Bates appears to have the...
Bates appears to have the right stuff to reach the top.
Jeff BarkshireDenny Hamlin and Jeff Barkshire have a lot in common: They are young and personable, they show strong promise behind the wheel, and both drive for FedEx.
Hamlin drives the FedEx Express Chevrolet in Nextel Cup. Barkshire drives a FedEx truck over the highways of Washington and Oregon.
That could change if the 22-year-old reaches his potential.
"The kid's got the goods," says Garret Evans, a pillar of NASCAR's Northwest Series and a three-time series champion. "He's got everything a team owner could want. All he needs to be is discovered."
Barkshire raced quarter midgets as a kid but put driving aside when he went to high school. While attending Central Washington State College to become a mechanical engineer, he began moonlighting at Evans' race shop and soon abandoned the classroom for an oval. It didn't take long for him to get into one of Evans' old Late Models.
"The kid really did well," Evans says. "It was an old car and he had almost no seat time and he did a phenomenal job. He's just got the knack for it."
Last season Barkshire moved up to the Northwest Series, where he scored three Second-Place finishes on his way to Sixth overall and the series rookie title.
He's already working on getting sponsored so that he can move to the AutoZone West Series next year, when NASCAR eliminates its touring divisions.
He hopes to get noticed by one of the Nextel Cup teams.
"It's just a case of being in the right place at the right time," he says. "If the right guy sees you when you are doing well, there's always the chance you can end up in a Craftsman Truck. I need to move up to a series where I'll be in the right place when it counts."-Jerry F. Boone
Darren HagenHagen, currently a USAC Sprint Car driver, started his racing career at age 11 in BMX bikes. "I knew even then that I wanted to be in a four-wheel race car," the Riverside, California, native says.
Karts came next with 90 career wins and seven track championships. Then, at age 15, he raced the winged 1,200cc Mini-Sprints, winning the Mini-Sprint Nationals in 2001. Next came a successful career in the new Ford Focus-powered Midget series.
In 2002, the Focus Midgets became his total effort, and he won his third time out at Bakersfield, California. Of the dozen Western Focus races Hagen ran, he won half. If he had been able to compete in all the races, he could have won the title.
The following year brought the spotlight on Hagen as he won the indoor Chili Bowl race in convincing fashion. That was followed by a flag-to-flag victory in a big race at Irwindale (California) Speedway. In 2004, he added Sprint Cars to his resum with a win and a number of Top-5s and Top-10s.
One NASCAR Northwest Series...
One NASCAR Northwest Series competitor says Barkshire has everything a team owner would want.
Last season he was the National Rookie of the Year in both USAC Sprint Cars and Midgets. He is the first driver in USAC's 50-year history to accomplish that dual honor.
NASCAR racing is the goal with this 20-year-old, make no mistake. He's been to the Buck Baker Driving School, where he excelled.
"I learned that the stock cars are lot different from the lighter open-wheel cars," he says. "The same fundamentals exist, though, [such as] avoiding spinning the tires and hitting your marks. In either type of race car you have to be smart and be aggressive enough, but not too much.
"If the opportunity to drive a stock car came along, I would grab it in a minute."-Bill Holder