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driver's EDUCATION : It's a rough road, but Jack Bailey steers toward NASCAR goal

February 18, 2006 12:50 am

MULTIMEDIA: Interactive presentation tells Bailey's story.

THE PATCH Jack Bailey wore on his racing uniform last year branded him.

It said "NASCAR Dodge Weekly Series." But it might as well have read "Fill-in driver."

The patch meant he was qualified to compete at small, local tracks. Most of his time has been spent at Old Dominion Speedway in Manassas.

But ever since the Stafford County native was 10 years old, he has wanted to be a regular in what's now known as the Nextel Cup Series and to race in the Daytona 500.

You won't be able to see the 23-year-old in tomorrow's 500, but he's moving full-throttle to make it there someday.

Bailey competed in six NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series races last season, and that's where that "Weekly" patch comes in.

Though the Truck Series is the least prestigious of NASCAR's three main series, it's still the big time.

So when Bailey ran in Truck Series races, the patch was a dead giveaway that he wasn't a regular.

For example: By his fourth truck race, the Las Vegas 350 on Sept. 24, he felt as if he belonged among the NASCAR drivers you see on TV. Most treated him cordially, and he even struck up a conversation about snowboarding--one of his favorite off-track pursuits--with Nextel Cup regular Kyle Busch.

"Of course," he said later, recalling the moment, "there I am with my Weekly Racing Series driving suit on and patch and everything, so it's like they know I'm just a fill-in, you know, weekly driver."

Bailey hoped to run full time in the Truck Series this year, but he couldn't secure the corporate sponsorship necessary for a racing team to take a chance on a rookie.

"It's all about dollars and cents," Bailey said. "It's not about talent anymore."

Now it looks as if he will drive a car in the Hooters Pro Cup Series, a racing circuit a notch below NASCAR's three elite divisions.

It's not where he hoped to be now, but it's not a consolation prize, either.

"I really want this ride," Bailey said.

That's what it's like for a driver trying to make it big in NASCAR. Stock-car tracks may be flat or banked, but the journey to a full-time ride is filled with ups and downs.

Bailey has found success at every level of racing since he started driving go-karts at age 10.

But it hasn't been without sacrifice. He missed out on parts of his youth because he was either at the racetrack or in the garage turning wrenches.

"When everybody else was chasing girls, he was chasing cars," his father said.

And since Aug. 5, when he made his debut in the Truck Series in Indianapolis, he's encountered some bumps in the road.

He crashed in Indy and in Richmond, and even though those incidents weren't necessarily his fault, they impeded his career progress.

His best finish came in Las Vegas. He took 17th place, not bad for a rookie, and even ran third at one point in the race.

"So, you know, I was all smiles," Bailey said later.

At 1 miles long, it was the longest track he had ever driven on. So when he started practice laps early in the day, he thought he was flying. But then he drove his truck back to the garage and looked at the charts measuring everyone's speeds.

"I was, like, dead last," he said, pausing, "which wasn't good."

However, he picked up almost an entire second in qualifying--a proverbial "eternity" in racing--and qualified in 29th place.

A week later, on Oct. 1, Bailey returned to his old stomping grounds of Old Dominion Speedway for a race sanctioned by the United Auto Racing Association touring series.

Bailey smoked the field in his No. 2 late-model Ford, leading all 150 laps of the race, sometimes by as much as the length of the Old Dominion straightaway. Occasionally a competitor would near him in a corner, but he would slingshot out of the turn and pull away.

"The car's a handful, but I guess we wore 'em out," Bailey said afterward.

He stood tall, pumped his fist and basked in the win--until UARA officials examined his engine for more than two hours after the race to make sure he wasn't using illegal parts. (The verdict? He wasn't.)

And appropriately, while they scrutinized the minutiae of the motor, Fleetwood Mac's "Don't Stop (Thinking About Tomorrow)" played over the public-address system.

Bailey returned to Old Dominion on Oct. 23 for the "Big One" 250-lap race. He finished third on the -mile track, though he would have rather have taken the $10,000 winner's prize home to Stafford in his Ford Explorer.

Then it was on to Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth.

Bailey had high hopes for the Silverado 350 on Nov. 4. A potential sponsor was watching, as was a racing team that was considering signing him to a contract.

But he crashed on the second lap and finished last in the field of 36.

After the race, he felt terrible. The wreck was just a "rookie mistake," he said.

Bailey was just three-tenths second behind the 10th-place qualifier, in 27th place.

"For a team that doesn't have an engineer and millions of dollars in sponsorship, that was a really big deal," he said. "And for me to wreck on Lap 2 kind of hurt everybody's pride."

Despite his three crashes last year, Bailey has gotten high marks from some stock-car racing mainstays.

After the Sept. 17 Sylvania 200 at New Hampshire International Speedway, veteran driver Ken Schrader told Bailey that he ran a "hell of a race."

"He said, 'You gave me plenty of room, you raced me hard and you raced me clean.'" Bailey said, "He's like, 'For a rookie that was outstanding.'"

Likewise, Bobby Dotter said, "There's no doubt in my mind" that Bailey could drive a full Truck Series schedule if he had a sponsor that could pay the bills. Dotter is co-owner of the Mooresville, N.C.-based Green Light Racing.

Bailey, his family and business associates had to pay Green Light thousands of dollars per race for Bailey to drive in the Truck Series because Dotter doesn't have a full-time sponsor and Bailey isn't signed to a full-time contract.

To run the 25-race truck season, Dotter said, a driver would need to secure at least $1 million in sponsorship. Race teams that field Toyota trucks might require more like $4 million.

