Rock Harris - Chasing Championships

Fast-forward to last season and another hard crash at the track.

"I wrecked up here in the last race of the year," says Harris. "We sat on the pole and had to do an invert. I hit the wall right there [off Turn 4] and it knocked the rearend housing out from under it [the car]."

Among other things, he had to replace the rear clip on the car, which is the one he brought to Friendship for the preseason shakedown.

"Had to rebuild the front suspension, including spindles, upper control arm, all of it," he says. "Replaced the steering box. Busted three hubs and had to put three hubs on it. I spent so much on it. It was a hard lick. Hit right there [off Turn 4] and backed it in up there [going into Turn 1]."

The day before the shakedown session at Friendship, Harris was putting the finishing touches on the car at his shop in the Lone Hickory community of Yadkin County, just outside the county seat of Yadkinville. He and SCR Associate Editor Jesse Miles Jr. finished hanging sheetmetal on the right side, weighed the car, set the crossweight, installed a sway bar, put a plastic valance along the leading edge of the hood, and tidied up anything left undone. While working on the car, Harris and Miles occasionally glanced at a television in the three-bay shop so they could keep up with the action in the Busch race at Atlanta, where Krisiloff and some of Harris' teammates were competing.

Once each job was complete, Harris grabbed a broom and swept up any shavings or pop rivet stems lying about. The same meticulous attention to detail was evident at the track the next day. It's what sets apart a champion like Harris from an also-ran.

The shop where Harris builds his Late Models is fully equipped, with everything on hand to build a car from the ground up. One chassis in the early stages of construction was sitting on a jig in the shop as Miles and Harris put the finishing touches on the Friendship car. Harris has three other cars he has built.

"That's the only way I've ever been able to race on my own, by fixing all the repairs and everything myself," he says.

The Late Model at Friendship is a rare exception. That chassis was originally built by Joey Childress at Childress Race Cars.

"The body is from ARP," says Harris. "I typically make the rocker panels, and usually I'll buy the fenders and quarters then make the doors and the rockers. But the price of steel has got to the point where it's almost as cheap to buy everything already made."

Harris performs a variety of tasks in his job at Haas Motorsports, from handling paperwork to helping install an engine, to staying atop of schedules and which car is going to what track next. He's a veteran of Cup and Busch shops over the past two decades, so it's easy to understand the origin of his attention to detail.

Deep Roots
Harris' day job and the weekends he's spent racing over the years mark him as a pure racer. The roots of his passion go back 30 years or so when he tagged along with his dad, Tony, who raced a Mercury Capri at a couple of dirt tracks in the Wilkes County communities of Clingman and Roaring River, each just a short hop from Yadkinville.

That exposure to the sport is now being passed to the third generation of the Harris family. Austin, Rock's 3-year-old son, already has his own go-kart and is picking up the racer lingo. Rock is looking at putting him in a Quarter Midget a couple of years down the road.

"I've said I'm going to quit racing a hundred times," says Harris, "Then Austin came along and I'm doing it for him now. You can already tell he's eat up with racing."

When Harris and his entourage arrive at Friendship on the Sunday afternoon in March, the rebuilt car is immaculate. All the major stuff is tuned and ready. The GM Performance Parts crate engine roars to life and Harris hits the track for his first segment of laps.

As the cars circle the track, it's apparent that Turns 3 and 4 are tricky, with several cars getting sideways or wobbling off of 4.

"You don't need a lot of horsepower here," Harris says after the first session. "You need to concentrate on getting through the corners. That's the big thing. Most anything runs decent here. I won here in a Ford the Lamberts had. So far, we've won the spring opener race the last three or four years, and I'm hoping to do it again.

"The biggest thing to win a race here is you've got to be patient. The track itself-I've never driven Darlington but I've been down there with Cup teams and Busch teams-but this place, like Darlington, will get you quick. You can see that just from watching these guys practice. [Turns] 3 and 4 are real tight. You've got to set a man up coming off Turn 2 to get by him. When you get down to 3 and 4, he's got to give it to you. If not, there's going to be a problem."

After hitting the track for a couple more sessions, the team loads up the car and heads home.

There's more work to be done before the season opens at Friendship. Harris wants to keep his mini-streak of three-straight season-opening wins alive at the track.

"We've got so much stuff to get ready, man," he says. "My shop. My pit wagon. We've got to get all that mess ready."

Judging from one weekend spent around Harris in March, you get the feeling that being ready won't be a problem.