All of it, p.17
All of It, page 17
The race came down between Mike Skinner in a Richard Childress Racing truck and myself. The track, having four corners like Indy, gave me more chances to pass Mike, which I could do, and did, in the corners, but he would outpower me on the straightaways. With two laps to go, I reached over and removed the rev-limiter chip, which allowed the engine to turn more RPMs so that Mike wouldn’t pass me down the straightaways. By doing that, the engine turned so many RPMs that it broke several valve springs, but I still won the race.
I wanted to try my hand at the series, and Exide Batteries was willing to step up sponsorship on the No. 7 truck for the full season since we won the Homestead race. I would be able to race some of the events, but I needed a fill-in driver for the races I couldn’t be at.
I picked Dave Rezendes, a NASCAR Grand National driver who had some great runs in the series, to race the truck when I couldn’t do it. Dave had a great reputation for keeping racecars in one piece, and I had gotten to know him over the years. When I purchased AK Racing in 1993, I also bought the shop next door at a later time, which Dave previously owned. That’s where we housed the Truck Series team.
He was a kind big brother, I can’t say enough about the guy. He treated me like how you would treat a star. It was incredible the kindness he had. When I think about him, I smile. Just a kind, big brother.
Dave Rezendes
Perhaps one of the coolest moments would be the possibility of Barry making his first start in NASCAR, and the Truck Series would be the place to do it. Barry had been racing go-karts, and at a test at Martinsville, I let him drive the No. 7 car. He was so fast that my brother Todd thought I was driving the car! When he saw it wasn’t me, he told me, “You need to get him racing on the track in something.”
If our first season in Trucks was successful, it could be Barry’s development ride to get more experience racing in NASCAR.
Almost the End
The holidays were tough. The drinking continued through December and January. It was an everyday occurrence. Wine could ease the pain, but I knew what I was doing wasn’t right.
“Lord, I know this is wrong,” I’d pray every night. “Please help me.”
I had gone through a “wild phase” during this time. I got my first tattoo, a small one on my back. In Chinese lettering, it means “Speedy. Fast.” I also pierced my left ear.
Depression can come in waves. Some days, you feel great. Others, it weighs you down, and you have no motivation to do anything. And some days, thoughts cross your mind that can leave permanent consequences.
When we were together, Kathy and I bought a condo in 1987 in Daytona Beach Shores. During a test session in Daytona, getting ready for the 1995 Daytona 500, naturally, I was staying in the condo. One evening, while I was staying there alone, I put one leg over the eighteenth-story balcony, saying to myself, “I can’t go on.”
I considered jumping and ending the pain from the divorce. But thank You, Jesus. He pulled me back and wouldn’t let me follow through with jumping.
1995
The off-season, like it always does, quickly came and went. This was the first time, however, in my full-time NASCAR racing days when I was in close proximity to the race shop and could continue to work with my team as we built our cars for 1995 and now the new trucks.
Our team hired more help to keep up with what was building up to be a busy year. We weren’t going to have thirty-four test sessions like last year, but racing full-time in two series would be great to keep us busy—and keep me distracted.
As time passed, the days were getting a little better, but there would still be slumps to navigate. Much of the first races of the 1995 season feel like a blur. The truck program was fast, but our Cup Series program seemed off. Was the swap from Hoosier to Goodyear tires making a difference? Was I still not 100 percent? Did I not have the “drive” like in previous years? Chevrolet teams swapped from the Lumina to the Monte Carlo. Could that have had an impact? I think all of those factors played a role.
Unlike 1994, on paper, we were a mid-pack Cup Series team at best. The No. 7 rarely qualified up front and finished up front. In the Truck Series, Dave and I continued to split driving duties, and the finishes were noticeably better. I led laps in Truck Series races but couldn’t close the deal on a win in that series. But everyone on the team stuck behind me through the 1995 slump.