Dotter hoped Bailey would drive all year with Green Light, but the sponsorship just hasn't panned out.

All the truck races are broadcast on cable's Speed Channel, but that's not necessarily enough exposure for all sponsors. So instead of spending, say, $3 million advertising in the Truck Series, Dotter said, some companies might spend perhaps $5 million to get their names out in the second-tier Busch Series.

The so-called "rent-a-ride" program that Bailey used might seem like a big money-maker for Green Light. But Dotter said he'd much rather have full-time, sponsored drivers.

Racing engines will cost the team $20,000 per race this year, and tires will be at least $8,000. Throw in traveling costs, and per-race expenses could easily be more than $30,000 per truck for the two trucks Dotter owns--and he doesn't spend nearly the money that other teams do.

So if a driver wrecks a truck, Green Light goes into the hole. An easy truck body fix might cost as much as $6,000, Dotter said, and work that requires frame repair could be $10,000.

Trying to raise sponsorship money has taken a toll on Bailey and his family.

"This is the hardest thing I think I've ever done," said Bailey's father, who also goes by the name Jack.

And that's saying something. He's suffered through business difficulties, and he had a stroke in 2003 before one of his son's races at Old Dominion.

Some people say the younger Jack Bailey, who works for his dad in the land-development industry, has gotten to where he is only because the family could afford to spend the money.

The elder Jack Bailey didn't want to divulge exactly how much the family spent on the young man's foray into the Truck Series. The family could have lived in a nicer house, he said, or spent money on other things. But they chose to spend their money on their son's dream.

"Everybody that's gotten to where they are has done exactly what we're doing," he said. "Every family has sacrificed something to get their son or daughter to where they are."

The racing gene apparently skipped a generation in the Bailey family. Young Jack Bailey's grandfather Jack Bailey Jr. was a racer in North Carolina before his wife made him quit the sport, and he eventually moved to Virginia to build part of Interstate 95.

Now living in Graham, N.C., he's a former land developer and a one-time candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates.

Bailey has a dozen other grandchildren, but only one has continued the family's racing tradition.

He regrets not continuing his racing career, but he thinks his grandson's humble nature would please a sponsor that wanted to make him its speeding spokesman.

"If he can keep that dedication and humility, he'll be all right," Bailey said.

The Brooke Point High School graduate has what marketing executives want out of NASCAR drivers in the 21st century. He presents a fairly quiet demeanor, but he can move easily between old-school stock-car racing and the rock 'n' roll future many want for the sport.

He's tall, thin, clean-shaven and has dark brown hair and the non-accent of someone who's grown up only an hour from Washington. Think more Tom Cruise in the NASCAR movie "Days of Thunder" than Richard Petty in the Daytona 500 back when it wasn't televised live.

Bailey knows that a track-bar adjustment can improve a race car's handling and that an extra shot of espresso turbocharges a Starbucks grande white mocha.

Driving in the Hooters Pro Cup Series, meanwhile, isn't nearly as expensive as making left turns for NASCAR. That means Bailey might need to find "only" about $300,000 in corporate sponsorship.

And that touring series has spawned several stars who have moved onto NASCAR's big time, including Brian Vickers and Virginia boys Danny O'Quinn of Coeburn and Mark McFarland of Winchester. McFarland raced against Bailey at Old Dominion Speedway and will make his debut in NASCAR's Busch Series today in a Navy-sponsored car owned by Dale Earnhardt Jr.

So did the Baileys make the wrong move by running the trucks last year?

Even though it was his father who ran for office, Jack Bailey III comes up with a good political answer: "Don't look back."

When his son told him his lifelong dream was to run the Daytona 500, Bailey said, "he didn't have a clue what that meant. I didn't have a clue."

But the young driver can take solace in the fact that all that money and time spent seem to have gained him lots of recognition.

His short Truck Series career has generated a dozen fan letters, and he's been greeted by race aficionados at the Home Depot and at dinner with his girlfriend at Carrabba's in Central Park.

Bailey knew his family and friends were behind him, but he's overwhelmed by the good wishes of strangers.

"It's kind of shocking because I'm, you know, just some kid from Stafford who drives race cars. Pretty quiet guy," he said. "It's kind of cool."

Don't take that "kind of" to mean he fails to fully appreciate his supporters, however. Though Bailey sincerely feels he belongs in NASCAR, wonder seems to come over his voice whenever he speaks about fans--or makes them.

Last fall, Bailey caught the eye of Jackie Acquista, a clerk at the Starbucks in Massaponax.

To a reporter interviewing Bailey, she said something like, "Who's that guy you're talking to?"

"Jack Bailey," the reporter answered. "He's a race car driver."

"He's adorable," Acquista said.

When Bailey returned from the restroom, she sought to confirm the reporter's account.

"You're a race car driver?" she asked Bailey.

The young driver, who by then had logged only three big-time races, seemed taken aback. He responded in the affirmative, and briefly explained the Truck Series' place in the NASCAR universe.

Acquista asked for Bailey's autograph.

"I'm not famous yet," Bailey responded.

But he obliged her request. And, in doing so, who's to say he wasn't wrong in evaluating his station in life?

It's a good bet that the only other autographs signed at Starbucks that night were on the dotted lines of credit card receipts.

JONATHAN HUNLEY is youth editor and a Life columnist with The Free Lance-Star. Contact him at 540/368-5004, or e-mail jhunley@freelancestar.com.

MIKE MORONES is a staff photographer with The Free Lance-Star.