Rocket fuel? How do you even get rocket fuel? We were fined $100,000 and had a couple of our key crew members suspended. Our promising start could not have gone more dramatically wrong.
We never found out for sure how it got there. But it is the crew chief’s responsibility to make sure the car passes NASCAR’s technical inspection. Obviously, with the addition of space-shuttle fuel, that didn’t happen.
So there I was again in Daytona without a crew chief. Only this time, in addition to that, NASCAR had taken my car and told me I couldn’t practice. That’s a lot to be faced with.
After calls to NAPA, Aaron’s, Toyota, and all my sponsors, we agreed with Mr. Helton and my dad, Leroy. We had to stay there and push forward. I was going to attempt to qualify my backup car into the 500 without a lap of practice.
I was able to do just that, racing my way through Thursday’s qualifying race. But so what? Such damage had been done to me personally that qualifying didn’t seem like a big deal. We had worked so hard to help Toyota gain acceptance in NASCAR, and I had invested every dollar I had to build our team. But because of what had happened with our fuel, driving my way into the 500 field hardly mattered to me.
I had gone from proud and happy when I arrived in Daytona to embarrassed and sad. Remember I said I couldn’t handle being embarrassed? Well, I was. The only thing people wanted to talk about was what had happened with our fuel. I wanted to do what I had always done when I was hurting. Bury it. Definitely don’t talk about it. But I was in Daytona. I couldn’t hide there like I do at home.
There was only one reason we survived what could have been that fatal rocket-fuel blow: the relationships I had with my sponsors. NAPA, Aaron’s, Coca-Cola, and Best Western had been with me since the Dale days. They knew I wouldn’t pull a stunt like that. I’d known the folks from Toyota for only a year or two. But they too had confidence in my integrity.
But we still paid a painful price. Our reputation was harmed. And after that, we had real trouble getting my car back on track. Literally. I left Daytona without a crew chief. And this time, I wasn’t driving for the mighty DEI. I was on a new team with a new car. A Toyota. None of the Toyotas were doing very well in their inaugural season either. Our aerodynamics were off, and our engines didn’t have the power they needed. Remember the copy machine that was getting on my nerves? The results—or lack of results would be a better way to put it—that it was printing had FAILURE stamped all over them.
The #55 NAPA Toyota did not qualify for another race until Dover that June, missing eleven races in a row. With each DNQ, it got harder and harder to show my face at the track, let alone at the race shop.
But I was the leader. Ty and my boys needed me. And more often than not, I wasn’t there.
Even though our sponsors stuck with us, the combination of the cheating scandal and us missing races was putting the financial squeeze on me, the team owner. My name was on the building. I was responsible for the bills. I’d borrowed all my banker, Hondo, could loan me. Ty and my finance guy explained to me in early April that we were in trouble. By the end of September, according to those two, we would be out of money.
The dream was falling apart.
The bank was nervous. And the vendors had begun kindly asking me if I had a plan to catch up my delinquent bills. I didn’t one hundred percent have a plan, but I had faith I would figure one out.
This was the kind of pressure I didn’t need. No one needed that. It was taking its toll on my personal life. At about that time Buffy and I had decided to separate. I knew the past year or so hadn’t been that smooth for us, and I guess the way I handled the start of the 2007 season was more than our relationship could bear. If I had been distant before, after I left Daytona that February I took it to a whole new level.
And if that wasn’t enough to deal with, I had a car wreck about that time that could have killed me.
One late night coming from a friend’s house, I fell asleep driving on a road near my home. My car flipped over and hit a telephone pole. I was uninjured but again embarrassed. I was only about a quarter mile or so from my house so I just walked home. The next day, I was contacted by the local sheriff ab
out my accident. I explained to him it was late, there was no one around, and I just wanted to go home. And that’s what I did. I didn’t realize I had done anything wrong by leaving. Was I supposed to just sit there? Turns out, yes. There’s not a lot of traffic in Sherrills Ford at that time of night. Just sitting there didn’t occur to me.
So let’s summarize what was going on in my life at that point. My wife had left. I had a scary car wreck that made people question what I was doing out at that time of night. And then there was the minor detail of my financial situation. Everything I’d worked for my whole life was going down the drain because of my team’s inability to perform competitively.
People love to talk. And in the weeks and months that followed, they talked. But one thing I was thankful for: No one was talking about me and Buffy. She and I loved each other. We just found it harder and harder to live together. Our main focus was to make sure our beautiful daughter, Macy, knew we both loved her. So Buffy and I were nice to each other, and we always will be.
So I found myself in another quite difficult situation. Again, it was time to make some serious decisions. I never seem to go too long without moments like these. I was starting to learn from experience. I was figuring out what worked for me and what didn’t. It never seemed to happen quickly enough, but eventually I learned.
One thing I was quite confident about: There was only one person capable of pulling me out of where I was. That person was me. I’d had help with this twice before, when Dale got me going. One time, it was his idea, the you-will-win-in-my-car speech. The other time it was mine, because I didn’t want to let him down. And now, it was time to call on Big E for some of that help again.
Things weren’t going well for me. I didn’t like who I was or where I was. I made a decision. I was tired of sitting idly by.
I was home one evening all by myself. No Buffy. No Macy. I didn’t even have a dog. But I had a mirror, and I looked in that mirror. It made me look way deeper than the reflection I saw. I looked down inside myself. I thought about how Dale had taken a guy who had never won a race before and convinced him that he couldn’t lose. And when that guy needed to rescue his season, Dale had been there again.
