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HOOKED ON SPEED: Jimmy Spencer and the NASCAR Winston Cup Series

by Frank Moriarty

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of the most aggressive drivers in NASCAR's Winston Cup Series is Jimmy Spencer. When I suggested a cover story on NASCAR to Philadelphia Weekly, a natural tie-in was the fact that Jimmy Spencer had grown up in Pennsylvania. Always outspoken, Spencer speaks his mind, a blessing in these days when many Winston Cup drivers are more concerned with offering generic public relations-friendly quotes.

From the 6/5/1996 Philadelphia Weekly

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Jimmy Spencer sat in his Ford Thunderbird stock car on a sunny spring Sunday earlier this year, ready to start the powerful 700-horsepower engine and compete in a grueling 500-lap NASCAR Winston Cup Series race at North Wilkesboro, North Carolina. With a high-profile sponsorship from R.J. Reynolds' Smokin' Joe's brand and wins at two of NASCAR's toughest tracks to his credit, one might think the Pennsylvania driver would command respect.

Then the honorary starter, a local radio personality, gave the traditional command to start the race.

"Gentlemen - and Jimmy Spencer - start your engines."

But that doesn't bother Jimmy Spencer, because Spencer is proud of his reputation as one of the toughest drivers in what is the world's most competitive professional automobile racing series. Spencer makes it clear that he isn't afraid of any other driver on the racetrack. His racing talent got him into NASCAR ­ Spencer once drove a car with no brakes to a second place finish, earning him the title "Mr. Excitement." But among many race fans Spencer is known for his aggression more than his talent, and they will quickly cite instances where Jimmy bulldozed his way past a slower car. And if that driver had a problem with Spencer's tactics, Jimmy wouldn't shy away from letting fists settle a post­race argument. Then again, any old timer in the sport of stock car racing will point out that the combination of talent, fearlessness, and aggression is essential to winning in NASCAR, and there are former NASCAR greats like 1970 Daytona 500 winner Pete Hamilton who love to watch Jimmy Spencer drive a race car.

But how did a man born in Nanticoke, Pennsylvania - a small town near Wilkes-Barre - wind up racing in a sport traditionally associated with the south?

The answer starts to become clear when you consider the fact that Jimmy's father, Ed Spencer, had a pretty good reputation himself around the racetracks of Pennsylvania and throughout the Northeast.

"My dad and all of his brothers raced," Spencer begins. "Even my aunts raced in the powder puff derby. My dad met my mom at the racetrack. Ever since day one, they were racing. About 100 yards from the house is where my dad had his garage and that's where all my uncles worked on their cars. They won a lot of races, and it was pretty normal for us to go to the winner's circle on Saturday nights with my dad.

"I started racing around two evergreen trees my mom and dad planted in the front yard," the 39-year-old racer continues. "I always had to try and win. And naturally, with the cars just being at the house all the time, I just got started. It's hard to be like that anymore. Racing has just changed so much."

The fact that one of top drivers in the Winston Cup Series comes from north of the Mason-Dixon Line isn't unusual any more. The change in racing that Spencer alludes to is reflected in the fact that the drivers of NASCAR's most elite division now hail from across the country, and - although a look at the sports page of the Philadelphia Inquirer or Daily News may not reflect it - NASCAR has ascended nationally to the level traditionally occupied solely by Major League Baseball or the National Football League.

Top drivers of the Winston Cup Series pull in hundreds of thousands of dollars in winner's fees and millions more in souvenir royalties. And there are lucrative bonus programs to be raced for. Driver Dale Jarrett, victorious in the Daytona 500 and Coca­Cola 600 so far this season, will pick up a $1 million bonus from series sponsor R.J. Reynolds for winning three of four designated NASCAR races should he capture the Labor Day event run at Darlington, South Carolina's historic speedway.

