Rock Harris - Chasing Championships

Editor's Note: This is the first in a series of articles chronicling the season of Rock Harris, a Late Model driver from Yadkinville, North Carolina. Associate Editor Jesse Miles Jr. will accompany Harris for much of the season.

It's a Sunday afternoon in mid-March and Rock Harris is at Friendship Motor Speedway in Elkin, North Carolina, shaking his car down in preparation for the upcoming season. The bright sunshine and a cool breeze give a hint of the impending spring season, and for Harris, the order of the day is getting his Chevy Late Model ready for the track's season opener, just five weeks away.

Harris is running an old set of tires on a completely rebuilt car, yet he turns a fast lap of 15.79 seconds in his first seven-lap segment as three other Late Models make practice laps. Harris brings the car in, adjusts air pressures, checks the toe, and goes back out. The time progressively improves to a fast lap of 15.35 seconds, just a tick or two off the range of a pole run at the 41/410-mile paved track in the Blue Ridge Mountain foothills of northwest North Carolina.

The line he runs on the D-shaped track-with its Darlington-style Turns 3 and 4-is smooth and consistent, just what you would expect from a driver with 22 years of racing experience, including several seasons at Friendship Speedway, less than 30 minutes from his home in nearby Yadkin County.

Friendship Motor Speedway opened in 1982 as a dirt track and is typical of the 100-or-so oval tracks that dot the landscape in the two Carolinas and Virginia. Nestled in the heart of stock car country, 90 minutes or so north of Charlotte, the facility has undergone several ownership changes in its 25 years and is currently owned by Checkered Flag Promotions, formed by Danny Baker, Thomas Needham, and Randy Myers in 2002. They operate the track under the ASA sanction, and Late Models are the primary division. The track also hosts Mini Stocks, Super Chargers, and Chargers as long-standing divisions. A Super Six class will be added for 11 events this season, and ASA Southern Modifieds will run five times. The track's regular race show is on Friday nights, but this season a Saturday afternoon schedule featuring Legends and Bandoleros from 600 Racing is being added.

The track has drawn some of the same racers from the immediate area for years, and some, like Harris, have carved a spot among the track's following. Harris, in fact, ran his first competitive laps at Friendship. During his senior year of high school, 1985, he built a car to compete in a Modified 4 division at the track, took it to Friendship for his first race, but didn't quite make the show.

"Actually, one of my dad's friends, Rob Long, drove it," he says as he grins at the memory, the midday sun drawing a squint from his eyes. "I kind of chickened out that first night and didn't drive it. But then the following year I came back and started running here."

Those early jitters quickly went away as he did more than merely compete, winning three championships in that Modified 4 division at Friendship. The track was dirt at the time but was paved in 2003. He added Friendship's Late Model asphalt title to his trophy case in 2005 and says the track's character didn't change when it was paved.

"When this thing was dirt, it was laid out exactly the same," he says. "You drive it right now the same way you did when it was dirt. I guess that's why I like it here. And everybody who has run here that's done any good will tell you the same thing."

When Harris talks about a track's layout, he does it with the experience of a racer who has competed on several of the legendary short tracks in the two Carolinas and Virginia: Myrtle Beach in South Carolina; Motor Mile in Radford, Virginia, where he won 11 races one season in the mid-'90s in a Limited Late Model class; and Hickory Motor Speedway in North Carolina. "Never have run a whole lot at Hickory," he says. "Never had a lot of success over there. Almost won a race there once, but it's hard to get around. I still like going over there, though."

For three consecutive seasons, beginning in 2002, Harris won the Late Model championship at Tri-County Motor Speedway in Hudson, North Carolina. He won the first title while driving a car he owned, then earned the next two driving for the father-and-son team of Gary and Garrett Lambert. Harris bought the Chevy Late Model, a Ford dualie, and a hauler from the Lamberts last year. The Lamberts have fielded some of the best Late Models around and won a NASCAR Late Model national championship in 1997 with Dexter Canipe behind the wheel.

Harris' Late Model operation is now family based. On this Sunday, when the Nextel Cup guys are running at Atlanta Motor Speedway six hours to the south, Harris' wife, Gidget, is timing and charting lap times. His father, Tony, is keeping his eyes-trained by years of turning a wheel, and later, helping Rock-on the goings-on, looking for potential problems with the car and monitoring tire temperatures. Even 3-year-old Austin, Rock and Gidget's son, is scampering around the team's hauler, peering underneath the car and acting like the track veteran he's already become.

By day, Rock is shop foreman for Carl A. Haas Motorsports and Busch Series rookie driver Kyle Krisiloff. The Haas operation is managed by Travis Carter, a former partner of Haas' when the two fielded a Cup team from Carter's shop in Statesville, North Carolina, where the Busch operation is headquartered. One of Harris' co-workers at Haas, David Milholand, is assisting with the Late Model team this season.

While Harris and Milholand tweaked the Chevy, Tony Harris related the story of the time when Rock, then just a teenager, tangled with the car of another Modified 4 driver near the flagstand at Friendship. Harris' car caught the wheel of the other car, stood up nose first, then flipped wildly down the frontstretch before landing upside down at the entrance to Turn 1.

"I saw his arm fly out the window and I was afraid of what had happened," recalls Tony. "I had always told him to grab his lapels whenever he started flipping, and he told me he thought of that and grabbed them when he was in midair. He had a pretty bad cut on his neck and was hanging upside down strapped in the car.

"I thought that would be all for him, but he came back the next week and put the car on the outside pole."

Rock recalls being black and blue from the crash. He stuck with the sport, though, and was soon winning championships.