Bobby Hamilton, a veteran Winston Cup driver, does what any father will occasionally do for his son: he offers advice. And Bobby Jr., an up-and-coming driver in the Busch Series, sometimes treats his dad's words of wisdom like so many grains of salt: he brushes them off. Especially when the senior Hamilton offers advice on running road course races.
Father and son, traveling together during the midweek on their way to an early-season race weekend, both find it amusing-with a robust round of laughter-when the question concerns the senior Hamilton's road course advice to his son. "He's out there cutting grass and sawing trees down and everything," Hamilton Sr. says. "He doesn't have any use for them. When I try to explain it to him, he just blows me off because he doesn't have any use for them at all. He doesn't even want to hear it. He just says, 'I'll go out there and cut my grass and saw my trees down and get away from there and go to the next one.' The same thing happened to me. If you go run good at a road course, then you sort of get interested in them."
While Hamilton's advice is simple-bide your time and wait on a strong run to change your opinion of road courses-it can be a long, challenging process for many drivers.
Ward Burton recalls his first road course visit as a Winston Cup rookie. "The first time I was at Sears Point, in '94, we didn't make the race the first day (of qualifying)," says Burton. "In the second round of qualifying we turned in the 10th-fastest time and made the race. Then in happy hour I hit everything but the damn start-finish line. Wherever there's a gravel pit, I've been there at one time or another and don't want to go there again if I can help it."
Sterling Marlin, one of the most consistent drivers in Winston Cup over the last two seasons, professes not to like the "damn thing(s)" when discussing his road course record.
Now you've got a feeling for the frustration many drivers with oval track backgrounds experience on their initial and, sometimes, subsequent visits to Sears Point or Watkins Glen, the two road courses on the Winston Cup schedule. "Some people just don't like them," says Burton. "It's like some people when they go to Darlington, they just don't like it. I guess when the guy doesn't like the place you've got him beat when you get there."
The ApproachIt's not difficult to relate to that level of dislike for road courses. With their multiple turns, uphills, downhills, and odd configurations, road courses go totally against the modus operandi of going fast and turning left that most NASCAR drivers experience week after week in their formative years. Basically, they've spent much of their adult lives learning how to drive a particular way, then they visit a road course and have to learn how to drive all over again.
"You just have to give and take," says Burton. "You can't keep asking a whole lot more out of your car than it's willing to give you because it's pretty easy to get into trouble. It's just a real balancing act."