In fact, the lack of coverage of NASCAR in the local newspapers is most likely a reflection of the "stick and ball" mentality of the sports editors rather than a lack of racing interest on the part of the readers. A market research study by Charlotte Motor Speedway showed that Pennsylvania was the state placing the third greatest number of ticket orders for the North Carolina track's events. Winston Cup stops at nearby Dover Downs International Speedway in Delaware and Pocono International Raceway in Pennsylvania regularly sell out, drawing well over 100,000 fans to each track. This area supports a growing number of shops that sell nothing but racing related merchandise. And all those advertisers who feature the stock cars they sponsor in those glossy coupon pages that run in the Sunday Inquirer do so for a reason - their studies have shown this area is a racing hotbed.

But it's not just a local phenomenon. NASCAR is shaking up the sports world, and its fan demographics mirror racing's ascension. Once considered a sport whose observers were little more than brawling rednecks watching the races through an alcoholic haze, studies show that fully half of the fans in the stands are now female. In 1994 Business Week reported that 27% of NASCAR fans had professional/managerial employment, and 29% of NASCAR fans earned an annual income over $50,000. Consider that in light of the fact that stock car fans are 64% more likely to buy a product from a company that sponsors a NASCAR team than from competitors that do not, and you can see why sponsors as varied as MBNA, DuPont, US AIR, Tide, Kodak, and McDonald's are deeply involved in Winston Cup racing.

Imagine if the Eagles or the Phillies played on a different kind of field for every game and you'll get an idea what NASCAR drivers face. The Winston Cup teams race on everything from flat half-mile tracks to sprawling superspeedways more than two miles in length during a season that begins in February with the Daytona 500 and continues on into November. 70 to 80 hour work weeks are the norm for crewmen in the Winston Cup Series, who build specialized cars designed to match the characteristics of the different sized tracks. There is a constant pressure to perform well to keep race team sponsors happily writing checks to support each team's competitive endeavors.

Jimmy Spencer has watched the sport of Winston Cup stock car racing grow tremendously in the years he's been behind the wheel.

"At one time, you could never make a full-time living out of it," Spencer notes. "Now we've got ten cars back at the shop, 25 people working for us, tractor-trailers, sponsor commitments to fulfill all the time - it's just incredible what the sport has done in 25 years. That's all because of sponsors and people like R.J. Reynolds," the tobacco company whose brand name "Winston" appears in the racing series' title.

"I mean, if it wasn't for Winston I don't think this sport would be where it is," Spencer says. "We get paid an awful lot of money to do what we're doing. When I first started racing I never dreamt - never dreamt! - that you could make the kind of money that I'm making for driving a race car. And I would drive it for free."

Bill France probably never dreamed how much NASCAR would grow when he formed the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing at a meeting in December, 1947. France had gathered a number of auto racing promoters and others involved in the fledgling sport at a hotel in Daytona Beach, Florida, with the goal of setting standards for what was often unruly competition characterized by fights and cheating.

NASCAR was incorporated in February of 1948, when races were still held on a beach course in Daytona and sponsorships were nothing more the name of a local garage scrawled on a car's quarterpanels. But things soon progressed on an exponential path of expansion.

NASCAR built a reputation as a reliable sanctioning body for racing promoters to align themselves with, and racers could count on being paid their winnings. NASCAR's Grand National division emerged as the organization's flagship, building on Bill France's determination that stock-appearing cars should compete on his speedways. In the key marketing principle since NASCAR's inception, France knew that the fans in the stands needed to be able to identify with the cars on the track.

And the fan base grew rapidly. In the early 1950's, with tracks like the historic superspeedway at Darlington established, France began to maneuver his organization beyond the territorial limits of the Southeast as he tested the markets in places like Arizona, California, and Michigan.

In the 1960's, NASCAR developed a key ingredient to success in sports - stars. Names like Fireball Roberts, Junior Johnson, David Pearson, Cale Yarborough, and Fred Lorenzen attracted not only new fans but the television cameras of the networks. Legitimacy began to seep into the realm of stock car racing.

