Once Around the Track (24 page)

Badger’s Din

Lady Pit Bulls “86” The Badger
by FastDrawl

Taran read FastDrawl’s article for the third time, wishing she had not decided to check on comments from her old Internet buddies. She had gone back to the hotel to check on Tony Lafon, who was still sick. Allergic reaction to seafood, he thought. He declined her offer to bring him dinner, and he was obviously in no mood for company. He had seen the race on television, and neither of them wanted to talk about that. After a few more awkward minutes, she left and went back to her room, wishing she had someone to talk to. That’s why she had logged on to
Badger’s Din.

It had been more than a week since she’d visited the site, and she was so despondent after the race that she’d hope to commiserate with the faithful on Badger’s unauthorized fan site. But instead of sympathy, she had found FastDrawl’s screed, and now she was progressing from disbelief to shock to rage. He had no idea what it was like to be out there trying to do a job in thirteen seconds—
thirteen seconds
—with TV cameras zeroing in on you like snipers, and people barking orders into your headset, and having to worry about whether some car coming down pit road would lose its brakes or blow a tire and plow into you. Easy enough for that arrogant jerk FastDrawl to sit at home in his recliner, swilling beer and second-guessing the race, assuming that he could do everything better than the people who actually had the jobs. What was that quotation about critics? Teddy Roosevelt had said it, she thought.

Thank God for the Internet: All you had to do was type in a few keywords and you could find almost any quote you’d ever heard.

A few moments later she had found it, saved it with the copy command, and prepared to fire it point-blank at the smug little asshole at
Badger’s Din.

Taran stayed online for a few more minutes, reading the crossfire between FastDrawl supporters and people who agreed with her defense of Team Vagenya. She found, though, that she didn’t much care anymore what any of them thought. They didn’t know Badger, and she did. They hadn’t lived through a Cup race, and she had. All their endless paragraphs of speculation now reminded her of the work of some remote Pacific cargo cult, building a contraption out of sticks and vines and then expecting it to fly. They didn’t understand anything at all. And she’d never be able to explain it to them.

She logged off. She was too tired to read any further entries, and too depressed to post any more comments, even to thank those who sided with her. Tomorrow they would be flying back to North Carolina, and there they would face a critic who
did
count, a critic who was quite entitled to point out how the doer of deeds could have done them better: Grace Tuggle—or worse—Badger Jenkins himself.

Taran decided to take another shower, so that Cass, her hotel roommate, couldn’t hear her cry.

“Well, we sucked,” said Tuggle, facing the despondent 86 team in their postrace analysis.

The pit crew and assorted other team members were back in Mooresville, sitting around the conference room table in various stages of misery, waiting for the crew chief to comment on their performance, not that they needed to know what she thought. The expression of disgust would be a mere formality, but it had to be endured. They would be watching the footage of the overhead view of each pit stop and analyzing each strategy call to see what they could have done differently. It would be unpleasant, but they all knew it was a necessary ordeal. They would never get better unless they knew exactly what had gone wrong before.

Taran had brought her own box of tissues to the meeting, and her swollen eyes and reddened nose suggested that this was her second box since the race; the others were maintaining a stoic calm, awaiting the storm.

“We sucked,” Tuggle said again in that voice of preternatural calm that is worse than shouting.

“Aw, don’t be too hard on ’em, Tuggle. They’re new at it,” said a drawling voice from the doorway. “And at least we qualified. That wasn’t exactly a given, you know.”

Nobody gasped, but nobody breathed, either. Badger and Sark were standing in the doorway, looking grim. Taran let out a stifled sob and buried her face in her arms.

“At least he isn’t wearing the firesuit!” hissed Reve, elbowing her in the ribs.

He didn’t have on sunglasses either, but he still managed to look intimidating to people who knew that his career and even his life had been in their hands—and that they had let him down. The fact that he was being nice about it only made it worse. Taran reached for another tissue.

“Come in, Badger,” said Tuggle, indicating the empty chair beside her. “You, too, Sark. I’m sure the team would welcome your comments on their performance yesterday.”

