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Diversity in NASCAR
Brad Daugherty will become a fulltime owner of a Sprint Cup team next season
AP Photo
Marcos Ambros celebrates his win at Watkins Glen on Saturday.
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Published: August 12, 2008
Brad Daugherty, already the most visible black man in NASCAR, is becoming a fulltime Sprint Cup team owner.
Daugherty has been an on-and-off team owner for the past 20 years at the sport's Class AAA level, and is a TV analyst for ESPN's Sprint Cup coverage.
His move should be a big step forward for NASCAR's diversity program.
Striking while the iron is hot, Daugherty, a Black Mountain native and formerNorth Carolina basketball star, has bought into partnership with Tad Geschickter, a former advertising exec who has been running a Nationwide team the past few years. The two will be campaigning Marcos Ambrose on the Sprint Cup tour next season full-time, Daugherty said.
Daugherty says he also plans to run two NASCAR Late Model teams "with drivers of color."
Geschickter's team works out of the same shop with the Wood brothers, and they were partners for two years until splitting earlier this season. But they are still obviously close -- Ambrose won Saturday's Nationwide race at Watkins Glen in the Daugherty-Geschickter Ford, and Ambrose nearly won Sunday's Sprint Cup race at the Glen in the Woods' Ford, finishing third.
Saturday's win was a breakthrough for Ambrose, an Australian who has moved to North Carolina to try to make his mark in NASCAR.
David Hyder, the Woods' new crew chief,has been amazed by Ambrose.
"He could be the very best road-course driver I've ever seen," Hyder said. "It all worked out. We came out third, so I'm happy and tickled to death."
Ambrose started Sunday's race at the rear of the field.
"I kept watching his lap times, and they didn't fall off in a long run like a lot of the cars did," Hyder said. "He stayed consistent and kept the car under him all day. We looked at the tires the first stop, and at that point I figured it was going to be a pretty good day if everything fell our way from there on out.
"Anytime you can finish in the top five in this series, you're doing your job. And certainly it'll help us in the future."
Ambrose's work on NASCAR's ovals is still iffy, though.
Eddie Wood, the team owner, has been struggling to right his team for some time now, and what happens next remains to be seen.
"We needed this so badly," Wood said. "I think this is our first top five in a long time."
Recently adding Hyder, who worked with the Woods a few years ago, "has just made a world of difference," Wood said. "We ran well last week at Pocono. And we had a good car at Sonoma, too. Sometimes things will fall into place for you.
Ambrose himself is just riding the wave, which has been very up and very down.
"We came up out of the truck so well we were too scared to change anything, and the car was flopping around a lot during the race, though it had a lot of grip," Ambrose said of Sunday. "It was just real tough to drive. So I just tried to stay clean as best I could there and pass cars cleanly and just pick away at it.
"I don't want to be labeled a road racer. And by the way, I am 10th in the Nationwide series standings.
Ambrose said he could have pressed the issue with Tony Stewart at the end, when he was chasing Stewart for second, behind eventual winner Kyle Busch.
But Ambrose said he needs to earn respect, too: "I just really want to be respectful to the guys who are doing it week-in and week-out. It's not my place to stick my nose in and ruin someone else's day that's fighting for the Chase.
"If I was going to pass Tony, I was going to do it clean. I really thought about it. I wanted to have a crack at it. But I just wasn't close enough.
"The difference between second and third was small ... compared to the negative it would have been had I taken out one of these Chase guys and gotten a bad reputation."
Ambrose conceded that NASCAR is a tough sport to break into and to stay in as long as the Woods have.
"I hope they can turn it around," he said. "It's just great I can give them a bit of a lift."
Ambrose has made sacrifices of his own in pursuit of a ride.
"I've dragged my family a long way away from friends and family down-home," he said. "It's just a lot of commitment. But when you have a weekend like this it validates the choices I've made.
"I've gone down this road before, and races come and go -- and you've got to stay level. You don't want to get too high when the going's good, and you don't want to get too low when the going's bad."
■ Mike Mulhern can be reached at mmulhern@wsjournal.com.
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