by John Close
2/16/2009 Triumph and tragedy intersected at the Close household this weekend in the form of two racecar drivers named Matt – Matt Kenseth and Matt Hawkins. Kenseth won stock car racing’s biggest prize Sunday capturing the Daytona 500 NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Daytona International Speedway. Hawkins also saw the checkered flag this weekend, but in a decidedly different manner passing away in his Georgia home after an apparent gun-related accident. The emotional rollercoaster began Sunday morning when a friend phoned to say Hawkins had died a day earlier. I first worked with the 21-year-old Hawkins two seasons ago when he completed a Career Media Coaching Seminar I presented with fellow media member Rick Benjamin. In a lot of ways, Hawkins immediately reminded me of another young driver I first started working with more than 20 years ago – Matt Kenseth. Kenseth was just 13 when we first met. Always eager to learn and long before Media Coaching Seminars were in vogue in racing, we spent countless hours talking about how important it was to Kenseth’s racing career to be comfortable working with the motorsports press. When Kenseth (left) made his racing debut at age 16 at Columbus (W) 151 Speedway, I was there as the track’s PR person to report it. It was easy to see he was going to be a great star and I said so in a column for Midwest Racing News just a few weeks later. That column today is framed in a shadowbox with Matt’s first driving suit at his museum/souvenir store back in Cambridge, WI – an honor that is and always will be one of my most treasured. Hawkins didn’t have a museum yet, but he was working on one. A prodigy racer as a youth, he quickly roared through the Georgia short-track ranks winning races at every level. I was contracted to handle Hawkins’ PR the summer after his Career Media Coaching experience and was along for the ride as he became one of the youngest winners ever in the USAR Hooters Pro Cup ranks that season. While I didn’t work with Hawkins this past year, I kept in contact with his father Fred and was pleased to see Matt’s progress as a winner in ARCA and in dealing with the increasing media and marketing requirements. Like Kenseth, I could see a young driver growing up right in front of me. That all came to a halt for Hawkins (right) with the tragic events of this weekend. There will never be a Daytona 500 win or a Sprint Cup championship for him. Unlike Kenseth, the unlimited potential Matt Hawkins possessed will never be realized. The hopes of what might have been are his – and our – only reality. Meanwhile, Kenseth is standing on top of the stock car racing world today. To see him struggling to hoist the massive Daytona 500 winner’s trophy over his head in Victory Lane at Daytona Sunday was almost surreal – an odd juxtaposition of more than two decades of memories with him compressed into the triumph of the moment. Here was the skinny kid from Rockdale (a ‘suburb’ of Cambridge) realizing every dream he ever dared to imagine for himself, his wife Katie, dad Roy and mom Nikki. It was an emotional day for everyone – especially those of us from Wisconsin who were there ‘back in the day’ when Matt got his start. Unfortunately, the emotions of those who knew Matt Hawkins are much darker today. We can only wish the best for his family – especially his dad, all-around good guy Fred – in this time of trial. Daytona Review Given all the things that happened at Daytona this week, it’s kind of tough to boil them all down in to a couple of paragraphs, but we’ll give it a try. Attendance Kudos to NASCAR and Daytona International Speedway for packing the house for the 500 Sunday. This reporter, like many others, predicted a lot of empty seats for the race, but the fans turned out in force to see all three races at the track this past weekend. Guess that just proves that hard times and a slow economy can’t slow the great fans of the sport – at least not for the Daytona 500. Go Dale! Dale Earnhardt, Jr. turned in another subpar performance Sunday completely missing his pit box on one round of stops and parking outside of it on another costing him a one-lap penalty. Earnhardt then took out his frustrations on the racetrack apparently retaliating to a stupid blocking move by Brian Vickers. The resulting wreck knocked out a good portion of the field in the process, including Kyle Busch, easily the fastest car in the race up to that point. One of these days, folks are just going to wake up and realize that Earnhardt is an average driver at best. The truth is there are lots of guys who are better than Junior, and not just in Cup. Sunday’s events went a long way to prove that once again. What Penalty? The message boards are full of rants this morning about Earnhardt not being penalized for his part in the ‘Big One’ Sunday at Daytona. On Saturday, NASCAR parked Jason Leffler for five laps for a similar incident leaving them completely open for scrutiny as to why Earnhardt wasn’t accorded a like-kind penalty. It’s this kind of perceived subjective officiating that gets NASCAR in trouble and something we’ve seen time and again over the years – especially when it involves someone named Earnhardt. Regardless of