“Yeah,” Reve muttered under her breath. “Nice to know he isn’t on his yacht today, or out earning another ten grand signing his name somewhere.”

“I’m not sure how you want me to write this up,” said Sark.

Tuggle shook her head. “Smoke and mirrors,” she said.

Sark nodded. “
We are a new team, and we view this first race as a learning experience. We value Badger Jenkins’s expertise, and we are grateful for his patience as we learn the something-something of motorsports.
Like that?”

Tuggle sighed. “Whatever. Just don’t say I said we sucked…. But we did.”

“Well, at least we didn’t come in last,” said Jeanne, the tire carrier.

“Only because Badger had the good fortune not to wreck the car, and because Jay Bird and Julie’s engine didn’t give out during the race,” said Tuggle. “But I’m sure you all know that apart from the DNFs who left the race in wrecks or with mechanical problems…apart from them…we were dead last, y’all. I assure you that you gave a lot of chauvinistic owners and sports writers a great deal of satisfaction with your performance.”

That remark even silenced Reve, whose primary goal was proving that women could perform as well as men in motorsports.

Badger had poured himself a cup of coffee, and now he sat down next to the crew chief, looking gaunt and weary. Supposedly, drivers lose about ten pounds in a three-hour race. Looking at Badger this morning, no one doubted it.

“We’ll look at the video footage in a minute,” said Tuggle. “But before we do that, do you want to start us off, Badger?”

He stared into his coffee and sighed. “I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

“Well, we can start with you then. Your speeding down pit road cost us a lap. And this may be the crew’s first real race, but it sure as hell wasn’t yours, boy. We could have used that lap.”

Taran raised a tear-stained face, ready to defend her hero. “It wouldn’t have helped,” she said in a hoarse voice that trembled on the breaking point. “I got the catch can stuck in the gas tank, and his having to come back to get that removed cost us a lap, anyhow.” She looked at Badger pleadingly. “I’m really, really sorry.”

The others exchanged uncomfortable looks, and Badger closed his eyes and held the coffee cup against his forehead. “It’s okay,” he said softly. “You didn’t mean to. And it’s not like any of the rest of us were perfect.”

Taran wiped her eyes. “But I let you down.”

Badger gave her a rueful smile. “You can’t take all the credit for this defeat. We’re a team. We all pitched in to make this fiasco.”

The rest of the team nodded, but nobody would look at him.

“I left off a lug nut,” said Cindy. “I had them taped to my arm, like you showed us, Tuggle, and one must have come off that time.”

“And one time I let the jack slip during the tire change,” said Cass Jordan. “I guess I had it at the wrong angle or something. Maybe I was more nervous than I thought I was.”

Tuggle nodded. “And the rest of you did not make any howling blunders, but you were slow. I don’t expect you to make a thirteen-second pit stop right off the bat, but I gotta tell you, you were putting me in mind of the days when drivers used to take five-minute coffee breaks on pit stops.”

“When was that?” asked Sigur.

“Early fifties,” said Kathy. “Leonard Wood of the Wood Brothers was the man who figured out that you didn’t have to have a faster car if your team shortened the pit stop. And that’s what we need to do, folks—shorten the damn pit stop.”

“How?” said Reve.

“We stop screwing up,” said Badger.

“Practice,” said Tuggle. “We practice the moves until you can do them in your sleep. Until crowds and noise and cars whooshing by don’t faze you anymore. We’ll practice this afternoon after we finish here.” She turned to Badger. “And as for you, boy, you need to remember that you are not calling the shots on this team. I am. You can give me your opinion, Badger, but the final call will be mine. Understood?”

“I know, Tuggle,” said Badger. “But remember I’m not driving a school bus out there. My instinct is what makes me a Cup driver.”

“I hear you,” said Tuggle. “But either you start trusting me to plan the race strategy or you can take all the blame when we lose.”

“Can we see the film now?” asked Sigur. “I’d like to know how we looked out there.”

The others nodded in agreement.

