Post by redclayrebel on Apr 14, 2009 19:32:01 GMT -5
Racer's passion comes at a price
By Thomas Pope
Motor sports editor
ADVERTISEMENT
Lance West has dirt in his blood.
And, for most days during the past nine months, dirt in his ears, his eyes, his sinuses and under his fingernails.
Such is the price he pays for choosing to work as a truck mechanic in Iraq for a U.S. contractor. It’s a job, he decided, that offered the only avenue through which he could finance his passion for dirt-track racing.
Friday’s World of Outlaws Late Model event at Fayetteville Motor Speedway will end a two-week trip home to Fayetteville; a 16-hour one-way flight planned specifically to compete in the Outlaws event and others since April 4. Saturday morning, he’ll be airborne again, heading back to the dust and the looming 140-degree summertime heat of Baghdad.
“I reached my goal,” West, 24, said in the kitchen of his parents’ home in the rural Turnbull area of Cumberland County. “I went over there to get the money to get a racecar ready.”
Racing, and earning the money to pay for it, is constantly on Lance West’s mind. He started out in go-karts at 13, then moved into Fayetteville’s entry-level Pure Stock class a year later. He worked his way up to the Super Late Model ranks — the same type of cars that run in Outlaws competition — for nearly four seasons.
He switched to asphalt cars for about a year and a half, and dominated the Limited Late Model division at Kenly’s Southern National Speedway. When his ride there ran its course, he set his sights on dirt Super Late Models again, but knew he couldn’t afford it over the long haul.
He’d had jobs laying flooring. He’d worked as an electrician and a mechanic. He’d helped his father, Larry, operate a turkey farm, and he’d worked in tobacco. He had even attended the NASCAR Technical Institute in hopes of a career with a NASCAR team, but left after three weeks when he realized the focus was more on auto repair than racing.
No job, it seemed, would generate the kind of income he needed to properly fund his own Super Late Model.
Then, last June, at a friend’s bachelor party, his answer arrived in the form of a gleaming sports car.
“A guy that I went to Cape Fear (High School) with pulled up in a brand-new Corvette. I said, ‘Man, what’ve you been doing to get a car like that?’ He told me he’d been working in Iraq for three years and all the money was tax free. I thought, ‘That’d be right up my alley.’
”
When he told his parents about his plan — a one-year contract as a mechanic for Lear Siegler Industries — it wasn’t well-received.
“I said, ‘Lance, you’ve got to be kidding me,’
” said his mother, Vickie. “He said, ‘I can’t make enough money over here to race on, so I’m just going to sacrifice a year over there to get me some money.’
“I knew there wasn’t any use in trying to talk him out of it.”
His father, a heating-and-air mechanic at Cape Fear Valley Medical Center, took the news even harder.
“It like to have killed me, really,” Larry West said. “I never thought he’d sacrifice like that to go racing, but he wants to do it so bad. I thought he’d be home in two weeks because he’s a homebody, but he surprised me.”
Lance’s best friend since middle school, Jeremy Odom, signed on with a different company to do the same type of work. They both adapted to the broiling desert heat while they worked on nearly any kind of truck in the Army’s fleet. They’ve also had to take cover from mortar attacks, and they’ve learned the distinctive sound made by the CRAM guns that destroy inbound rockets and mortars in flight.
Odom’s job in Mosul ended in January when his camp was closed. That turned out to be a plus for West, as Odom hasn’t done anything since coming home except help in the completion of West’s new racecar.
West, meanwhile, spent his free time on the Internet, scouring racing classifieds for engines and other pieces he needed for the car. He hit the mother lode with a racer near Richmond, Va., who sold him a top-of-the-line engine and a slew of other parts for fire sale-like prices.
“I got my Dad to go look at it and see if it was really all it was cracked up to be for that price — and if it was, to buy it,” Lance said.
Friends and racers such as Shawn Beasley, Rodney Rich, and Shaun and Sherrill Sewell also helped prep the car, and even then, it wasn’t entirely finished by Odom and Larry West until 1 a.m. April 4. As the final decals were applied to the car, Lance was sound asleep over the Atlantic, arriving in Fayetteville at 8 o’clock and suited up for action at the race track 10 hours later.
He didn’t qualify for the feature — a donated racing seat more suited for asphalt superspeedway competition was a hindrance, to say the least — but it didn’t really matter. For the first time in over a year, West was back behind the wheel.
After Friday night’s Outlaw event, West will head home for final bit of shut-eye, then make the return trip to Iraq via Atlanta and Dubai. He’ll complete his contract Aug. 3, when he’ll come back to Fayetteville and finish out the local racing season.
He hasn’t ruled out going back into a combat zone as a mechanic, but said he would do so only to fund for his racing. Some jobs in his field, he said, pay between $150,000 and $200,000 a year.
