Motorsports

At 16, driver at diversity crossroad

Chase Austin is back where he started after his big connection went away.

By BRANT JAMES
Published June 17, 2006

Bill Lester peered through the dewy-wet window of his transporter and frowned. Spring rains this day at Atlanta Motor Speedway threatened to ruin his attempt to become just the sixth African-American driver to qualify for a race at NASCAR's highest level.

But hours would pass and weather would relent and Lester, a 45-year-old engineer, would put his No. 23 Dodge into the field. His wait was finally over. But how long would the wait be for the next African-American? Would it be another 20 years and another oddity, or would Lester's milestone precede the influx of minority drivers that the sport has so publicly promoted.

"I have absolutely no idea," admitted Lester, who qualified 34th on Friday for Sunday's 3M Performance 400 at Michigan International Speedway. "There are a lot of minority kids that want to have an opportunity that have talent and have demonstrated it and haven't had the opportunity to be on the grand stage. I just hope to think it won't be 20 years and I'm pretty convinced that it won't be."

Chase Austin was supposed to be the one. Signed in 2004 to a developmental deal with powerful Hendrick Motorsports at age 14, he had the resume of a go-carting and dirt car prodigy and was the confluence of two new NASCAR trends - youth and diversity. The polite, well-spoken and marketable son of an African-American father and Caucasian mother, he was packaged, fairly or not, as auto racing's Tiger Woods.

That all changed when this season Hendrick dissolved its developmental program.

Now, life is very much like it was the year before Hendrick scouts spotted him racing against men twice his age at a dirt track within sight of Lowe's Motor Speedway in Concord, N.C. Austin hardly had a chance to experience what Hendrick could have provided but he knew things had become harder.

"Since I lost the Hendrick deal, I've probably gone through the most peaks and valleys and learned the most that I ever have," he said. "You really have to come back to home with yourself again and find out what went wrong and find out what you need to do to get back to a level like that."

So again Chase, now 16, his uncle, Robert, and father, Steve, drive the truck and trailer, pulling his Modified dirt car to places like Thunder Valley Speedway in Lawndale, N.C., where he won his first feature of the season last weekend. He has virtually no sponsors, very little money and his family is divided for seven months at a time as together they sacrifice for a collective dream.

Chase lives with sister, Jessica, 20, a student at Rowan-Cabarrus Community College, taking his courses online and working on race cars. Steve lives in their hauler in the race shop parking lot. In Eudora, Kan., mother Marianne lives with daughter, Cara, 19, working full time in her health insurance business, trying to make enough money to support the family and pay the race bills while writing the occasional news release for her son.

"We've been spread apart for so long, it kind of feels natural," Chase Austin said. "We all get in one place and it makes it kind of awkward. I mean, we notice (being apart), but we just keep moving on because we know what we have to do."

Hendrick honored the financial portion of its contract with the Austins, but a third of the money was lost in taxes before it could be invested, Marianne Austin said.

Months later, Star Motorsports, a highly publicized venture associated with the Wayans family of entertainers, signed Austin to a contract, but the deal eventually left the family with more burden. The Austins found themselves the owners of a 7,500-square foot Mooresville race shop, boxes of parts and a USAR Pro Cup race car when Star failed to pay employees, vendors or rent.

"We have a lot of tools and equipment we're hoping to sell to stay afloat," Marianne Austin said. "Basically, we have a lot of equipment and no money to race on."

A competitor since age 8, Chase Austin wonders if time is passing him by. Those thoughts nagged harder when he raced against peers such as 15-year-old Joey Logano - a member of the Joe Gibbs Racing developmental program - and his top-flight equipment in the Pro Cup series this year. Austin's family thinks the next two seasons could decide whether he eventually becomes a professional race car driver or a footnote in the history of African-Americans in racing.

"His peers are running Pro Cup and running in the top five," his mother said. "Everybody we've talked to in the industry says that Chase is capable of that, but unless you have the funding to play, he can't maintain the level of training his peers are."

The Austins and Hendrick split on good terms - still exchanging Christmas cards, said general manager Marshall Carlson - and each expressed interest in a future relationship. But losing the team's clout, connections and resources has left the family scrambling for sponsors.

From Chase Austin's perspective, it's sometimes hard to reconcile whether the sport's diversity efforts are more show or really an attempt at progress.

"I think it's a little bit of both," he said. "I think if you look at racing, it's a lot about money and politics. Sponsors pay for it, and that's why NASCAR is so big. Part of it is politics and that's why they have minorities in there, and another part of it is more minorities are trying to get into the sport, and they're trying to allow an avenue for them to (get in)."

Austin has been answering race questions almost as long as racing questions, and he hopes one day to stop, when minorities in the show are commonplace.

"If I just keep proving I am just a race car driver, that I can drive really good, I think people will notice that I am not just an African-American driver, that I am out there just like everybody else," he said.

So on they go running their small team - Chase is his own crew chief - out of their cavernous shop, slogging through the South as much as they can afford, hoping to earn the interest of a NASCAR team for a second time.

"I have to look at the glass as half full," Austin said. "If I dwelled on what could have been, we wouldn't be working right now, I wouldn't be in Mooresville trying to race every weekend, I'd just kind of be a depressed mess. So, we're just looking at what we can do.

"It'll happen eventually."

But it may be another long wait.

[Last modified June 17, 2006, 00:50:09]