Tuggle scowled. “Well, you weren’t the Magnificent Seven, I’ll tell you that. Roll the tape.”

“B
adger has to do well in qualifying. At this track there’s almost no way to make your way to the front if you start too far back.”

“I’ll keep my fingers crossed,” said Taran.

“You’ll do more than that,” said Julie Carmichael. “You’re going to help me make sure he does well.”

“Why me?”

Julie smiled. “Because you never go home. Everybody else went back to the hotel an hour ago, and here you are still in the garage area tapping away on your laptop. Jay Bird is back in Charlotte with strep throat, and Rosalind is off doing an interview from some German journalist about being an MIT grad working in NASCAR. I need help right now, and you are the only person available.”

“Okay,” said Taran. “Help you how?”

Julie dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “We’re going to soak the tires.”

Taran blinked. “Are they dirty?”

Julie groaned. “You’re almost as dumb as a wheel man, Taran. Don’t you know what tire-soaking is?”

Taran shook her head. “No, but back at Atlanta that nice Mr. Baldwin in the next pit stall said that if I ever had any questions—”

“
No!
Don’t mention this to a soul. Especially not to anybody outside this team.” Julie dropped her voice to a whisper again. “It’s not strictly legal.”

The technical side of Team Vagenya had decided that the time had come for desperate measures. The race after Daytona had been at the California Speedway, a two-mile track, located in Fontana, California, about forty miles east of Los Angeles. They had not expected to do well at Fontana, and they hadn’t.

As Tuggle explained to Team Vagenya’s owners, “The California Speedway is an easy drive. The banking is never more than fourteen degrees; the track is a simple oval with no trick turns, and the track surface is excellent.”

“Well, that sounds good,” said Christine.

“Good?” said Tuggle. “It’s a nightmare. For us, anyhow. It means all the drivers can perform well there, so Badger’s ability gains us nothing. Remember that races get won by fractions of a second, and this race will be won by one of the big teams with fancy engineering and super equipment.”

“Not us?”

“One of the Roush drivers,” said Tuggle. “Bet on it. And it’ll be a dull race, too,” she added.

After the race, as they watched Jack Roush, aka the Man in the Hat, congratulating his winning driver in Victory Lane, one of the Team Vagenya owners was heard to remark that one might make more money betting Grace Tuggle’s predictions than they’d make actually owning a Cup car.

The most memorable thing about Fontana as far as Taran was concerned was its proximity to Hollywood. Taran was stricken when she spotted the slinky blonde leaning against the 86, with her arms around Badger. “Who is that walking Badger to the car this time?” she asked indignantly.

“Malibu Barbie,” said Reve.

The next race—Las Vegas—wasn’t much better. One of the rookie drivers got loose on a turn and caused a wreck that triggered a chain of collisions, and the 86 car was damaged beyond repair. Badger sat out the last few dozen laps and finished thirty-eighth. Everybody was philosophical about that one. Wrecks happen. You just move on.

With the two winter west-of-the-Mississippi races out of the way, the Cup teams returned to the Southeast, heartland of stock car racing, for the Golden Corral 500, a mid-March battle at the Atlanta Motor Speedway. A fast, banked track located only a hundred miles from Badger’s north Georgia hometown—everyone hoped that this would be the race that changed their luck.

“After all,” said Taran, “Badger is a native Georgian. This will give the hometown crowd someone to root for.”

“You mean, other than Bill Elliott?” said Kathy.

Even Taran had to admit that Awesome Bill, the 1985 Cup champion, who had twice won the Daytona 500, would outrank Badger as the favorite son at Atlanta, but to the folks back home in Marengo and to Taran, he would always be in first place. At least in Cup racing, she amended. Whenever she managed to get away from her duties with the team, Taran had been going to the local speedways to watch Tony Lafon race in Late Model Stocks. He hadn’t won yet, but he seemed glad to have someone he knew to cheer him on, and someone to have dinner with after the race. She’d heard people at the track say that he was quite a talented wheel man, and Taran supposed that it was his driving experience that made him such an effective spotter for Badger in the Cup races.

