Motorsports

When parents g o for broke

By BRANT JAMES
Published November 11, 2006

AVONDALE, Ariz. - Mary Lou Hamlin got another one of those questions the other day. The parents of an aspiring race car driver had come to the mother of one of NASCAR's young success stories for the magic plan: how to get their son from the short tracks and little leagues of racing into the big time before it bankrupted them.

Since her son Denny went from being one race from retiring in 2000 at age 19 and running his father's trailer hitch business to being 80 points from the top of the Nextel Cup standings, she couldn't tell them to stop dreaming. But she emphasized that this particular dream is harder on a family than buying a baseball glove, a bat and some spikes.

Racing is incredibly expensive even on the grass roots level, and families can financially ruin themselves by trying to run one more weekend, hoping someone will notice their kid, like Joe Gibbs Racing executives spotted Hamlin in 2003, and sign him.

"There were many conversations where his dad would say, 'Look, we can't go on any further,' " Mary Lou Hamlin remembered. "And I'd say, 'Gosh, we've gone this far, we really need to do whatever we can to keep on going.' "

So there were mortgages taken out on the Hamlin house in Chesterfield, Va., loans against the 401k, credit card madness. There's a prized red Camaro Rally Convertible out there that used to be in Mary Lou Hamlin's garage. That went after her husband, Denny, sold a 1932 Ford and a '57 Chevy he had rebuilt.

"Our ultimate thing was to get him where he is now, so that's fulfilled all of our wishes," said Mary Lou Hamlin, in Clearwater this weekend for a family reunion.

The dream nearly drowned in red ink twice for Hamlin, who lived in Brandon until he was 2. In 2000, Hamlin had blown the only engine he had for his Late Model and was apparently done before a competitor paid to fix it in exchange for placing his business logo on the car. The money ran out again in the fall of 2002. Hamlin was saying his goodbyes on pit road at South Boston Speedway in Virginia when a local owner needing a driver ambled by. Hamlin signed a few days later.

Jimmy Cherry is still looking for a happy ending for his 17-year-old son. Owner of a Valrico towing service, Cherry has helped finance Michael's career to the point he was invited to participate in a NASCAR diversity combine last month in Virginia. Things went well, but $5,000 in equipment was stolen from Cherry's girlfriend's truck as it sat in front of his father's house. They've continued racing by borrowing equipment until Michael's job at a construction company and Jimmy's extra hours can help them buy everything all over again. A friend lets them build motors in his machine shop and the family gets by with a honed ability to scrimp.

"Rob Peter to pay Paul, yes we do," Jimmy Cherry said, "but we don't let the house bills slack off.

"But I would never tell him I can't. I will do what I have to do, whether it's work day and night to make sure that he races and gets to be where he needs to be."

Parents, often at the subtle encouragement of NASCAR teams, can accrue hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt moving to the sport's capital in Charlotte, buying trailers, cars, motors, shops.

Tom Logano moved his family to Charlotte, bought a $900,000 race shop and filled it with equipment when his 14-year-old son, Joey, became a hot prospect. Marianne and Steve Austin split their family between their home in Kansas and Charlotte to further the career of their teenaged son, Chase, when he signed a developmental deal with Hendrick Motorsports. Logano eventually signed with JGR, allowing his father to divest himself of all those pricey parts. The Austins were not so lucky when HMS dissolved its developmental program. Chase signed with Star Motorsports, but the family was stuck with a building and car they could not afford when the team began to fall apart.

Desperation can breed opportunity. Katherine Legge's career was about to end two years ago when she progressed from karts her family could afford to the Formula 3 series, where an entry level program costs $700,000.

Legge, from Northampton, England, parked herself in the reception area of the nearby Cosworth engine-building headquarters in 2004 when she learned billionaire Champ Car team owner Kevin Kalkhoven would be there. She confronted him in the lobby and persuaded him to sign her. She made her Champ Car debut this season, becoming the first woman to win a major North American open wheel race.

"People don't do that sort of thing," Kalkhoven said.

Mary Lou Hamlin knows there are many more families sinking their savings into fruitless dreams than there are jobs or lucky breaks. But she also can't tell them to give up.

"You don't want to tell people they should put all their money into it and this will happen to their kid," she said. "But it's really tough to tell a kid they shouldn't try to follow a dream."

Brant James can be reached at brant@sptimes.com or 727 893-8804.

[Last modified November 11, 2006, 01:51:13]