Have you ever wondered what it would be like to spend the summer traipsing across the country as a crewmember for a traveling stock car team? Ever fantasize about jumping over the wall, air-wrench spinning in your hand as your driver screams to a stop at the edge of your team's pit stall?
The highly talented athletes we watch perform these duties on network television week in and week out are finally beginning to make the kind of money such skills deserve. But flying below the radar of the multi-million dollar television deals are many lower-budget traveling teams who rely just as heavily upon skilled people to keep their cars running and, hopefully, winning. In America's smaller traveling series, most of those skilled people do their work for free.
I set out on a late September weekend to spend time as one of those volunteers. I would become a temporary crewmember for the Scott LaFavre-owned No. 21 Texas Roadhouse Chevrolet, driven by Kevin Cywinski in the ASA/AC Delco Series.
My story would take place as the team visited Indianapolis Raceway Park on the final weekend of the ASA season. I would meet the crew at the track, throw on a uniform, learn my role for the night, and then execute my duties under racing conditions. I would dive headfirst into the pressure cooker of big-time stock car racing, scuff my knees and callus my hands and then limp tiredly away from the track with an award winning "I was there" story to tell.
The idea seemed plausible as I pulled through the gates of IRP the day of the race. Ten hours later I would be alone in a hotel room with my computer in my lap and a completely different story in my head.
The Kevin Cywinski pit crew is made up of 11 people, eight of which are unpaid volunteers. Scott LaFavre of Lakeville, Minnesota, owns the team. LaFavre's two-car effort (which also includes the No. 1 Tecumseh Chevrolet driven by Mike Garvey) is one of the most heavily funded on the ASA circuit, but still cannot afford to hire an entire crew the way a high-budget NASCAR Winston Cup or Busch Series team can.
"We've always run with volunteer pit members," Cywinski tells me while signing autographs before the race. "At our level it's really hard to be able to afford to pay a full- or even a part-time position. Finding good volunteers is hard because a lot of the guys have full-time jobs. They have to be able to get off of their job and come with us 20 times a year, plus come to the shop during the week for practice. The guys who do this are very dedicated and we find you'll never hurt them because their hearts are in it."
They have to be. The team pays for the volunteers' travel expenses, meals and lodging. Any other expenses come out of their own pockets. That includes income lost from missed workdays back home. On this particular weekend, the team was flown to Indianapolis on the Thursday evening before the race. For most of the volunteers, that meant missing two full days of work.
"I use all of my vacation time to go racing," says front tire carrier Dan Miller. "I don't get to go on regular vacations, but I see the country anyway while we're racing."
Jack man Dan Borker has the luxury of being self-employed, but even for him missing work still has its drawbacks.
"I have to replace the time I'm gone somewhere along the line. I work weekends, holidays, you know, whatever it takes," Borker says.
What it took was far more drastic actions for tire specialist and rear tire changer Jason Minar.
"In the beginning of the year I was the manager for a large air freight company," Minar says. "But it got in the way of my racing so I resigned from the position, bought my own truck, and went into independent truck driving so I could make enough money and still go racing."