Once Around the Track

“I’m sorry, Ms. Tuggle…did you say dwarf?”

She waved away the question. “Figure of speech is all. He ain’t that little-for a driver, that is. Mark Martin could have about driven a die-cast. I reckon Badger and I would stand nose to nose. ’Course I outweigh him,” she finished cheerfully, ignoring the shudders of the scrawnier investors. She imagined them later pushing away untouched plates of salad. “But you were asking about temperament, weren’t you?”

Several of the women nodded, perhaps not trusting themselves to speak.

“Well, it will mostly depend on how well they do their jobs, doncha know. A driver would be happy with a tribe of chimpanzees if they could get him out of the pit on four new tires in twelve seconds. You take much over thirteen, though, and a band of angels wouldn’t satisfy him. So get me good people and don’t worry about whether their booties were pink or blue.”

There was another awkward silence while the investors exchanged more significant looks. Must be telepaths, thought Tuggle. Finally, Christine said, “Find you good people? But surely that is your task, not ours?”

“Well, you’re the bosses,” said Tuggle amiably. “Like you said before, most teams nowadays have a crew manager and a crew chief. It’s the manager who hires the personnel, and the crew chief who makes sure they function smoothly as a team.” Noting the dismay on the women’s faces, Tuggle added kindly, “Of course, there’s no law that says you have to have a team manager. They never bothered with such things back in the day. Why, Bill Elliott’s crew was mostly his family, and he certainly did all right for himself, so I guess if you want me to handle both jobs, I can do it about as well as anybody. Hire the crew. Hmmm.”

Handling both jobs would be more work, but it also meant more independence-one less person to answer to. Grace Tuggle prized independence above rubies, and she was even willing to work harder to maintain her autonomy.

“You’ll need to pay me some more money to do both jobs,” she said.

No point in being a damn fool about it, she reasoned. “I’ll do both jobs for $950,000.” That way she didn’t have frighten them with the word “million,” but crew chiefs didn’t come cheap. To sweeten the deal, she added, “I can save us some money on the pit crew by hiring people who can do double duty.”

“I thought we had to have seven over-the-wall crewmen.”

Tuggle nodded. “Yes, but that’s for race day. What’s the point of hiring people who only work a day or two a week? If we get enough applicants for the jobs, we can hire the ones who also have another skill we can use. Say, a mechanic or a computer person, or someone who can also drive the hauler. That way we’ll have fewer workers on the payroll and a more efficient team. We also need a tire specialist-well, we can probably train a likely candidate, within reason.”

“What’s a tire specialist?”

Tuggle swallowed a sign of exasperation. “That’s the person who inflates the tires. Well, first we let the air out of the tire and refill it with nitrogen.”

They stared at her in puzzled fascination. “With nitrogen? Why on earth-?”

“I don’t know, but everybody does it. It’s not illegal. Trust me, okay? And when you hire an engineer, ask him- her-why NASCAR teams prefer to run on nitrogen-inflated tires. And as for tire- soaking-”

“What’s that?” asked Christine.

That was illegal. Most everybody did that, too, but she probably ought not to discuss it with people new to the sport. Tuggle took a long, fortifying breath; then she said, “Well, you want to wash the tires before the race to make sure they haven’t picked up any bits of debris that could cause a blowout.” It seemed plausible enough, as lies went, and no one questioned her explanation.

“So, you’re saying that we can streamline the team and save money on salaries by hiring people who can do two jobs. But wouldn’t such experts cost more?”

“Well, you have to have them anyhow. Shop jobs may take skill and experience, but anyone reasonably spry and willing can be taught to serve on the pit crew. We’ll just hire the people who are willing to do both jobs at a salary we can afford to pay. That suit you?”

They nodded, looking relieved that she was looking out for the team’s budget. It had been quite a shock to most of them to learn how expensive Cup racing was. A million dollars for a crew chief? More than twenty-five thousand dollars per race for tires? No wonder sponsorships were so expensive.

“What about equipment?” said Tuggle. “I take it we’re not building the cars from scratch?”

“I got some advice about that,” Christine Berenson said. “We’re going to buy the chassis from…Oh, what is his name? I have it written down somewhere…”

“Never mind,” said Tuggle. Four guesses would have told her what the name was, but it really didn’t matter at this point. “And you’re getting the engines from Hendrick?”

“However did you know? I believe that was the name.”

Tuggle nodded. It had been an educated guess. Hendrick was a five-car race team with about 500 shop dogs at their disposal. If anybody could spare adequate engines for a price, it would be them.

“All right,” said Tuggle, “so we buy the components and get our people to overhaul them. That ought to work.” It won’t win you a championship, she was thinking, but with reasonable skill on the engineers’ part and a halfway decent wheel man, it ought to keep you in the game.

“And you’ve had your application cleared by NASCAR? Got assigned a number and all?”

They nodded. “Apparently you can’t pick your own number,” one of them remarked.

“Well, no. Teams are assigned numbers. Some of them not in use are still already taken,” Tuggle explained.

“We wanted number 7.”

“Taken,” said Tuggle. “Both 7 and 07; both. Why did you want it in particular?”

They glanced at each other uneasily. “Well, there’s a feminine product, Monistat 7 for yeast infections, and we thought-”

Tuggle’s eyes glazed over as she tried to picture Badger Jenkins as the spokesperson for a yeast infection product. He’d have to carry pepper spray to the drivers’ meetings. Thank God that number was taken by Robby Gordon, who already had a sponsor. She’d have paid money to see Robby Gordon’s face if the yeast infection people had approached him about sponsoring his car.

“Twenty-eight would have been a good number, too!” said Diane Hodges, the former Miss Texas. “I think that pharmaceutical company with the birth control pill would have come on board if we could have got that number.”

“That was Davey Allison’s number,” said Tuggle. “And Ernie Irvan’s.” Both Daytona 500 winners: one of them dead and the other so badly injured he’d never race again. No, you wouldn’t see the number 28 back on a NASCAR track anytime soon, and she was glad of it. She wouldn’t want to see anything disrespectful done with that number. She didn’t want to jinx Badger, either. Repressing a shudder, she said, “So what’s our number?”

Christine Berenson said, “NASCAR assigned us the number 86.”

Tuggle tried not to wince. Not an auspicious number in Cup racing. It had been used fewer than a dozen times in the past thirty years, and never with any notable success.

“Isn’t 86 a slang term for terminating something?” asked one of the women.

“Maybe they want to eighty-six a woman’s team,” another one said.

“It’s just a number,” said Christine, with the weary patience of one who has had this discussion often. “Randomly assigned, I expect.”

“It’s okay,” said Tuggle. “It’s as good a number as any. Better than some. At least it’s not a number whose past would overshadow you, like…oh…22.” 22. Now that was a number to conjure with. The legendary Fireball Roberts, who had died after a fiery wreck at Charlotte in the sixties; country singer Marty Robbins, who used to try to come in second because he didn’t need the prize money; the respected and popular modern drivers Ricky Rudd and Bobby Labonte; and Daytona 500 winners Bobby Allison and Ward Burton. They all had driven the 22. She’d hate to have to compete with that reputation in her first season. At least it wouldn’t take much to eighty-six the previous reputation of number 86. She said, “So if you’ve got enough money to buy engines and chassis, you must have a primary sponsor lined up.”

“We do. A pharmaceutical company has developed a pill for women-you know, like Viagra. It’s supposed to-”