Throughout the 1995 season, Paul Andrews and I noticed a trend with our Cup Series program. Despite some mediocre starting positions, the No. 7 had speed in the beginning parts of the races. But it would seem like the car wouldn’t perform well when it came time for pit stops and changing tires. Early on, I didn’t give it too much thought, but Paul, my crew chief, my team engineer, and good friend Bob Cunio, and I were taking note that this was happening too often to be just a coincidence. It was time to put our detective hats on.
Each tire would have a serial code on it that Goodyear would bring to the track. Typically, during a Cup Series race weekend, it’s not unheard of for a team to have eight sets or more of new tires for the entire race. These are the sets teams use throughout the event to change during pit stops and replace worn-out ones.
Paul and I noticed some of the sets of tires we’d get would have different serial codes and numbers. We’d make comparisons to some of our competitor’s tires, and week after week, we would have different serial codes than other teams. But we took it a step further. Back at the shop, we made a machine to test the spring rate of the tires and found a big inconsistency with the tires.
This went on for several weeks. We’d bring the tires back to the race shop after races and were noticing this pattern of inconsistency. Was Goodyear up to something?
They don’t even know what’s going on. You just keep looking at that, and there’s definitely different codes for sure. There’s unfortunately a lot of that going on, and again, you had to deal with that the best you can.
We’d bring them back to the shop, cut them up and try to look at them, especially when we had a good set and a bad set, we’d make sure that set went home. Now you can’t take your tires home, but you could then.
The serial codes were way different than what people ran. That’s what you’d notice. You want to have disbelief, because you believe in the system, but you want to have disbelief that wasn’t happening. But I feel pretty strongly there were some things going on.
Do I have any proof of that? No, absolutely not. We had good cars back then and we had to work really hard to make things right with our setups. We were still capable of winning, that’s for sure. It was very hard to prove anything, but still, to this day, I feel like we were getting monkeyed with.
Paul Andrews
The more and more we’d confirm bad and inconsistent tires, the more frustrated Paul, Bob, and I were getting. We thought that we were facing possible retaliation because we were the poster boy team for Hoosier in 1994 and now were forced back with Goodyear.
I never had any beef with Goodyear. In fact, when I was racing modifieds in the 1970s, I would recommend Goodyear to any of my competitors who would listen to me. I won many races driving Goodyear tires and had a favorable view of them, but I knew something was amiss. The tire issue continued through 1995. It was frustrating, but looking back, we didn’t address it as quickly as we could have.
The best highlight of the year was getting to race against Barry at Martinsville in the Truck Series. Geoff Bodine Racing fielded the No. 07 for him and the No. 7 for me. His truck looked strikingly similar to the Exide Batteries paint scheme, only with a different number and my dear friend Tanya Tucker’s salsa company sponsoring the ride. We posed for photos before the race, then climbed into our trucks and started the race.
It was a great learning day for Barry. He was spun out early in the race, but he managed to keep the truck clean. Then, about halfway through the race, while I was racing inside the top 5, I noticed a truck on the frontstretch scraping the outside wall and then turning back towards the inside wall. It was Barry! He clipped another truck, Jack Sprague’s, and Jack got briefly airborne before smacking the inside wall and coming to a stop. I had enough time to slow down for the crash and barely missed it. Barry didn’t finish the race.
I was leading coming to the white flag, and I had been trying to pass the lap-down truck of Ron Hornaday, who wouldn’t let me by and slowed me up. That allowed Mike Skinner to catch me and spin me out coming off of Turn 4. I ended up finishing fifteenth.
“I’m sorry about tearing up the truck,” Barry told me after the race when we were loading up the trucks.
“It’s okay, son,” I told him. “Sometimes that happens in racing.”
It was a great father-son moment. I assured him he would get more opportunities in the Truck Series and looked forward to racing against him some more.
The Next Year
Nineteen ninety-six saw the team make some visible changes. Exide Batteries did not renew with our team, but QVC, a TV network that sells goods, joined the team as our primary sponsor. Their design on our No. 7 racecar and Truck Series ride called for a black paint scheme with red numbers.