Badger had arranged to get team pit passes for a couple of people from Marengo, and he had asked Laraine to walk him to the car before the race. Even Taran approved of that. Laraine had stopped by to visit with the pit crew that morning, bringing a basket of muffins from the diner and wishing them all luck. Badger had come with her, looking more relaxed and happy than they had ever seen him on a speedway.

“Well, she doesn’t look like a Barbie doll,” said Sigur. “Or like a driver’s wife.”

“Once upon a time,” said Kathy. “Back before this sport was a glamourfest. My mom was a pretty lady, but she wasn’t a centerfold. Laraine puts me in mind of her.”

“I think she looks fine,” said Jeanne. “To me she and Badger look like family. Same dark, sad eyes.”

“I expect they are kin,” said Kathy. “Badger says that in Marengo every home football game is a family reunion. She is closer to his age than the beauty queen was, but she looks classy in that watery blue silk dress, and she really does seem to care about him. Not about the publicity and meeting movie stars, but just about
him.
She’s okay.”

“
Almost
okay,” said a scowling Reve. “When she was passing around the muffins, I went up to Badger and told him how much we all liked her, and he said,
‘Yeah, she’s a good girl. Too bad she doesn’t look like a model’.”

“And did you slug him?” asked Sigur.

Reve shook her head. “Wouldn’t be a fair fight. I outweigh him. Besides, we need him to drive the car.”

Badger had not qualified well at Atlanta. The team had drawn one of the last slots for qualifying, which meant that he went out on a hot track—generally not the way to nail a fast time. On the cool track not yet warmed up by the afternoon sun, earlier qualifiers were able to rack up higher speeds. So, lagging behind the leaders by only a few tenths of a second, Badger had started the Sunday race two-thirds of the way back in the pack—hardly an auspicious beginning, but winning was still possible, even from that far back. When the race began, Badger held his own, steadily working his way through the stream of cars until he was running tenth.

It was still early in the race, but those in the pit crew who were new to the sport began to cheer loudly, and it was obvious that they were beginning to envision themselves in the televised jubilation of Victory Lane.

“There’s many a slip between the lip and the Cup,” muttered Kathy Erwin, but no one paid her any mind.

She was right, though. Nothing drastic happened, really. Badger was tapped in one minor incident, but thanks to the resulting caution, he did not even lose a lap. He never blew a tire or developed engine trouble. He simply struggled to hold his place in the slipstream, losing a fraction of a second with every succeeding lap. Every so often his unmistakable drawl would come on, telling Tuggle that the car was tight on the turns. Then they would wait for a caution so that they could use the pit stop to make adjustments. It didn’t help, though. He just kept losing ground, a fraction of a second at a time.

It was one of those races that proceed without any particular drama, and unless you happen to end up in Victory Lane, it is not a memorable experience. They worked every pit stop they got to adjust the car so that it would handle better, but at best they were playing a game of catch-up, and in the end, everybody was relieved to see the race end, so that they could stop trying to fight the inevitable.

“It wasn’t our fault this time,” said Sigur, as they watched the red and white car take the checkered flag.

Kathy Erwin sighed. “Nobody cares whose fault it was. We all lost the race.”

Badger’s Din

The Lights Went out in Georgia

FastDrawl:
Well, folks, I had high hopes for our man Badger at AMS when he was running up front, but this was a battle with long odds. I make it 52 to 1. Forty-two other Cup drivers, plus the 86 team’s crew chief and pit crew all working to thwart Badger while he is trying his damnedest to win that race. That car handled like a cement mixer in a mudslide, and they never did get the setup right. It pained me to watch.

Lady Badger:
They’re getting better, though. At least he got up to tenth place, and he didn’t wreck. I wish they’d interview him on camera, though.

Bonneville Bill:
Hold the syrup, Lady Badger. Nobody wants to hear about Badger’s beautiful eyes. I heard him on the radio after the race. He said: “The car was just way too tight all night long. I got into someone during one of the incidents on the track and it knocked out the toe, and we had to make multiple stops to try and correct it, which cost us valuable time and track position. The Vagenya racing team worked hard all night to try and get the car dialed in, but it just never came. We were lucky that we were able to finish the race and finish as high as we did, especially at Atlanta.”

