All of it, p.18
All of It, page 18
In the first few races of the year, our Cup Series team was competitive. We were qualifying inside the top 10 consistently. In the second race of the year, I finished runner-up at Richmond, and by the sixth race of the year, our team was solidly inside the top 10 in points. However, the next stretch of races saw the consistency of DNFs.
In seven of the next eight races, we failed to finish. The one time we did, we scored a top-10 at Pocono, but we had fallen from championship contenders to thirtieth in the standings. The cost of crashed racecars and engine failures was adding up rather quickly. Not having the sponsorship money from our partner was forcing me to take a pay cut to keep the team going.
Taking It to
the Big Boss
NASCAR president Bill France Jr. agreed to meet with me and some NASCAR officials at Fontana. Gary Nelson, my former crew chief and now an executive at NASCAR, joined the meeting as well as other officials.
“What’s going on?” Mr. France asked.
I explained to him the situation about inconsistency with our tires. The problem was happening every race and had been going on for over a year now.
“Well, the tires can’t be the problem,” Mr. France said. “We [NASCAR] pick all the tires out every week for everybody.”
“No, no,” I said as I shook my head. “NASCAR people only pick out the first three sets. After that, Goodyear people pick them out.”
Mr. France looked at me with a confused look on his face. “Gary, is that right?” he asked.
Gary shook his head and confirmed that what I was claiming was true. Mr. France’s jaw dropped.
“Oh boy,” he said.
I asked Mr. France if he remembered telling me to test and run the Hoosier tires in case Goodyear and NASCAR needed a new tire supplier. He answered with some reservations that he did.
I asked him if he would tell Stu Grant, the person in charge of the racing division for Goodyear, and that I would tell Phil Homer, the at-track Goodyear rep, which he agreed to do.
When I told Phil this, his reply was, “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell me?” He said, “It’s time to bury the hatchet. We haven’t done anything wrong. It’s time to bury the hatchet.”
Not too long after my conversation with Phil and Mr. France’s conversation with Stu Grant, Goodyear took all the tires they had already mounted for me off my rims and gave me all new tires. Our tire debacle with Goodyear came to an end. I never had any bad tires for the rest of my career.
Daytona was next up on the schedule on the Fourth of July weekend. A staple on the schedule for a long time, NASCAR in Daytona during that weekend was a long-standing tradition, and I had some good finishes in the 400-mile race.
At Daytona and Talladega, NASCAR assigned restrictor plates to each team. A restrictor plate is placed between the carburetor and the intake of the engine. It is made of steel and is about an eighth of an inch thick. It has four circular holes, and it doesn’t allow as much air and fuel into the engine’s combustion chamber. This reduces horsepower, which reduces the speed of the car, and that causes the racecars at Daytona to race in large packs.
During the opening practice, our racecar was plenty fast to qualify for the race. At that time, there were two qualifying sessions—one on Friday and the other on Saturday. Before qualifying, NASCAR inspected all the cars, and they removed the restrictor plate under the carburetor that you had been using in practice and out of a number-slotted box, they took the numbered plate assigned to your car that they made and placed it on your engine underneath your carburetor.
Of course, all competitors think that NASCAR’s restrictor plate will match up in size to the restrictor plate they had been using in practice. As I left pit road to make my qualifying laps, I noticed immediately my engine wouldn’t turn the RPMs that it had turned in practice. And that related directly to our lap time, which wasn’t fast enough to qualify in the first round of qualifying.
When I brought the car back into our pit stall, I asked engine builder Danny Glad to take the restrictor plate that we were using in practice to NASCAR to have them check and make sure the size was exactly per the rules, which he did, and our practice restrictor plate was a perfect fit. But even after that, I had Danny go buy a new restrictor plate from NASCAR just to make sure it was the right size for us to use in the Saturday morning practice.
Again, in practice, we were plenty fast to qualify for the Pepsi 400 starting field. And again, NASCAR inspected all the cars that had to requalify, and again, NASCAR installed their restrictor plate on our engine. Unfortunately, like qualifying the day before, our qualifying time wasn’t fast enough to qualify for the starting field of the Pepsi 400. It was a hard day loading up the car into our transporter, knowing we weren’t going to race on Saturday night in the Pepsi 400.
After analyzing all that had taken place through practice and qualifying, even though we don’t have proof that this happened, it was obvious to us that NASCAR, during their pre-qualifying inspection, placed a restrictor plate under our carburetor that had smaller holes, which didn’t allow our engine the full horsepower we needed to qualify for the race.
Without any proof, it appeared that Bill France Jr., because I asked him to tell Goodyear that he had told me to run the Hoosier tires in 1994, had placed a smaller restrictor plate in the slot in the box where they kept their restrictor plates, for my engine. Thank you, Mr. France.
It was the first time in my NASCAR career I had failed to qualify for a race. To add to the stress, no race, no payout. Our team would miss out on at least $14,000 of race winnings.