intent – whether he meant to do it or if it was ‘just racin’ – Earnhardt should have been parked Sunday. The rules need to be consistent for everybody, regardless of what their last name is. Tony The Tiger You have to wonder how Tony Stewart likes being a car owner after rolling out five cars for the 500 this week. Ryan Newman crushed three cars – if you also include Tony’s mount in a Saturday practice crash. The NASCAR inspection fees for this alone would break most of us. If it did bother Stewart, he didn’t let it show winning the Nationwide race in one of the best drives you will ever see anyone ever make at Daytona. He then followed it up with an eighth-place finish in the 500 rallying his spare car from the back of the starting grid. Nationwide Dough There were plenty of Nationwide cars at Daytona and most of them had sponsorship. Then again, some of those ‘sponsorships’ were of the one-race variety with as little as $10,000-$15,000 involved. To put that into perspective, I was part of a then Busch Series effort that paid $20K per race – in 1995. Of course, teams in the Nationwide garage area at Daytona took whatever was offered as some money is always better than no money, right? Raymer’s Wreck Friday’s Truck Series race featured some really good racing as well as a harrowing moment or two. Brent Raymer’s wreck on the back straight was one of the scariest crashes we’ve seen in a long time and highlighted the fact that safety barriers should be employed around the entire speedway – not just in the turns. Raymer joined a long list of drivers that pounded straightaway walls during this year’s Speedweeks. In each case, the driver walked away, albeit shaken, after drilling the concrete retaining wall head on at more than 170 miles per hour. Opponents of the ringing the Daytona oval with safety barriers will say it make the track too narrow. Here’s a solution – just build them into the new resurfacing of the track. It’s been more than 30 years since DIS was resurfaced – it’s well past time – just like installing safety barriers all the way around the track. Even if you have to reconfigure things a little to make it work, it’s worth it. And, by the way, don’t wait as much as three years to do the resurfacing as hinted. Do it this year, right after the July events. Truck Kudos Even though he caused this year’s version of the ‘Big One’ in the Truck Series race, Todd Bodine was a deserving winner. Bodine had the best truck in the garage area all week long – just like he has had in the last four division superspeedway races. That said, Bodine shouldn’t have won the race. TRG Motorsports rookie J.R. Fitzpatrick had the fastest truck at the end of the race thanks to a fresh set of tires, but the Canadian rookie didn’t have the experience to pull off the win. With a lap and a half to go, Fitzpatrick had a hole and help from behind to swing to the outside and drive by Bodine, Kyle Busch and Terry Cook. That would have been really special – a rookie in his fourth-ever Truck race winning at Daytona. Daytona Renewal Anyone who has worked in NASCAR for a long time will tell you that the best part about Daytona – besides the racing – is seeing all of your friends again. As racers, the time commitment to your profession is endless. Regardless of your position – driver, team member, media, marketing, sponsorship, PR – you’re either on the job at the shop/office or on the road. With little time to socialize outside the sport, the garage becomes your home and those in it your friends, your buds. This year, the two things I heard most of all in the Daytona garage were “Great to see you again” and “I’m just happy to be here.” People were genuinely excited to see their friends this time around. After no testing, massive layoffs and reorganizations during the off season, a lot of folks were just damn glad to be there and have a job. Looking Forward It will be an interesting week as the Cup, Nationwide and Truck divisions head to Auto Club Speedway (California). Ticket sales are rumored to be abysmal for the weekend tripleheader and entries are sure to be down as one-vehicle and lower tier, cash strapped teams throttle back not making the cross-country trip in all three divisions. Look for several ‘start and park’ entries in the Nationwide and Truck events on Saturday. Meanwhile, Cup teams will show up trying to make ends meet. At Daytona, one Cup team marketing manager told us they were getting calls about one-race sponsorships for California, but the offers were as low as $20,000. That will hardly pay for lunch for the high-living Cup crowd. Then again, there was plenty of gloom and doom predicted for the Daytona vehicle and fan counts. In the end, there were more teams than starting positions available for all three 2009 NASCAR Speedweeks events. Also, fan counts at all three events were very good including a “sellout” for Sunday’s 500. We don’t think that will happen at California, but we’ll see. One More Thing
If you want to see a cool photo gallery of Matt Kenseth’s Cambridge, WI Museum (upper right) – which includes a bunch of images of his first race car – please click on the following Close Finishes link. Once there, just click on any photo to enlarge. Enjoy – Click Here