Relying on good fortune to come across next big thing
In the final analysis, Denny Hamlin owes his breakthrough into NASCAR's national divisions not to ability but sheer good luck. Certainly, his talent allowed him to capitalize when the opportunity arose. But had Joe Gibbs Racing not made a call to his late-model team owner about building a few cars for their diversity program, and had Hamlin not turned some heads shaking those cars down, the four-time Cup Series race winner might still be earning $10 an hour welding trailer hitches at his father's shop in Chesterfield, Va.
All too often, that's the way it seems to happen in NASCAR. Major-league baseball teams employ a vast network of scouts who scrutinize players from high schools to Latin America. NFL teams seem to have tape on every college player capable of running a 40-yard dash in 4 seconds or less. NBA executives study college games and international leagues. In those sports, scouting is as thorough as an FBI background check. If you're good, somebody is going to notice. A prospect who comes out of nowhere is an anomaly.
But in NASCAR, it's the status quo. Hamlin broke through only after Gibbs contacted Jim Dean, his late-model team owner, about building cars. Greg Biffle broke through only after the late Benny Parsons recommended him to Jack Roush. Clint Bowyer broke through only after the businessman sponsoring his ARCA car asked friend Richard Childress to keep an eye on the kid. Matt Kenseth broke through only after his late-model crew chief, Robbie Reiser, made the gutsy move to take his program to the now-Nationwide Series circuit. Jeff Gordon broke through only after he switched to stock cars, went to driving schools, and impressed Bill Davis at a tire test.
It goes on and on and on. In a technology-driven sport, talent is often mined through the most unscientific of methods -- word-of-mouth and fate. There is no "scouting" as the practice is employed in baseball and football, whereby people with an eye for natural ability are sent out into the hinterlands to find prospects with the tools to make it big.
Occasionally a kid like Joey Logano or Reed Sorenson sets the world on fire at an early age, and the big teams take notice. But typically, drivers break through in one of three ways -- they bring money or a sponsor to the table; they know somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody; or they're strictly the beneficiary of good fortune.
"Roush has those gong shows, and you have to have done something to get invited. But it basically comes down to fate," said Dean, who runs a successful late-model program for which Hamlin once competed. "I mean, Denny's situation is amazing. If Mark McFarland doesn't win the [NASCAR Weekly Racing Series] national championship in 2003, [Gibbs] probably never calls us, they never meet Denny, and Denny is welding trailer hitches at Chesterfield Trailer and Hitch for $10 an hour. He would still be there. It's just a fluke. He had the right timing."
In a sport where millions are spent to make cars go fast, it's staggering that so often, finding the right driver to pilot those cars is left to the whims of fate. Yes, Hendrick Motorsports seemed to unearth a diamond in Jimmie Johnson, but the two-time defending Cup champion helped himself by putting together a business proposal and learning how to court sponsors. It may seem in some cases that the team is doing the heavy lifting of driver development, but more often than not the prospect met somebody or did something to help smooth the path of advancement. Scouting, as baseball teams readily will attest, is expensive and time consuming. Big NASCAR teams don't have anyone whose job it is to comb local tracks and pore over Saturday night short-track footage in search of the next big thing. But what if they did? What if Hendrick or Gibbs hired a former driver or crew chief and turned him into a scout, sending him each weekend to places like Hickory and Greenville-Pickens and South Boston with the job of eyeballing drivers who might be able to make it to the next level? Why not use the same tactics that have proven so successful in other sports, rather than relying on luck? Yes, it would cost money. But somebody like Hamlin or Matt Kenseth might have been discovered years earlier. And somebody like Philip Morris, a 42-year-old who won everything at the short-track level but never had a real chance on the national circuits, might not have been overlooked.
"He can go win in a damn [Nationwide] car right now," Dean said. "He can flat drive. He's smart. He was a good driver back in the day. I think his name killed him. When it was Winston Cup, they wanted nothing to do with a guy named Philip Morris. That guy, he's unquestionably one of the best there is. That guy can get up on the wheel and flat drive it. You can put that guy in anything and he'll go win for you, if you give him a good car. He just never got a shot. Now he's 40 years old and nobody would put him in a car. But there's still nobody better out there in late models. There's nobody better."
With executives from teams like the Boston Red Sox and the Arizona Diamondbacks now involved in NASCAR, you'd think a more sophisticated approach to scouting would be inevitable. And it might prove handy, given the current state of driver development. The two big trends of the last decade -- hiring U.S. Auto Club drivers and ex-open wheelers -- are coming to an end. The USAC pipeline hasn't produced anyone notable since Kasey Kahne, and the struggles of a few former Indianapolis 500 champions has made everyone realize the transition isn't as seamless as Juan Montoya made it appear. Now the pendulum is swinging back to late-model drivers like Hamlin and Bowyer. And promising late-model drivers, because of the volume and the often stark differences in local track competition, can be much more difficult to find.
But given the skills needed to successfully drive the new car, Dean believes teams need to find them. "Guys who are good on short tracks are the guys who are going to be good in these cars," he said. "It's a matter of being more of an athlete, having more of a seat-of-the-pants feel to your car. You have to be able to give more back to your crew, but there's a lot less adjustment now. So it's up to the driver more, and I think that falls right in a late-model guy's lap. Because the skills that they learn exceed what an open-wheel asphalt guy learns. They have to learn more in the seat than the late-model guys do."
The top four drivers in the Sprint Cup point standings -- Jeff Burton, Kyle Busch, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Hamlin -- all came out of late-model backgrounds. So did sixth-place Kevin Harvick, seventh-place Bowyer and eighth-place Biffle. So did legends like David Pearson and Cale Yarborough and Dale Earnhardt. Fads like open-wheelers and motorcycle riders come and go, but the late-model drivers remain the cornerstone of driver development in NASCAR. Recognizing that is the easy part. Actually finding the next Hamlin or Biffle is considerably more difficult, especially in a system that relies so heavily on chance.
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