Sat, 12 Oct 2002, 04:11 PM Psychologically Speaking…

By Bob Frey Photo copyright 2002 Auto Imagery, Inc.

Anthony Bertozzi

One of the many things that I love about my job is the opportunity that I get to talk with the racers. After a win, I get to celebrate with them and after a loss, I get to console them. As you might expect, this gives me a chance to see the racers at some of their highest moments as well as some of their lowest. In between, I often get to talk with them about their year, their chances for success and their long range goals. The attitude they have, their mental approach to the races and the way they choose to go about their selected tasks are as varied as the paint jobs on their cars. Last year I got to watch Don Stratton go to Pomona where he knew that he needed to win the event to claim the world championship, and he did just that. His mental approach and preparation for that weekend had to be amazing and he handled the pressure as well as anyone whom I’ve ever seen. There probably weren’t many racers who experienced that kind of an emotional high in quite some time. Conversely, this past weekend, while I was in Noble, Oklahoma for the Division 4 point’s race, I spent a lot of time talking to Dan Fletcher who had just finished competing at the Division 2 event in Darlington, South Carolina. Dan, the former world champ, had been beaten in the semi-finals by Grace Howell, Bill’s daughter, and Dan was anxiously waiting to hear how Anthony Bertozzi was doing in Noble. Anthony, one of the great sportsman racers in the country, was trying to win the D-4 race and, in the process, lock up the Super Stock Lucas Oil world title. Through the miracle of modern science (a cell phone) I was able to give Dan the results, literally, as they happened. "Well, Dan, Anthony wins another round when his opponent fouled out. Well, Dan, Anthony wins another round as….," well, you get the idea. And the further Anthony went in the eliminations, and the more round wins that I reported on, the more sullen Dan got, because if Anthony were to win the race, it would close Dan out from any chance at the championship. I’m sure, by now, you know how that ended up.

Fletcher vs. Biondo

The reason that I bring this up is because the whole scenario started me thinking about the sportsman racers and their quest for the championship. If you’ve followed the sport for any time at all you certainly know that it can be time consuming and costly, but it can also be very rewarding. I wondered about the thought process they go through and just what is the most important thing to a sportsman racer anyway? Win the championship? Win a race? Win some money? Have fun? What? And why was Dan so forlorn when he realized that he was not going to be able to defend his Super Stock world title? Well, between last weekend and today, I’ve had a chance to talk with Dan, Anthony and several other top rated sportsman racers about the philosophy of winning an NHRA title, and the discussions were very enjoyable and informative.

To begin with, I stopped in the staging lanes in Noble last week to congratulate Anthony and his wife, Malinda, on their great season. Now for those of you who don’t know, Anthony’s wife also races, in fact, she is the only one in their family who has won an NHRA national event (Gainesville, 2001 in Super Comp). Anthony has won several IHRA national events and a whole pile of big money bracket races, but the one thing that has eluded him is an NHRA national event victory. As he clutched his Division 4 trophy in his hands at Noble, he looked at me and said, "Now I’ve got to win one of the big ones," (referring to the larger, more prestigious national event trophies). I found that interesting, since here is a guy who is going to win the season-long championship, a goal most drivers would love to achieve, and the first thing that he thought about was the fact that he hasn’t won an NHRA race. Still, I congratulated him again and told him that he has had a wonderful year and that beating the likes of a Dan Fletcher and Peter Biondo, among others, is pretty impressive. As I walked away, I knew that Anthony still wanted more.

Dan Fletcher

When I got to Dallas today, I ran into Dan Fletcher in the staging lanes and I asked him a question that had been bugging me since I hung up the cell phone four days ago, and that is, what was it that upset him the most about not winning the championship? Was it the money that he lost, the fact that he wouldn’t defend his crown or what? Knowing that Dan is a deep thinker (and I mean that in a very flattering way), I knew I would get a very interesting answer. "It’s not the money, Bob, because I can win that much by winning the race this weekend. And it’s not the fact that I won’t be the champ, because I’ve done that before. But what bugs me the most is that I had a real shot at winning it and I let it get away. That bothers me!" Dan then went on to re-run his semi-final loss to Grace the week before in amazing detail. He did this off the line and she did that. He had her covered at the end of the track and he knew it, but he wanted to be safe so he backed up a bit and gave up the stripe. "It’s like coming from 20 points back in the last quarter of a football game and then missing the game winning field goal as time runs out," he said. "You just want to beat yourself up."

As we stood in the lanes and talked, a couple of pretty good racers, David Rampy and Gary Stinnett, came up and joined in the discussion. David, who has 45 national event wins and has won the world championship in three different classes (Super Comp ’95, Comp ’90 & SG in ’89), said that he races now for the money. "I’ve won the championship, and I’ve won national events and this is what I do for a living," he said. "Take nothing away from the guys who run for the championships, but that’s not my major goal right now." David went on to say that, if he should win another title, (and he will), that’s fine, but his point was that different racers have different priorities at different points in their careers, and his right now is to win rounds and win money. Gary Stinnett, also extremely successful, (1998 Super Comp world champ and one of the few guys to have "doubled up," that is, win two classes at the same national event), said that it costs a lot to run for the championship, and that once you’ve done that, you move on and set other goals. Both guys, David and Gary, are among the most respected drivers in the sport because they’ve done it all, and I always enjoy talking with them and listening to their take on the sport. As a fan, I also enjoy watching them race. It was very interesting to listen to them talk about winning the championship.

As the weekend goes on, Anthony Bertozzi will have another chance to win his first NHRA national event, and with the schedule having been changed because of the weather, we’ve already run three rounds of eliminations and he’s in the quarter-finals, so maybe this will be his weekend. If it is, that’s great. If not, Anthony Bertozzi will still go on to win the Super Stock world championship and lots of NHRA national events, and he’ll get the admiration of racers like David Rampy, Gary Stinnett, and, assuredly, Dan Fletcher. Even though these guys have different philosophies about why they race, they all have one thing in common, a burning desire to win and to be the best at what they do. I’d say they’ve all already achieved those goals.

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