1970 was a crucial year for Bill France and NASCAR on a number of fronts. ABC agreed to telecast nine races of the season, with five being telecast live from the racetracks. The performance front was shaken up by Buddy Baker's successful assault on the 200 mph barrier, as he drove an aerodynamic Dodge Charger Daytona past the previously unreachable speed mark in March of that year.

But of all the changes, the most important and lasting came on the business front. Thanks in part to the efforts of Junior Johnson, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company aligned itself with NASCAR as sponsor of the sanctioning body's top division. As a result, the Grand National division was rechristened the Winston Cup Series. Beginning with the 1971 season, Reynolds would post a $100,000 point fund to reward the top twenty drivers of the season.

With the Reynolds involvement came a scaling back of the series' schedule, which had seen as many as 50 Grand National events per year. A more manageable thirty races became standard.

In 1972 "Big Bill" France handed over control of the organization to his son, Bill France, Junior. While many companies that have undergone such transfers of power have suffered as a result, Big Bill's son has shrewdly guided the sport onwards.

A growing number of America's largest companies began to enter the NASCAR world, and throughout the 1970's cars sponsored by such divergent interests as Citicorp, Coppertone, and Pepsi became more common. The reason - people were watching NASCAR races.

In 1976, NASCAR's Winston Cup Series drew crowds of 1.4 million fans, more than any other motorsports attraction in the world. But that figure pales compared to last season's attendance figures: 5,326,721 fans attended the 31 events awarding points in the Winston Cup Series, an increase of 8.8 per cent from the 1994 season, according to statistics compiled by Goodyear's racing division.

That's not to mention the fact that the race cars' appearances are designed to maximize the visibility of sponsor logos, as every race on the schedule is beamed live to millions of television viewers at home. How many are watching NASCAR? Television viewership of this year's Daytona 500 was rated at 9.2 by A.C. Nielsen, translating into 8.84 million households. The financial figures are equally impressive. The Sponsors Report, which studies television exposure, calculates that Valvoline's 1995 Winston Cup sponsorship garnered more than 13 hours of exposure and 192 telecast mentions for the oil company, with a comparative advertising value of more than $33 million. Forbes magazine recently estimated the annual take of NASCAR, its speedways and racing teams at over $2 billion. Licensed sales of apparel and souvenirs alone soared from $60 million in 1990 to $400 million in 1994, Forbes stated. And the Reynolds-supplied points fund - the one that started at $100,000 - has ballooned to over $6 million annually. The sport shows no signs of its explosive growth slowing. In addition to the established Winston Cup tracks - some of which have hosted NASCAR races since the early days - new superspeedways are under construction in Texas, California, and Nevada. The tracks are being built with no guarantee that they will be offered a Winston Cup date by NASCAR - but the potential revenue from such an event makes the huge financial outlay of the new track owners a worthwhile gamble.

What has brought about the tremendous growth of stock car racing? Jimmy Spencer believes it is the competition, where the difference between starting on the pole position of a race and starting last can be as little as a few hundredths of a second. And, of course, there is the matter of two cars battling through a high-banked turn next to each other at nearly 200 mph.

"If Winston Cup racing wasn't as competitive as it is, and we didn't have close side-by-side racing, then we wouldn't be selling out," Spencer theorizes.

Alluding to Indy car racing, where the slightest of contact can remove the delicate vehicles from competition, Spencer states, "If we had racing where it was like, 'Oooh, I've got to be careful here, I can't get close to him because I might get a tire mark on my car,' then we wouldn't have sold out stands."

In many ways, Spencer's rough and tumble attitude is a throwback to NASCAR's early days. Spencer stands in contrast to many of his fellow drivers, who have adopted a suitably business- like stance as their sport has become more corporate-oriented. After all, these days it's not uncommon to see Winston Cup drivers arrive in a racetrack's garage area with a helmet in one hand and a briefcase in the other.