Unlike the year before, I was feeling better and better. The divorce had been finalized, but I was feeling mentally and physically better. Much through 1995, I didn’t have the drive or desire to be behind the wheel much of the year. My mind was certainly elsewhere. Yet, my strength in God and my faith helped pull me out of the lowest points of my life. I no longer had suicidal thoughts and no longer needed to drink to fall asleep.
I couldn’t wait for the new season to start. I had my drive and motivation to be back behind the wheel. What I went through in 1994 and 1995 were all big setbacks, but they set the stage for a bigger comeback.
In a two-year deal, the new partnership with QVC and Geoff Bodine Racing was set up as one that would pay dividends—literally. As the company would take new customers, they had a part on their questionnaire that asked how they had heard of their channel. If they selected the box that said auto racing or our team, we would get a cut of the sale.
Additionally, I was thoroughly impressed with Dave Rezendes’s races when we drove the No. 7 truck in 1995, and to be “all-in” with the Cup team, we felt it was best to have Dave drive the No. 7 full-time and race for the driver’s championship. I’d run select races in the No. 7 and have Barry race a couple of times, too.
The Cup season started out disastrous. I was taken out in a crash in the season-opening Daytona 500 and had an engine issue the next week at Rockingham. By the tenth race of the year, one-third of the schedule through the year, it was the worst Cup Series season, statistically speaking. I hadn’t finished four races, but the races we were finishing seemed to mirror 1995 again.
We’d start strong and fade at the end. There’s no way we could be getting bad tires for another year. In the next few races, we had some better runs, including a third-place finish at Pocono. We took some of the tires back to the shop after the races at Charlotte, Dover, Pocono, and Michigan. We continued to test the tires’ spring rate. We didn’t like what we were seeing. Enough was enough. Goodyear was still making bad tires for us. The only good tires we got for the weekend of racing were the first three sets of tires that NASCAR officials picked out for us.
Beating Them at Their Own Game
The Watkins Glen road course is a 2.45-mile road course in upstate New York. In fact, it is less than an hour’s drive to Chemung. It always had a homecoming feeling when we’d race there in August, and it was my home track on the NASCAR Cup Series circuit.
Over the years, I’d have great speed with any car I’d drive. I won an IROC (International Race of Champions) event there in the 1980s. In the Cup Series, I always qualified up front and won a pole position driving for Rick Hendrick. I came close to a win driving for Junior Johnson, but I could never secure the deal. Winning at my home track in a Cup Series racecar would probably feel close to winning the Daytona 500 someday.
In terms of distance, the Watkins Glen race was one of the shortest on the schedule. The race was ninety laps, and based on the past tire wear and fuel mileage, a tank of gas and good tires could take you to about thirty laps. In theory, the race could be done in just two pit stops—one on lap thirty, the next on lap sixty. We knew we’d have three sets of good tires because NASCAR would pick our first ones. If we could practice minimally, qualify well, and conserve the tires during the first thirty laps, maybe, just maybe, we could beat Goodyear at their own game and contend for the win.
I only ran a few laps in practice and qualified the car thirteenth. No one knew that our strategy was going to call for two pit stops, no matter what was happening on the track. Only Paul, Bobby, and myself were in the know. If the race was green or under caution, we were going to pit on laps thirty and sixty.
During the first third of the race, I rode around, making sure to conserve the equipment, tires, and fuel. After an early caution flag, all of the cars made a pit stop to change tires and fuel up, as they’ve always done. Paul Andrews radioed for me to pit, and I said it was too early.
“Everyone’s going to pit; you’ve gotta pit,” he replied back.
“No, that’s not our plan; this is too early,” I said to Paul. “We can’t pit now.”
“Well, you’ve gotta pit,” he insisted.
“Guess what. I own the car, and I’m driving it, and I’m not pitting.”
By not pitting, we ended up leading the race and immediately started pulling away from the rest of the field. We had a fast car!