He added: “I haven’t spent all my money on the racecar — yet.”
copied from fayobserver.com
By Thomas Pope
Motor sports editor
ADVERTISEMENT
Lance West has dirt in his blood.
And, for most days during the past nine months, dirt in his ears, his eyes, his sinuses and under his fingernails.
Such is the price he pays for choosing to work as a truck mechanic in Iraq for a U.S. contractor. It’s a job, he decided, that offered the only avenue through which he could finance his passion for dirt-track racing.
Friday’s World of Outlaws Late Model event at Fayetteville Motor Speedway will end a two-week trip home to Fayetteville; a 16-hour one-way flight planned specifically to compete in the Outlaws event and others since April 4. Saturday morning, he’ll be airborne again, heading back to the dust and the looming 140-degree summertime heat of Baghdad.
“I reached my goal,” West, 24, said in the kitchen of his parents’ home in the rural Turnbull area of Cumberland County. “I went over there to get the money to get a racecar ready.”
Racing, and earning the money to pay for it, is constantly on Lance West’s mind. He started out in go-karts at 13, then moved into Fayetteville’s entry-level Pure Stock class a year later. He worked his way up to the Super Late Model ranks — the same type of cars that run in Outlaws competition — for nearly four seasons.
He switched to asphalt cars for about a year and a half, and dominated the Limited Late Model division at Kenly’s Southern National Speedway. When his ride there ran its course, he set his sights on dirt Super Late Models again, but knew he couldn’t afford it over the long haul.
He’d had jobs laying flooring. He’d worked as an electrician and a mechanic. He’d helped his father, Larry, operate a turkey farm, and he’d worked in tobacco. He had even attended the NASCAR Technical Institute in hopes of a career with a NASCAR team, but left after three weeks when he realized the focus was more on auto repair than racing.
No job, it seemed, would generate the kind of income he needed to properly fund his own Super Late Model.
Then, last June, at a friend’s bachelor party, his answer arrived in the form of a gleaming sports car.
“A guy that I went to Cape Fear (High School) with pulled up in a brand-new Corvette. I said, ‘Man, what’ve you been doing to get a car like that?’ He told me he’d been working in Iraq for three years and all the money was tax free. I thought, ‘That’d be right up my alley.’
”
When he told his parents about his plan — a one-year contract as a mechanic for Lear Siegler Industries — it wasn’t well-received.
“I said, ‘Lance, you’ve got to be kidding me,’
” said his mother, Vickie. “He said, ‘I can’t make enough money over here to race on, so I’m just going to sacrifice a year over there to get me some money.’
“I knew there wasn’t any use in trying to talk him out of it.”
His father, a heating-and-air mechanic at Cape Fear Valley Medical Center, took the news even harder.
“It like to have killed me, really,” Larry West said. “I never thought he’d sacrifice like that to go racing, but he wants to do it so bad. I thought he’d be home in two weeks because he’s a homebody, but he surprised me.”
Lance’s best friend since middle school, Jeremy Odom, signed on with a different company to do the same type of work. They both adapted to the broiling desert heat while they worked on nearly any kind of truck in the Army’s fleet. They’ve also had to take cover from mortar attacks, and they’ve learned the distinctive sound made by the CRAM guns that destroy inbound rockets and mortars in flight.
Odom’s job in Mosul ended in January when his camp was closed. That turned out to be a plus for West, as Odom hasn’t done anything since coming home except help in the completion of West’s new racecar.
West, meanwhile, spent his free time on the Internet, scouring racing classifieds for engines and other pieces he needed for the car. He hit the mother lode with a racer near Richmond, Va., who sold him a top-of-the-line engine and a slew of other parts for fire sale-like prices.
“I got my Dad to go look at it and see if it was really all it was cracked up to be for that price — and if it was, to buy it,” Lance said.
Friends and racers such as Shawn Beasley, Rodney Rich, and Shaun and Sherrill Sewell also helped prep the car, and even then, it wasn’t entirely finished by Odom and Larry West until 1 a.m. April 4. As the final decals were applied to the car, Lance was sound asleep over the Atlantic, arriving in Fayetteville at 8 o’clock and suited up for action at the race track 10 hours later.
He didn’t qualify for the feature — a donated racing seat more suited for asphalt superspeedway competition was a hindrance, to say the least — but it didn’t really matter. For the first time in over a year, West was back behind the wheel.
After Friday night’s Outlaw event, West will head home for final bit of shut-eye, then make the return trip to Iraq via Atlanta and Dubai. He’ll complete his contract Aug. 3, when he’ll come back to Fayetteville and finish out the local racing season.
He hasn’t ruled out going back into a combat zone as a mechanic, but said he would do so only to fund for his racing. Some jobs in his field, he said, pay between $150,000 and $200,000 a year.
He added: “I haven’t spent all my money on the racecar — yet.”
copied from fayobserver.com