During the 1997 season, we had several engine failures out of our own engine shop. During that time, Ford Performance had mentioned the possibility of hiring famous Ford drag racer Bob Glidden to help Danny Glad, the Geoff Bodine Racing head engine builder, determine why we had so many failures and what we could do to prevent them. Bob and his sons built an engine and tuned it for the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Unfortunately, it didn’t perform as we were all hoping it would. We didn’t qualify for the race, which is one of the highest-paying races on the Cup Series schedule.
New Track Record
While the rest of the year on track didn’t produce many notable events, perhaps the highlight for the team was earning the pole and setting the qualifying track record at the season finale at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
The track was brand new, resurfaced, and reconfigured. The conditions were ideal for the qualifying record. We were fast in practice, and I had a lot of confidence the car would stick on the qualifying run. Tim Brewer was back as my crew chief, and I had told him I could run the qualifying lap wide open on the throttle. He thought that was crazy, but I reassured him that I thought I could do it.
On the warm-up lap, I came through Turn 3 and Turn 4 wide open, crossed the start/finish line, and went through Turns 1 and 2 wide open. It was sketchy. I could feel the tires wanting to let go, a little slip, but I didn’t lift. Turns 1 and 2 are sharper and narrower than turns 3 and 4, so going down the backstretch, I thought it would be easier to go wide open through Turns 3 and 4.
The only problem was that the track had waves in the asphalt in Turn 4. The car moved up and down a little bit, so that caused traction loss with the front tires for a split second. Going into Turn 4, I might have hit the wall if I kept the throttle wide open. I had to lift just a touch, just enough to release the pressure on the rear tires to let the car turn.
I crossed the line and took the top position on the leaderboard. When Tim radioed me the average speed of the lap, 197.478 mph, I thought it could have been 198 if I didn’t have to lift that little bit. I was disappointed I wasn’t faster, but the No. 7 team was going to start at the front of the field.
The record still stands to this day.
Partners Step In
Late in the 1996 season and the beginning of the 1997 season, it was made known to me that QVC was not going to fulfill its sponsorship obligation. I started searching for help. I needed something: a sponsor, a partner… anything. Felix Sebates, who had helped me years before in putting the deal together to purchase the late Alan Kulwicki’s team, knew the position the team and I were in. He had friends who had indicated to him that they might want to get involved in owning a team. One such friend was Jim Mattei, and the other was John Porter.
Porter was the former chairman of WorldCom, a telecommunications company, and Mattei was a private investor. They came in late in the 1997 season, funded the team, and kept Geoff Bodine Racing going.
The three of us worked out a deal for the 1998 season. Mattei and Porter would purchase the majority ownership in the team, rebranding it as Mattei Motorsports, and I would remain as a minority owner and driver. I introduced the two as my business partners during the Michigan race weekend in August. Both of them said their expectations were our newly rebranded team would be a top-10, championship-competing organization in 1998. We all would have high hopes entering the next season.
Odd Man Out
Mattei and Porter assured me I was their guy and that they wanted to build a program around me. They wanted me to focus more on what I do best: driving. The Truck team was going to shut down, but they agreed to give Barry a ride in the season opener at Walt Disney World Speedway. Tim Brewer returned to call the shots atop the pit box for the No. 7 car.
My office at the team shop was now turned over to Mattei and Porter. I had left the office that Alan Kulwicki used, complete the way it was before Alan passed away. When they came in, they got rid of it all and made it their own. After all, they were the owners, but I thought that was a troubling sign.
When the season kicked off at speedweeks, our team was still securing a primary sponsor for the ride. I drove around in practice sessions at Daytona in an unsponsored, bright white No. 7 Ford Taurus. At the last minute, the team secured Phillips Communications as the sponsor for the entire season. It was surely a sigh of relief, as it would have been difficult to survive solely on race winnings and Mattei injecting his own money long-term.
Prior to the 1998 Daytona 500, I was honored as one of “NASCAR 50 Greatest Drivers” ahead of the fiftieth season of the Winston Cup Series. I had no idea I was going to be included in that. There had been so many NASCAR drivers since the sport started in 1949.
The drivers who were alive were honored pre-race at the 1998 Daytona 500, including my hero, Richard Petty, and my old rival, Dale Earnhardt. We were all introduced on the driver introductions stage and took some pictures.
We were introduced to the media and had photo opportunities in the Daytona media room. I remember sitting next to Cale Yarborough. He is one of my heroes. I also got to chat a little bit with Bobby Allison. To be recognized as an equal with heroes of mine, number one, was intimidating but also very humbling.
All the living drivers sat down and autographed several of the lithographs of the fifty greatest drivers and were presented with their own personal framed lithograph. One was auctioned off prior to the start of the Daytona 500. My team partners had authorized me to bid up to $150,000. The bid went way past that, so I was out. Felix Sebates had the winning bid at $200,000, and it was all for a good cause. I have no idea who that panel was and who voted for me, but I am thankful I was included.
In the first few weeks of 1998, the team had some promising runs. A top-5 finish at Rockingham and laps led at Las Vegas and Atlanta had our team thirteenth in points. However, crashes and DNFs for part failures in the next four races had us twenty-sixth in points.