Dale guided me in that direction, but I was the one who had to believe what he said. I couldn’t just go do it because Dale said I could. I had to believe I could. He had given me the coaching I needed. He pointed me there. But I had to take the journey for myself. And take it I did.
When it was time to snap my losing streak, when it was time to reclaim my season, whatever the challenge was, my motivation came from Dale. I felt like I was letting him down again and that was not acceptable.
There was no way I would just allow this team to fail, this team I had worked so hard for and was so proud of. As I sat at home that night, I knew I had to get more involved. I had to go help the people I had hired. I had to get back in there and rally my troops around me.
Why had it taken so long to make that brilliant decision? Why did I keep needing to learn, over and over again? I don’t have a great answer for that. But once I decided, I was determined to see my decision through.
Before Dale became part of my life, I had to survive, but surviving was all I was doing. My survival on the track led me to Dale’s car and the winner’s circle. In the middle of 2007, my survival was in question again. I needed something almost magical to happen, according to my financial advisors. All my money, everything I had invested in building Michael Waltrip Racing was in serious jeopardy. We were a couple of months away from the bank owning the whole joint. No one wanted that. Especially me.
I needed something extraordinary to happen. It happened before—actually twice, down in Daytona. And I needed it to happen again. The word was out on the NASCAR street: “Michael is in trouble. He won’t be able to pay his bills much longer.” The sharks were circling. What do I do? What would Dale do? Who could I turn to?
You might be surprised.
I called the soon-to-be-former Mrs. Waltrip. I told her: “I want to talk.”
Finally.
Those were four words that Private Mike rarely used. Unlike Public Mike, Private Mike ain’t a talker. But I had some things I needed to say. I wanted her to know I was sorry for letting our marriage slip away. Sorry for trying to deal with all the drama in my life by simply burying it, hoping it would go away. That was certainly no way to maintain a healthy partnership between a husband and wife. That sounds like stuff you’d discover about yourself lying on a couch in some doctor’s office, doesn’t it? I’m friends with Dr. Phil. But I’ve never been on his couch. I do watch his show a lot. Maybe that helped me figure some things out.
After my confession to Buffy on the personal side, it was time to talk business. I explained to her that the team was in dire straits financially.
I told her I was having trouble paying for all the stuff I’d bought, even that damn copy machine. She already knew there were issues, but she didn’t know how serious they were. We needed to put our heads together and come up with a plan. We needed to call someone—anyone!—and see if they wanted to own a race team.
Buffy had an idea. She called a friend, who called a friend. Then she called me back and said, “Johnny knows a man you need to meet.”
Johnny was Johnny Harris, a Charlotte businessman with connections all over the world. Johnny had a friend named Rob who loved racing. That Rob was Rob Kauffman.
Rob came to Charlotte from London in May 2007. We spent a couple of days talking about how a partnership between us might work. Rob headed back to London and said he would get back to me in a couple of weeks. We began organizing our partnership. By October of that year, he was 50 percent owner of Michael Waltrip Racing.
Rob is a billionaire and I was in trouble. Don’t tell anybody, about the bind I was in, Okay? He could have taken all of MWR if he wanted, and it would be known today as RKR. But Rob is not that kind of guy. He appreciated what I had built, and he wanted us to be partners. Every time I tell this story, it makes me cry. I can’t imagine not having the team I love so much, and I would have lost it if it weren’t for Rob Kauffman. With Rob’s support and partnership, we began making steady progress, going from missing races to making all of them to winning our first race in Charlotte in 2009. That was the same race where I began my Cup career as a driver twenty-four years earlier.
A Cup win didn’t seem so likely when I was sitting in Mike Helton’s office in 2007 talking about stupid fuel additives that had the capability of shooting you into space. Nor did it seem likely before I met Rob in the middle of the same year.
The trophy we won in Charlotte, my first as a car owner, has a prominent position in our shop. If you come to Cornelius, North Carolina, you can see it yourself. I walk past that trophy regularly. And when I do, it reminds me of the little old lady on that bus back in Kentucky. “Rejoice in the moment,” she said. “Enjoy your victory. Don’t take what you’ve accomplished for granted.” What great advice that turned out to be!
That trophy represents a lot to me. It reminds me what a long road I’ve driven to get where I am today. From a young racer who didn’t think he could lose to a guy who wondered if he’d ever win.
As a kid, race cars and high-banked turns inspired me. They were all I thought about. They brought me closer to my dad. They focused my dreams. They drove me. But as the years rolled by—and the miles—I came to see that it was always the people who mattered most. The ones who helped me buy tires and cars and parts and pieces. The ones who cheered me on. The ones who made me want to win. I couldn’t have had success in racing without them. Bobby, Darrell, Richard, Dick, and so many others. But one guy defined me—and continues to do so—both professionally and personally. His direction made me a winner. He’s never stopped guiding me.
Glad you’re still with me, Dale.
About the Author
Michael Waltrip is a two-time Daytona 500 champion, one of only eight drivers to win the race more than once. He is an iron-horse racer—one o
f three drivers to make more than a thousand NASCAR starts. He appears regularly on This Week in NASCAR on Showtime and other racing shows, and he writes a monthly column for NASCAR Illustrated. He is founder and co-owner of Michael Waltrip Racing, a three-car NASCAR Sprint Cup racing team.
Copyright
“Goodbye (Kelly’s Song)”
©1990 Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC. All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, 8 Music Square West, Nashville, TN 37203. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
Copyright © 2011 Michael Waltrip
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. For information address Hyperion, 114 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10011.
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Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4013-2431-5
eBook Edition ISBN: 978-1-4013-9653-4
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