Georgia Peach:
Could somebody translate that, please? I’m a new fan.

Mellivora:
Dialed in
means “correctly adjusted.” A dialed-in car is the ideal for racing.
Toe
refers to the direction in which the wheels are pointing.
Toe out
means it pulls to the right.
Toe in
means it pulls to the left. It’s an adjustment made on regular cars, too. Sometimes, one side is in or out, making the car just plain hard to drive. The team did their best, like Badger said, but when he got caught up in that little wreck, it knocked everything out of whack.

FastDrawl:
This isn’t NASCAR Tech, Mellivora! The new fish can look up that information and stop wasting our time. Hey—I’m car shopping, folks. Does anybody know what kind of car Badger drives—off the track, I mean?

“Mellivora” typed in “A silver Chrysler Crossfire with a Georgia license plate that reads ‘Badger 1’.” But then she stared at the line for a moment, and pushed DELETE instead of SEND before logging off.

Now they were in Bristol, on the heels of a meeting with the team owner, who had not been happy with Team Vagenya’s performance so far. After Atlanta, Tuggle had been summoned to the office of Christine Berenson for a discussion on the team’s progress, or lack thereof. Tuggle had been expecting to be called on the carpet. Because the owners were new to racing, and because they were corporate types, they thought that throwing twenty million dollars at a problem would provide instant results.

“Surely after four races we ought to be doing better than this,” said Christine, in a plaintive voice belied by her stern expression.

When she had entered the office, Tuggle had noticed that the framed posters on the reception room walls now showed pictures of the 86 car itself, rather than portrait shots of Badger in his firesuit.

“New teams take a lot of adjusting,” said Tuggle. “There are a thousand things that can go wrong mechanically in every race. There’s team skills. Communication with the wheel man. Meshing styles.”

Christine heard what she wanted to hear. “Are you unhappy with Badger’s performance?”

“No,” said Tuggle, “he’s a natural. Maybe we have to push him a little bit on practices and appearances, but he’s a good man. He can’t win without good equipment and a precision pit crew, though. Nobody could have done better.”

“Because if you
are
dissatisfied with his work, we can certainly explore other options,” said Christine. “Vagenya is quite disappointed that he did not go along with their kissing booth idea for the pharmaceutical conference. He needs to swallow his pride and be more cooperative.”

“He’s a race car driver,” said Tuggle. “His pride is his roll cage—nothing makes a dent in it.”

“He may have more pride than he can afford,” said Christine.

“I wouldn’t trade his pride for all the diligence in the world,” said Tuggle. “He wants to win more than you do. He’ll try to put that car into openings you wouldn’t throw a tin can through, because he wants it so bad. Every time we don’t give him a good enough car, I feel like we let him down. But if you give him half a chance, he will win or die trying.”

“Well, if his performance does not improve, we may take advice elsewhere on measures that might help.”

The discussion had not been productive. Owner and crew chief had remained civil to each other, but there had been no meeting of the minds. Tuggle went back and told the team engineers that if they had any miracles lying around, now would be a good time to use one. Julie, Jay Bird, and Rosalind talked it over, and they decided that, with very little to lose, they might as well soak the tires and see if they could get the pole at Bristol, where winning from behind mostly didn’t happen. Meanwhile, they would try to come up with other gray-area technical refinements that might get past inspection.

Julie held up a metal canister of the sort that might contain turpentine or floor refinisher.

Taran frowned. “If it’s illegal, then how did you get it?”

“I bought it at an auto store. Cost me fifty bucks a gallon, too. We should be able to do enough tires for the whole weekend with two gallons of this stuff.”

“But if it’s not legal—”

“Okay, it’s not illegal per se,” said Julie. “In go-cart racing you’re allowed to soak the tires. That’s why you can buy this stuff over the counter—as long as nobody finds out what you’re doing with it.”