"I think there's a lot of young guys in this sport right now who have a lot to learn," Spencer says firmly. "A lot of them have just had stuff given to them - they didn't have to go through what Dale Earnhardt had to go through, what Richard Petty went through, what Bobby Allison had to go through, what Jimmy Spencer had to go through. I'd say 75% of them wouldn't go through what I went through to get here. A lot of them wouldn't give up what we gave up. For a long time my wife and I lived in a house trailer, just saving money - and I'm talking about a bad house trailer! I don't think there's a lot of people who would do that today."

Spencer began to climb the ladder that led to the Winston Cup Series by beginning his career on the short dirt tracks that begin the resume of most racers. Tracks like the nearby Bridgeport Speedway in southern New Jersey and Grandview Speedway in Pennsylvania are similar to the ones where Spencer got his start.

But unlike most Saturday night racers, Jimmy Spencer moved onwards and up, graduating to faster cars racing on larger, paved tracks. "I went to Martinsville, Virginia in 1978 and I saw Richie Evans and Geoff Bodine and all those guys racing in Modifieds," Spencer recalls. Modifieds are highly altered, dangerously fast race cars that have become cornerstones of racing in the Northeast, another division sanctioned by NASCAR with Winston sponsorship.

"I thought that was interesting," Spencer continues. "I went to Daytona and I wound up buying an asphalt modified. I had looked into NASCAR and the Winston Racing Series. I started winning a lot of races around 1979, 1980, and 1981. I decided to venture out. I went to New England and found I could win a lot of races there. My dad said, 'You're pretty good. In fact, you're really good - you need to think about going further.' My wife and I got married in 1982, and I said, 'I think I can go professional.' And that's what I did."

Not that it was an easy climb. A champion on one level is just a rookie at the next, as Spencer discovered. After winning many races and championships in the highly competitive Modified series, Spencer moved south and into the stock car world, armed with a nickname that reflected his aggressive driving - "Mr. Excitement."

Finally, what Spencer thought was his break into the big time came with a call from former Winston Cup driver Buddy Baker. Baker had retired from driving after being injured in a serious crash, and was looking for a driver to wheel his cars. But what Jimmy Spencer really got was a sobering education as to the realities of Winston Cup racing as a business. Baker's was the first of a string of under-funded teams Spencer drove for as he struggled to establish his name.

"In 1989, Buddy Baker called me about half way through the season. I hung up on him, because I thought it was a joke," Spencer laughs. "He said, 'Do you want to drive for me?' My whole Winston Cup career has been like when I went to drive for Buddy Baker. The sponsor was just hanging on by a thread, and they left. I passed up a lot of rides so I could stay with Buddy Baker, because I like Buddy Baker. He treated me right. But I ended up driving for a team sponsored by Heinz, and that sponsorship was hanging on by a thread. Halfway through the year the money gets cut off. There I am in 1991 without a ride, and Travis Carter hires me - but the Banquet sponsorship is leaving at the end of the year. I went to drive for Bobby Allison. And he lost the Raybestos sponsorship."

After years of trying to establish himself in the Winston Cup Series, Jimmy Spencer finally landed one of the most wanted rides - behind the wheel of the cars fielded by the legendary Junior Johnson. But Spencer had also landed something less desirable - a reputation as an overly-aggressive driver. Spencer will admit that part of the reputation grew from a temper he had been quick to show, but part of it was from trying to drive second-class race cars beyond their capabilities.

Regardless, Spencer started 1994 with a clean slate and Junior Johnson's Thunderbirds sponsored by McDonalds. But trouble soon arose. On the short, tough track at Martinsville Spencer and Ken Schrader made contact, with Spencer's car spinning out of control. With the cars slowly circling the track while the race was under a caution flag, Spencer's temper got the best of him and he rammed into Schrader in retaliation. Weeks later fingers were pointed at Spencer as the cause of a large crash at Talladega Superspeedway, where just one car even getting slightly out of shape at 190 mph can have disastrous consequences for many drivers.

The season was off to a bad start. Spencer needed vindication. It finally came with his first Winston Cup Series win.

