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| August 19, 2005
Racecar Driver BY STEVE MCNAMARA
A big wall rock climber can reach the top of the sport while living on almost no money at all. Many of the climbing stars in Yosemite sleep in their old cars and subsist partly on leftovers poached from the plates of tourists in the Yosemite Lodge cafeteria. It doesn’t work that way in auto racing. NASCAR vehicles resemble cars on the street, but in truth they are hand-built racecars and to campaign them costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. Arranging to drive one on a regular basis dominates the thinking, day and night, of young drivers like Dyer. So winning against nearly impossible odds at Infineon didn’t just excite his friends and family, it sent a signal that Dyer hopes fervently will be seen by the sponsors and team owners who control the sport. Making the big time isn’t easy. Dyer, 27 years old and a San Rafael resident, has been racing full-time since 1993, two years before he graduated from Marin Catholic High School. He won a national championship in Kart racing, was tapped for several young driver honors, won a premier national event of the Formula Ford 2000 series in 2002 and has a solid reputation. Yet for the Infineon race, his only shot was to rent a racecar. You don’t rent a racecar from Hertz; you rent one from a team that has a spare that is occasionally available. In this case it was Allen Beebe, a Modesto land investor and former owner of 37 Taco Bell outlets. Beebe Racing Enterprises features Eric Holmes, an outstanding builder, preparer and driver of racecars. For the Infineon race he got to pick which two of his cars he would drive and which would be rented to Dyer. Holmes picked the new one that, to his huge frustration, started on the pole but finished behind Dyer by .499 seconds. “I don’t know how he did it,” said Holmes. Especially considering this: • The seven-man “over the wall” pit crew Dyer thought he had acquired from a Nextel Cup team turned out to have been promised elsewhere. Dyer learned this an hour before the race was to start. • The crew he acquired minutes before the start consisted of people he didn’t meet until after the race, and who, for competitive reasons, weren’t on the warmest of terms with his own people. Nevertheless, the two groups meshed seamlessly. • The tachometer quit working, which meant Dyer had no way to gauge his pit entry speed, thus risking a penalty. • His team’s required radio network wouldn’t work at first. • Racecar tires are inflated to about 40 pounds before a race to stretch them and make it easier to push the car in the pits. Before the race the pressure is bled to about 25 pounds. But in the pre-race craziness the air wasn’t bled from Dyer’s left rear tire, the critical wheel at Infineon. • Dyer wasn’t ready at the roll-off and so had to drop from seventh place, where he qualified, to 42nd place at the back of the pack. • Even then, because of the radio and tire issues, he had to come into the pits after one lap, thus falling even further behind. Crew chief Mike Roos sized up the situation and devised a brilliant strategy: Dyer should work himself into 15th place, take a short pit stop at about Lap 20 for fuel and only two tires, gain position as other drivers came in later and longer for four tires and consequently lead the race. It worked perfectly, with one problem: With only two new tires and having fueled up early in the race, Dyer ran the risk of running out of rubber and/or fuel. On the radio the crew didn’t dwell on the situation, just told Dyer to coast down hills when the yellow caution flag was out. Meanwhile, Dyer was driving a brilliant, steady race, leading the last 29 of the 64 laps and fending off Holmes’s every move. After the race there was talk that Dyer’s “local knowledge” had carried the day. Not entirely true, says Dyer, as the race was only his fourth ride in the NASCAR Southwest Series, and while he does teach driving in the Jim Russell School at Infineon, many of the drivers he faced that day had much more NASCAR experience at the track. So if it wasn’t all local knowledge, what was it? Says car owner Beebe: “Tom’s a real thinker. You have to be able to relax in a racecar. When you can relax, you can think and thinking leads to patience. That’s his best quality: patience. A lot of young drivers are real aggressive. Tom knows you don’t have to lead the first lap or every lap and so he doesn’t tear up the car.” Dyer knows that. Now he needs to turn it into a regular ride. Photo: Tom Dyer rented the race-car he drove to victory in last month’s NASCAR Southwest Series at Infineon Raceway. |
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Racecar Driver Highland Games Champ Cyclocross Racer Rock Climber Paintball Player Long-Distance Runner Big League Pitcher Swimming Competitor Rowing Champs |
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Tom Dyer’s victory in the NASCAR Southwest Series race at Infineon Raceway last month was an amazing feat—remarkable for fans to watch and potentially a big step for Dyer and his backers. In the first case, the win came despite an avalanche of troubles that boggle the mind. It’s a “minor miracle,” as Dyer puts it, that he even got on the track, let alone won the race. In the second case, winning the race could be worth way more than the $7,700 in prize money and a trophy. That’s because auto racing, more than any other action sport, runs on money. |
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