Then, we failed to qualify for Talladega. I was frustrated, but Tim Brewer was even more frustrated. He left the team, and Mattei promoted one of our crew guys, Pete Peterson, to call the shots. We were struggling to finish races, and the races we finished, we were not competitive. In August, I was forced to sell my part of the team to Mattei and Porter. And shortly after that, I learned I wouldn’t be driving for them in 1999.
It was a devastating feeling. I brought in investors because I was boxed into a corner with our previous sponsor, and a year later, my son Barry and I were being kicked out. Life certainly isn’t fair, but this one hurt. The team Alan Kulwikci built, and I tried to maintain and run as a tribute to the champion had changed so much in just one year. It was a saddening feeling to see what was going on. Options were certainly limited.
Another Chance
at Cup
Enter Joe Bessey. Bessey was a racer from the Northeast United States, and he was interested in putting together a NASCAR Busch Series team together for 1999. A friend of mine had told me about it, telling me to call Joe. We connected, and during my chat with him, I recommended we go to the Cup level.
His wife, Nancy, worked for a company out of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, called PECO Energy. PECO brokered electricity around the country, and she was a higher-up within the company. They put the deal together. Nancy brought the sponsorship, and Joe put the team together with Jim Long, who was going to be the crew chief.
The car had a solid black paint scheme with red lightning bolts on the side panels, along with the No. 60 in white. The words “Power Team” adorned the side and hood with the PECO Energy logo on the top of the hood. There was a circular, yellow cartoon figure with black sunglasses within the logo on the hood. His name was Spike. The car looked good.
Nineteen ninety-nine was the first time in a few years that I drove all the Cup Series races in a season. It wasn’t as memorable as others and wasn’t as competitive as we would have liked, but there were some flashes of brilliance.
My fiftieth birthday fell on the spring Martinsville race. The paint scheme was its usual black and red, but the hood of the car had Spike blowing out the candles on a birthday cake with his eyes closed and his sunglasses slightly raised above his eyes. “Happy birthday, Geoffrey,” the lettering above the logo said.
We finished many laps down in thirty-eighth that day. I didn’t keep many artifacts from my racing days, but the hood was too cool not to keep. To this day, the hood is hanging inside the garage at my house in Florida.
By the end of the season, we’d consistently qualify inside the top-10. In the fall Martinsville race, we started third, ran up front all day, and finished third. It was promising to see our first-year team put a race together like that. Joe liked where the team was going, and I liked the gains we made as a team. He wanted me back for the full season in 2000, and I wanted to build on our momentum.
Turn of the Century
The off-season between 1999 and 2000 looked much different for me compared to years past. I made it my goal to be in the best shape possible by the time the season started back up again in Daytona in February.
As we entered a new millennium, so was a new me. I was training during the two-month off-season with a personal trainer. I worked out five times a week at a gym just a mile and a half away from my house in Lake Norman. Frankie Littlejon, who played semi-pro football in Charlotte, was my personal trainer. I was very conscious of what I was putting in my body. I drank water with every meal and cut out sugar and alcohol. I eliminated fast food from my diet. And when it came to home-cooked meals, my rule of thumb was if it came out of a box, do not eat it. I was in the best shape of my life, thanks to Frankie.
On top of gearing for my second year in the No. 60, Truck Series team owner Billy Ballew approached Barry and me about racing his No. 15 truck throughout the 2000 season. Billy fielded trucks for a few years in the series, and they had shown some speed. My son Barry was originally going to drive the truck in Daytona. But after talking to me, Billy asked if I would drive it instead of Barry because I had won there and had more experience at the track and potentially a better chance of winning. After the Daytona race, he was going to put Barry back in the truck for some races.
A few weeks before the season started, I dropped by the Power Team shop to see how progress was coming on our Daytona 500 superspeedway car. I didn’t like what I saw. The body of the racecar had some issues that looked to me like they were wrong. They would affect the handling and the speed of the car, especially on a high-speed track like Daytona. I brought up the issue with Jim Long, but he assured me we were going to be okay. I also brought up the issue with Joe Bessey, but he never did anything to address my concerns.
Two thousand would be the first time the Truck Series was heading to Daytona to open its season. The race was going to be run the Friday before the Daytona 500.
In practice sessions for the Truck Series race, there were no restrictor plates on the engines, making the racing more like pre-restrictor plate racing, where you could draft and slingshot past another truck. I was looking forward to the first Truck Series race at Daytona.
I was pulling double duty with practice sessions and meetings with the No. 60 Cup Series team and the No. 15 Truck Series team. The Cup Series car wasn’t handling well and wasn’t as fast as it needed to be. However, the truck was pretty fast. The Truck Series ride was going to have no problems making the field for the race. I was worried about our Cup car not being fast enough to make the race.
The No. 60 car was towards the bottom of all the practice sessions. I reminded Joe that we should have made changes to the body of the car before coming to Daytona. On qualifying day, the time we posted looked like it was not going to be fast enough to qualify for the Daytona 500. We were going to have to have a good finish in the Thursday 125-mile qualifying races to make the Daytona 500. Through practice, we continued to try to find speed in the No. 60 Chevrolet but never was successful in finding some.