On lap thirty-one, under green flag racing, I came in to implement our planned pit strategy to only pit twice. We confused race fans and pit crews when we did this. On lap thirty-four, another caution flag period flew for Robert Pressley’s stalled No. 33 car. Again, the majority of the field made a pit stop, as they normally would. And again, per our race strategy, we didn’t pit, making fans and crew members alike more confused about what the heck Bodine was doing.
On lap fifty-three, just after halfway, Rusty Wallace’s No. 2 car crashed, prompting a full-course yellow flag and caution period. Dale Earnhardt was the class of the field, leading many of the laps. Drivers were going to be coming to pit road for fresh tires and fuel. Except me.
The black No. 7 commanded the lead for a few laps until we made our second and final pit stop on lap sixty-two. It was while the race was under the green flag. Watkins Glen, being a longer course, gave us a bigger chance of not falling a lap down. We just needed to make sure we had a great pit stop and for me not to speed on pit road.
We pitted, nailed the stop, and I maintained the same lap as the leaders. We just needed to run the rest of the race. By now, everyone had to have known that our strategy was going to work out in our favor. Everyone else needed to still pit at least one more time for tires and fuel, except Ken Schrader, driving the No. 25 Hendrick Motorsports car. They had figured our strategy out and were on the same pit schedule as we were.
With a handful of laps left, Ken Schrader stayed out and had the lead. He was running hard, and so was I. Running in second, I continued to try and find a way to pass Kenny. As long as he kept his fast pace up, it was going to be hard. So, I slowed my pace down slightly to slow the overall pace, and at the same time, Schrader started to slow down. Going into Turn 1 after a few laps, I went into the corner faster than I had been going on the previous laps, which surprised Kenny. He saw what I was doing and drove into the corner faster than he had been, too. He slid a little high, enough for me to get the nose under him and in position to pass him through the uphill S-corners for the lead. It was a great move by me. I was able to pull away and have a decent lead.
The rest of the race stayed green. On the white flag lap, going down the backstretch, I was waving out the window to friends and fans. I was having a good time. Terry Labonte was in second and in hot pursuit. He cut the gap but not within striking distance. I was enjoying that last lap, still looking at my mirror, making sure Terry didn’t get too close. Thankfully, I kept the No. 5 car at bay and brought home the victory at my home track.
It had been about two years since the last Cup Series win. On the cool-down lap, I had tears in my eyes as I drove around the track one final time. When I pulled into Victory Lane, I climbed out of the car and was immediately showered with Gatorade from all of my crew.
The journey to get back to Victory Lane was a long and grueling one. All the sleepless nights, the tragedies of 1994 and 1995, and the bad deal with tires. The win made all the bad go away. I enjoyed this one a little bit more. We knew Goodyear was building us bad tires, but we outsmarted them. We didn’t use the tires they picked out for us in the race. We just used the first three sets NASCAR picked out.
Where’s the Money?
Nineteen ninety-seven was the fourth full-time season for the Geoff Bodine Racing banner. The plan was to enter the full schedule in the Cup Series and a third straight season in the Truck Series. I’d pilot the No. 7 QVC Cup car, and Dave Rezendes would drive the No. 7 Truck for the full year.
However, we ran into problems before the season started. Our primary sponsor was not paying out the sponsorship money that our team agreed to with them. I had gone on several occasions to the company’s headquarters to talk with them about what was going on.
We weren’t getting the amount of money we needed to keep the truck team going. The sponsor stayed on our Cup Series car, but just two races into the Truck Series season, we had to let Dave Rezendes go from his ride. I hired Tammy Jo Kirk to finish out the rest of the year since she was bringing sponsorship dollars. Race winnings certainly helped offset the costs of operating a team, and I wanted to keep Dave in the truck, but I also had to make sure the employees at Geoff Bodine Racing didn’t lose their jobs. The company had promised payment and did send us a check early in the year, but it was nowhere near how much we were supposed to get.
