Motorsports

One-shot wonder or best to come?

Greg Sacks, the 1985 Firecracker 400 winner, refuses to retire as a one-time champ.

By BRANT JAMES
Published June 30, 2005

DAYTONA BEACH - Greg Sacks will stand along pit road on Saturday night, just to absorb the crescendo of sound, smell and frenetic energy. A memory is likely to rush back as 43 cars growl to the green flag and the start of the Pepsi 400 at Daytona International Speedway.

They will make one or two passes in a multicolored, 160 mph blur before he'll turn, pick his way through the crowd of crewmen sweltering in firesuits and onlookers with sunburns and pit passes, and slog back to the parking lot. Around 11 p.m., reclined on the couch, feet up, he'll watch the checkered flag wave on the television from his Ormond Beach home.

It's not the way Sacks imagined he would celebrate the 20th anniversary of his one and only Nextel Cup win, a victory so improbable it is regarded as one of the biggest upsets in the history of the sport. For that matter, Sacks never imagined when he won the then-Firecracker 400 in an unsponsored Chevrolet for now-defunct DiGard Racing that he wouldn't reach Victory Lane again.

"The biggest thing, and it's the hardest thing to deal with also, is I never expected, and I still don't, that that would be my only Nextel Cup win," said Sacks, 52. "And that's being very honest. I never thought that I would go this long without another win. I don't want to leave this sport as a one-time winner. That might sound arrogant or not. I don't know. But it's still my goal to win. It's all about timing. It's all about opportunity."

Opportunity has been fickle with Sacks in his 18 years of racing and struggling mostly on NASCAR's periphery. But on July 4, 1985, he was in the right place at the right time in the right car.

And with the right crew chief, innovator Gary Nelson.

DiGard, then owned by Bill Gardner, had decided to add a second research and development car for the race to help primary driver and 1983 points champion Bobby Allison. Sacks, a Long Islander who had driven parts of three seasons for his family team, was chosen - partly because he had finished sixth in that season's Daytona 500 and signed to a one-race deal. Nelson, now NASCAR's director of research and development, took that same Chevrolet - which DiGard had leased from Sacks for the Firecracker - and used revolutionary "front end geometry" and suspension techniques - some of which are illegal now - to create a car that was fast despite a slight shortfall in horsepower.

Sacks' team had sparse equipment, a jack that barely worked, one decent airgun, decrepit gas cans and worse yet, inexperienced crew members. He was supposed to run 10 to 15 lap segments and roll to the garage for measurements and parts changes, as if the race were an elaborate test, but when he qualified ninth and was competitive in the race, it became apparent to Nelson he owed Sacks a chance to win.

Sacks battled Bill Elliott - already a seven-time winner that season - but pit stops cost him lots of time. On his final stop, Sacks was amazed to find a new crew in his pit stall. Among them were Robert Yates, then a DiGard engine builder, now the owner of Dale Jarrett and Elliott Sadler's Nextel Cup teams, and Jimmy Makar, then of Tim Richmond's Raymond Beadle team and now an executive at Joe Gibbs Racing.

"It was pretty much a bunch of rag-tag guys from cars that had fallen out of the race," Makar said.

Sacks got out fast and Elliott, who led 103 of 160 laps, surrendered the lead with nine laps to go because he had to pit with gas mileage issues. Sacks won by 23.5 seconds.

"Robert Yates came from Bobby's pit down to my pit to fuel my car because we were coming in fifth and going out 20th on each stop," Sacks said. "Jimmy Makar came down to change a tire. Someone else was on the jack, people came from other teams to get us out fast on that last pit stop. It was a great community effort and it was really uplifting to me to have so many people encouraging me and supporting me to win that race."

Not among them was Allison, who finished 18th four laps down. Under contract with Buick, winless in 32 races and offended by Sacks' arrival, the 47-year-old claimed after the race that Sacks was given better equipment for his Chevrolet and quit the team. He had just three more years and three more victories left in his 84-win career.

"Bobby thought Sacks had a better engine, but the engine wasn't as good. Actually it was one of Bobby's old ones," Nelson said. "The internal conflict in that team after that win was pretty much difficult for anybody on the inside to endure - me included. Basically, the team was folding."

"It was quite intense at the time," Sacks recalls. "I was caught between a rock and a hard place. I was a younger driver and your job is to go out there and compete to the best of your ability.

"Bobby quit after that and that's where things really changed a lot for me."

Sacks took over Allison's Buick and failed to finish six of the final 13 races of the season, his best finish ninth in the next-to-last race at Atlanta. He was back in the wrong place at the wrong time that quickly.

"If Bobby Allison had not quit, we would have kept running that Chevrolet, which was a lot faster," Sacks said. "I think we had the chance to go out and win back to back races. The car was that fast."

DiGard withered when Nelson and Yates departured, and Sacks left a year later, beginning a string of driving for different ownership, including himself this season. He missed four years after suffering a back injury in a 1998 crash at Texas Motor Speedway. In between, Sacks drove a partial schedule in 1990 for Rick Hendrick - who has since won five championships - while serving as a technical director for the Tom Cruise film Days of Thunder .

"I've been right on the verge of such great opportunity and for some reason or another, things just haven't gone the right way," Sacks said.

Sacks' win, though largely forgotten, has a cinematic feel to it and may be a better plot than Days of Thunder . Sacks hasn't qualified for a race at Daytona since the 1998 Daytona 500, when he finished 39th in a car owned by Cale Yarborough. Still, Sacks has one more win on Nextel Cup's biggest stage than the series' last three champions and nine of its current top 10 drivers by points, including veterans Mark Martin and Rusty Wallace.

Not since Sacks' victory has an unsponsored car won a race in NASCAR's top series, and in the multimillion-dollar, multiteam sport of giants, it is unlikely one will again. Sacks knows that. Since rejoining the sport as a driver/owner this season, he's struggled to find sponsors willing or able to fund a shop capable of competing. Some megateams have lobbies as big as his 6,000-square foot race shop in Ormond Beach. Full-time teams carry two cars to every race. Sacks has two in his entire fleet, with engines leased from Mike Egge and old chassis purchased from Evernham Motorsports.

New NASCAR rules that eliminated provisionals and guaranteed starting spots to the top 35 teams in owner points have made his task even harder. He qualified for his first race on June 12 at Pocono, lasting 12 laps and finishing last.

A bid for another win, however unlikely, on the 20th anniversary of his first was scuttled because restrictor plate programs cost too much. Instead, he'll troll the technical inspection line in the days before the race, trying to pick up some pointers on how the monied teams are doing it, and how he might on a small budget.

It has become difficult to leave some kind of racing legacy and viable team for his sons, Paul and Brian. There seems to be little room for him at the scene of his greatest accomplishment.

"When I first started coming to Daytona, I used to get such a kick of coming through the tunnel in the morning at the crack of dawn," he said.

"You had to get there before the traffic and I'd kind of make a lap around the infield, looking at the sights and what-not. There are no sights anymore. It's all just corporate buses."

He'll pass those on the way to the visitor lot on Saturday night, as he pulls off for the infield tunnel and the couch back home. And NASCAR just keeps going around and around without him.

[Last modified June 30, 2005, 00:59:15]