NASCAR Weekly Race Car Drivers

They are a very real part of the best known racing organization in the nation, but they can walk into their local restaurant and eat a meal in peace. They have a NASCAR license and it's a license to win, yet they toil without the bright spotlights watching their every move. Instead, the lights they care about are the ones that ring any number of bullrings and short tracks across the country. They are the drivers in NASCAR's weekly racing program.

While the sanctioning body is best known for the touring divisions, led by the mighty Winston Cup, there's a homegrown feel to NASCAR and Winston. The sanction and sponsor joined together some years back to encourage the best weekly racers to strut their stuff. They have joined together to create a successful program, one that must now continue without the assistance of the tobacco giant (see sidebar, page 73). This program has put thousands of dollars into the pockets of hundreds of racers. It has given hope to drivers who aspired to track championships and helped promoters attract top talent to their tracks on a regular basis. It has boosted the weekly programs like few others. The NASCAR Winston Racing Series honored its champions for 1999 in a lavish affair at the Contemporary Resort at Walt Disney World. When it was all said and done, checks totalling more than 1.4 million dollars were doled out to an appreciative gathering, representing the ten regions across the country. At the top of the heap, national champion Jeff Leka landed a whopping $150,000. Not bad for a Modified racer from Buffalo, Illinois.

Leka scored 15 wins, 17 top-5s, and 18 top-10s in 18 starts. Each week, he faced tough competition, including his own family members. "I had to race against my uncle, Jim Leka, each week," says the new national champion. "He beat us a couple of times. Things happen so fast at Macon. It's high banked and quick. You really have to stay on top of what you're doing each and every lap." Leka has won many track titles in both the Modified and Late Model divisions. He also won a regional title in NASCAR's ShorTrack Series. "I told our drivers at the beginning of the season that any one of them could become a regional or even a national champion. Jeff just seemed to be a man on a mission this season," says Macon Speedway promoter Ron Tapp. "We are excited that he won the national championship for the NASCAR Winston Racing Series out of our race track."

Macon serves as one end of the spectrum of race tracks that make up the diversity that is the WRS (now referred to as "Weekly Racing Series"). The quarter-mile dirt track is joined by bigger tracks, both dirt and asphalt. Competitors select their home track, race in the chosen division registered by the promoters as the WRS division, and go to it. Determining a championship without the benefit of head-to-head competition has proven to be a challenging task. The current system in place calls for the introduction of the Competi-tion Performance Index (CPI).

Consid-erations are given to the average number of cars in the feature field, the win percentage, and the percentage of starts available. On the last night of the racing season, Darren Shaw's fate was in the hands of another racer. Two time zones away, defending national champion Ed Kosiski stood between Shaw and the regional crown. "We had to race the best we could and let that take care of itself," Shaw recalls. "The pressure was really on Ed to retain the title."

Shaw worked his way through the ranks to get his regional crown. In 1997, he ended up fifth in the competitive region. Last year, he came home in the third spot. This year, he leapfrogged to the top. In each of his three campaigns, Shaw claimed the track championship at Portland (Oregon) Speedway. Being the one they're gunning for is nothing new to Shaw, who finished fourth in the national standings. "The whole track wants to win now," he says. "It's tough. We work hard for this and we did well. In the first five races, though, I think we were in four wrecks, but we kept at it and pulled it out." A track and regional defense is not out of the question. The goal, however, is the national title. "We're definitely going to run the same thing. We could just use a little more luck." Mark Welch is a 25-year veteran of racing, a second generation racer who actually ran his first race in Australia. "I started 33rd and finished third. I did that twice," he recalls. "I raced my dad's car at 17. We drove all over the country." In 1999, he focused on Stockton 99 Speedway in California. Their featured division is the Grand American Modifieds. Welch had been second in track points the year before.

"It was pretty stressful," he says of the chase for the championship. "The way the point system is set up, you're worrying about how many cars. We were hoping for 22, but we usually started 20. We had to win the last couple to get this. "It was my second year trying to win this. Last year, we had 11 or 12 wins, but the car count hurt us because we only started 18 cars." While Shaw may go back the same route that took him to Orlando, Welch has other ideas. "We're going to try a different track, Altamont (Raceway Park). They started 14 cars, but there's a bunch that are coming in for this year. It's another 40 minutes further than Stockton, but their first three races are on a Sunday. We'll run Stockton on Saturday with the Modified and run at Altamont on Sunday (where the NWRS division is Super Sportsman). We'll take some of the money from what we got at the banquet to build the new car." No matter what, the weekly racing challenges and the money offered at the end seems to provide bigger, brighter dreams. For 2000, promoters like Ron Tapp are going to instill the idea of a national championship into the eyes of their competitors. Let the games begin.