Haul A** and Turn Left Read Free Page A

concerned at being “a lame duck.”
    “Somebody asked me that the other day, and I didn’t really know what the guy meant,” Irvan replied. “I never played baseball when I was a kid.”
    In the span of about ninety seconds, Irvan had dozens of reporters laughing uncontrollably, heads facedown in their computer keyboards, punching the table with their fists.

    “We had the wrong gear, wrong springs, wrong shocks, and wrong car. We had the right beer, but other than that, we got stomped.”
    —STERLING MARLIN
    sponsored by Coors Light, at Dover in September 2004

    “When I was twenty-two or twenty-three, I was trying to act like I was forty-five or fifty. I’m not saying that didn’t help me get a long way in this sport, but, now that I’m thirty-one, going on thirty-two, I want to get back some of those years.”
    —JEFF GORDON
    before the 2003 Daytona 500

    “Fast and smooth. You don’t have to be aggressive as long as you’re fast and smooth.”
    —RYAN NEWMAN

J eff Gordon was not always the self-assured, polished spokesman he is today. When he was in his early twenties, he had become a superstar on the track but remained uncertain off it. He often relied on the protective influence of crew chief Ray Evernham and drove journalists mad with responses that seemed rehearsed and predictable.
    In 1995, when Gordon was closing in on his first championship, he conducted a press conference at Atlanta Motor Speedway, which then hosted the final race of the season. Journalists were informed in advance that Gordon would not answer any question concerning the championship and would only respond to questions specifically referring to the specific race. This stipulation, of course, defeated the purpose of holding a press conference.
    It took a resourceful writer to smoke Gordon out.
    Jim McLaurin, then covering NASCAR for
The State
newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, was up to the task.
    “Jeff,” he said, “I know you won’t answer any questions about the championship. What I want to know is why you won’t answer any questions about the championship.”
    Most everyone in the room erupted in laughter. Gordon couldn’t keep a straight face. And he did talk about the championship he would wrap up two days later.

    “He drives off the end of his hood. He can’t see past his ears.”
    —TERRY LABONTE
    referring to Kurt Busch after an Indianapolis crash in 2003

    “If we ever had fan interference in this sport, it’d be a lot worse than a dropped ball.”
    —KEN SCHRADER
    noting the controversial incident in the 2003 Cubs—Marlins baseball playoff series

    “We all knew what the deal was when we got into it. It’s not like we started a five-day-a -week, nine-to-five job and all of the sudden somebody said, ‘Hey, we need you working more hours, traveling all over the country, and being gone just about every weekend.’ This didn’t surprise anyone. When we signed up we knew how many weeks, how many races, had a pretty good idea of where they were going to be, and knew what we had to do. Nobody fooled us into it”
    —KYLE PETTY

B efore the start of the 2005 season, I asked Carl Edwards if anyone had ever told him he was so wholesome and enthusiastic it made them sick.
    This youthful believer in truth, justice, and the American way replied, “Oh, yeah. I get that all the time.”
    Twenty-five years, Edwards’s age at the time, might be a relatively mature length of age for some, but not for race drivers, who strap themselves into outrageously fast vehicles and live out their frenetic dreams. Missouri gave the world Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, and Edwards—from Columbia, Missouri, not Mark Twain’s Hannibal—is descended from that fictional heritage.
    It’s not hard to imagine Edwards, sitting in some high school classroom, daydreaming about winning the Daytona 500. He’s all “yes, sir” and “no, sir,” reciting his sponsors even to an audience of world-weary journalists who wouldn’t mention