Giant Slayer

"I feel badly that he didn't get picked up by some other team years ago," says the owner. "I'm trying to give him the chance he should have had when he was younger. And I've always been ne of the guys who rooted for the underdog."

For Andrews, success on the track has to be parlayed into success with sponsors and clients.When he got out of the Internet business, Andrews invested in real estate and other small, leading-edge businesses. One of his most successful ventures has been Hype, a high-end metal fabrication and machine shop in Southern California. Today, he's using Hype's expertise to build his own Busch engines.

"When everyone else begins a team, they contract with someone else for the engines," he says. "I gave some thought to doing that, but decided the best engines those shops build aren't going to their lease customers, and I don't want to race with their second-best engines."

Andrews says the engine program is progressing. He has a small shop-an arm of his California business-just outside Charlotte, where engines can be designed, developed, dyno'd, and assembled, all within a short drive of the NASCAR officials who have to rule on their legality.

"One day we'll be making more power than anyone else in the garage," adds Gilliland, "and everyone will be saying that doing our own engine is the best decision the team ever made."

In many ways, his independence makes Andrews something of a throwback to the era when owners of small teams built their own cars from the ground up and arrived at the track with barely enough crew to get them through a weekend.That's a blessing and a curse.

Coping with success

Wilburn says assembling a good crew for a small team on the fringe of racing's epicenter has been a challenge.

"On a team this small, every guy is valuable," he adds. "It's hard to draw good people when they can look down the road and see that big spotlight shining. It is hard to get people to understand that they have to bring something to the table when they go looking for work, and that hard work has its rewards."

"You've got to be patient," Wilburn tells his team. "Our goal for the season is 20 races. If we begin going to every race we can, the season will be ill-planned." "So many times a team wants to go right out the door, and they let their appetite for competition exceed their ability to compete. Then they end up at the end of the season with nothing to show for all the money they've spent." "We aren't going to race that way."

While Gilliland understands the concept, it is frustrating for him as a driver.

"This season has been a flip flop from what I had been doing," he says. "Last year, I was racing every weekend somewhere. Now I'm running against much better teams and drivers, but I don't get to race as often. As a driver, that hurts. At this level, if you lose a little, you lose a lot just because of the depth of the field in the series."

Gilliland says driving in the Busch Series has been entirely different from anything he's done before.

"This is definitely more pressure," he says. "We've only got two cars, so we can't test, yet we've got to make the races to score points to get us into the Top 30."Now there are so many other obligations as a driver-autograph sessions, radio and TV work-that it pulls me away from helping in the shop."

Gilliland says he hopes to be able to finish in the Top 15 so he can assure potential sponsors they'll be back next year. But he knows there are no guarantees. In spite of its Kentucky win, Clay Andrews Racing remains the underdog. A win one weekend doesn't mean anything-other than increased pressure-when the team arrives at the next track.

Andrews seems unconcerned.

"We knew what we'd be up against when we began," he says. "There haven't been any big surprises. We're paying our dues this season." "I knew when we came into the series that we probably weren't going to make every race. That's the risk we take when we show up. When we get to race against the regulars, we love it. We know we are competing head to head against the best in the business." "That's how you get better."

The job has even taught Wilburn, the veteran crew chief, something.

"I've learned more in the last four months than I did in all my years with Yates or with Penske," he says. "I spend a lot more time with the guys I work with, and help them realize that everything that's done on the car is important." "In racing, we all share in success," he says, "but failures are more personal. The problem with working in a big operation is that after a while you just do a job, and you really don't have that feeling of sharing in a success."

He and his tiny crew experienced that feeling before a crowd of more than72,000, on a Saturday night, in Kentucky. Jerry F. Boone can be reached at Jfboone@aol.com