Visitors to my website (http://www.richardhelms.net/) may have stumbled on the pages devoted to the last decade of my 28-year career as an amateur racing driver. Included on those pages is one documenting my last race, in June 1999, at Charlotte (now Lowes) Motor Speedway.
To recap - I was driving in the Formula Ford class in the Sports Car Club of America. Between 1971 and 1999, I had driven in all sorts of racing cars, from go-karts to Late Model Sportsman stock cars. I even drove a NASCAR Winston Cup (now Sprint Cup) car in practice at Bristol way back in the 1970s. The list included modified midgets, three-quarter midgets, sprint karts, enduro karts, hobby stocks, semi-modified dirt stockers, limited sportsman asphalt stockers, and one very disappointing run with a late model sportsman car.
I quit in 1999 for a variety of reasons. I was 44 at the time - an age when many drivers begin to consider hanging up the helmet. Drivers generally start to lose in earnest in their middle forties, as their reflexes slow and younger, braver, bolder (often dumber) drivers come along for their turn on the podium. I found, in 1999, that my attention had begun to wander. There were other things I wanted to do - writing and publishing novels, for instance. Woodworking. Traveling without towing a race car trailer.
My father had died suddenly in April, just one week after I towed to Savannah on a Friday while he was in the hospital, and towed back to Charlotte less than twenty-four hours later after blowing a rear main seal in my engine. I had visited him in his hospital room just before making the Savannah trip. We sat and watched a Braves game on TBS, and talked about all sorts of things. He had congestive heart failure, and they were trying a new sort of treatment on him which involved snaking a catheter through his arteries and hooking it up to a medicine pump he would have to carry in a fanny pack for the rest of his life. They had told him that if he had the procedure, he might get two or three more years. If he didn't - well, he wouldn't. It was sort of a no-brainer.
That was the last conversation I had face-to-face with my Dad until the day he died. After he died, I became the oldest male in the family except for my father-in-law. Things like that make you think. I realized that I wasn't a kid anymore, and that maybe I needed to reconsider some of the stuff I was doing.
Like racing, for instance.
And, while it wasn't a primary reason for quitting, my son was in a private school, and the tuition was due in August for the next year.
The final straw was an incident on-track at Charlotte. I was cruising down the backstretch at a leisurely 145 miles per hour, just boppin' around the track in practice. It was miserably hot that day, and the humidity was stifling. I was encased in two layers of nomex and fireproof longjohns. In most cases, that would seem overdressed for the climate, but it's just part of the sport. I started thinking about how I'd rather be someplace else. I thought about that place for so long that I totally missed my turn-in point for turn three, and nearly drove right into the concrete wall.
It occurred to me, after I returned to the garage area, that if I was thinking about being someplace else while I was on the track, maybe I ought to go there instead. Later that day, on the first lap of the race, a water hose detached from the engine and spewed me with water. Two or three laps later, the water would have been superheated, and I would have been in line for skin grafts.
The racing fates were trying to tell me something. I parked the car, thought for a long time, and then went home to tell my lovely spouse Elaine that I was hanging it up. She was very happy.
Okay, for the first several years I told anyone who asked that I didn't miss it. I was involved in other stuff. My books were doing nicely. I was nominated for a few awards. The reviews were good, and I had developed a whole new group of friends on the mystery conference circuit. I built a few guitars, and had turned my former race car shop into a first-class woodworking shop.
I thought I had put the racing thing behind me.
Now, in all those years of racing, there was one thing I wanted to do - well, two, actually - that I didn't get the chance to do. I have always loved the USAC open wheel cars. Since I was a kid, I've loved sprint cars and midgets and Silver Crown cars. I love the way they slide through the turns on dirt tracks, tossing up roostertails of clay. I love the ground-pounding horsepower they cram into a half-ton car, and the big, foot-and-a-half wide tires. I love watching the drivers saw at the wheels, trying to keep the front-end planted, as they sweep through the corners. I love the way they twitch on asphalt, as the drivers try to keep all that horsepower traveling in one direction.
For all my racing career, I believed that real racing drivers drove sprints and midgets. Early in my career, I had driven something called a micro-midget, which was a very tiny race car powered by a 250cc motorcycle engine. I'd also done a couple of races in three-quarter midgets back in the late 1970s. They were fun but, compared to the real USAC midgets and sprint cars, they were toys.
Why didn't I drive these cars, if I loved them so much?
No opportunity.
I live in the south. This is the land of stock cars. USAC hardly ever ventures into the warmer climes. Sprints and midgets, for the entirety of my racing career, were mostly found in the midwest, in states like Indiana and Ohio and Iowa. There were a few tracks in the northeast, and some in California, but none down here in Dixie. I never really understood it. Stock cars are fun, sure, but a decently set up sprint car will cut five or six seconds off the lap time of the fastest late model on just about any short track in the country. Why the south became fixated on race cars with roofs and fenders is beyond me. Maybe it has something to do with that whole moonshine thing.
After I retired from racing almost nine years ago, things began to change. A group called ASCS started racing winged sprint cars on dirt and asphalt in the Carolinas and Georgia. They put on a great show, and the cars are reasonably affordable.
Then, a couple of years ago, USAC came upon a grand idea. They partnered with Ford and a company in North Carolina, and came up with the Ford Focus Midget Series. The cars are the same ones that run in the USAC National Championship series; open-wheeled wonders with brand names like Stealth and Spike and Beast. The engines are sealed, which means you can't fiddle with them, and they cost a LOT less than those used on the USAC National Championship cars.
And these little monsters fly! For less than the price of a used Camry, you can put a complete car on the track. The motors are good for thirty races before they need to be refreshed, and USAC is paying a guaranteed purse!
Man, did I miss the boat...
Yeah, that's right. After saying for years that I didn't miss racing, now I'm beginning to miss it.
A lot.
Now, here's the problem. I was a racing driver when I met my lovely (and did I mention incredibly patient?) wife Elaine. When we married, she knew I liked to do dangerous things in unpredictable vehicles, and she - perhaps reluctantly - accepted that as part of the package. She told me, long before I decided to retire from racing, that she would never ask me to quit.
On the other hand, she also said that if I ever did decide to give it up, she would acquire immediate and irrevocable veto power over any attempts I might make to get back in.
So, I've mentioned the possibility of picking up a cheap used midget a couple of times. As it happens, there's one for sale in the next county. It's a Beast. One of the best midget brands available.
Elaine wants to know whether it comes with a divorce lawyer.
I think she's kidding.
I'm not sure I want to test that theory.
Tomorrow night is the Chili Bowl Nationals for USAC midgets, in Tulsa. It's one of the biggest events of the year. Especially in Tulsa. HBO is offering it for viewing on Pay-Per-View.
I think I'm going to buy it.
Maybe, at 53, it's kind of foolish to yearn for another turn at the wheel. Doesn't mean I can't have some vicarious thrills.
Right?
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