Late in the July 2 Pepsi 400 race at the historic 2.5-mile Daytona International Speedway, it became clear there were two strong cars - Ernie Irvan's Texaco-sponsored Thunderbird entry, and the Junior Johnson Thunderbird with Jimmy Spencer at the wheel. Irvan had once borne the same villainous reputation as Spencer, even having to stand before his fellow drivers at a meeting to apologize for his aggressive actions. He had since ascended to the ranks of fan favorite and had won numerous races. Now it was Spencer who had the opportunity to try to show everyone just how good he was.

At Daytona, moving at nearly 200 mph, passing strategy is crucial as the air coming off the cars is a physical force that must be carefully dealt with. Spencer tried passing Irvan on the high side and on the low side, leaving Ernie to guess which move Spencer would really use on the last lap. On that final circuit, Spencer went high in turn two on the 33-degree banking, just inches from the wall. Irvan hung low, trying to protect the lead. Diving down toward the back straightaway, Spencer whipped his red car suddenly to the inside of Irvan, momentum propelling him next to Irvan's black Ford. Side by side the two Thunderbirds raced into turn three, maintained their positions through turn four, and then roared toward the finish line. The two cars bumped as they neared the stripe. Spencer won by inches in one of NASCAR's most exciting finishes. His strategy in the final laps had paid off in full.

"I'll tell you how I beat Ernie Irvan at Daytona: determination," Spencer says. "Junior Johnson told me that if there was anybody else in that race car, he doesn't believe they'd have won that race. I did unorthodox things, but I tried to win. And I did."

Jimmy Spencer backed up his Daytona win just weeks later, driving to victory lane at Talladega Superspeedway. His most recent victory came May 18, when he was first to take the checkered flag in a race at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

While thrilling finishes like the Irvan-Spencer duel under the Florida sun help draw fans, it is frequently the drivers themselves who bring new fans under the NASCAR banner.

The first thing Spencer did when he climbed from his car that day in Daytona was look into the TV camera and thank his mother and father and "everyone who helped me in my career." That humble nature characterizes the drivers of the Winston Cup Series and is attractive to millions of people who are fed up with professional athletes who complain about the millions of dollars they earn each year while throwing tantrums and behaving like brats.

NASCAR encourages role model behavior from its drivers, as do the sponsors who pay up to $5 million annually to support a team. The sponsors expect that money to pay off with a good spokesman to represent them both on and off the track. And donating time for charity work is something all drivers are expected to offer.

But you'll also never see a Winston Cup driver charge for an autograph. Today's drivers still emulate the actions of Winston Cup racing's "king," Richard Petty. Petty was well known for spending hours after a race, not matter how tired he was, signing autographs for every fan who approached him requesting one. It's not at all uncommon to see a driver voluntarily approach a child in a wheelchair to chat for a few moments. All of the Winston Cup drivers know that without the fans there would be no Winston Cup Series. Sure, that's the NASCAR party line, but it's one that every participant fervently believes in.

The wholesome feel generated by the competitors themselves, combined with the hot action on the track, accounts for the growing popularity of the Winston Cup Series. In November, NASCAR will run an exhibition race in Japan. A cutting edge site at www.nascar.com gives NASCAR a strong Internet presence. In short, the future looks bright, and NASCAR has an aggressive marketing department to help things move along.

The sport's future also looks as though the Winston Cup Series just may have the name Spencer in it for many years to come.

"Deep down inside, I'd love to see my boy race," admits Jimmy Spencer. Spencer's son, James, was born in 1986. "But if he chooses to do something else, I'll support him just like my dad did with me. I'll make it hard on him if he wants to race, because I want him to know it's not an easy sport. But I'm going to tell you something: he doesn't like to lose now. So if he's only ten years old and he doesn't like to lose, if he can keep that attitude he can probably be a race car driver. My dad was awful damn good, and I think I'm a pretty damn good race car driver, so maybe it will be in his heritage."

 

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