A Driving Force : Blind Mechanic Paves Way for Top Racing Team

Greg Kauffman spends long hours in the garage of his Ventura home feeling out every nut and bolt on his red 1976 Chevrolet Camaro.

The rest of the car, an entry in the Street Stock division at Ventura Raceway, is given equal inspection by Kauffman, a slightly rotund man with traces of gray in his hair that give testimony to his 38 years.

Kauffman fastidiously disassembles the engine and reassembles it in preparation for the car’s next scheduled race. He has removed cylinder heads, changed spark plugs and replaced spark-plug wires. He has assembled the car’s rear end, pulling out and replacing the rear axle.

He has been flat on his back beneath the car, removing and replacing the transmission. He has changed oil and changed tires. Recently, Kauffman began to experiment with a spray gun, applying a coat of paint to the front fender as well as his left thumb. “I’ve done everything on this car,” Kauffman said. “I do just about all of the major mechanical work.”

All of which is not unusual for a conscientious stock-car mechanic. What is unusual is that Kauffman has never seen the rewards of his labor. Nor, for that matter, has he ever seen his car, his set of tools, or his wife of 17 years.

Kauffman is blind.

Some people find it difficult to believe. Kauffman, who wears dark glasses and carries a cane, which mostly just hangs from his hip pocket, moves swiftly about his garage and the pits at Ventura.

His tools are marked in Braille, but his hands are too calloused to distinguish one piece from another. He is quicker relying on a combination of knowledge, instinct and his ability to feel the shapes of objects.

And his love of getting his hands greasy.

“What would you like me to show you?” Kauffman, presiding over the open hood, asks graciously.

He already has demonstrated plenty to those who have watched in wonder.

Kauffman, of course, cannot drive. That duty is performed by Paul Moore of Oak View, and with much success. Moore is the Street Stock division points leader after having won the division title last year in his first season with Kauffman. Six main events remain when racing resumes at Ventura on Aug. 21.

“All I do is drive,” Moore said. “We’re winning because we have a good car and Greg prepares it well. He tinkers on it every night.”

Moore, 32, a six-year track veteran who posted Mini Stock championships in 1987 and 1988, has driven to three main-event victories this season, while Kauffman, wrenches at arm’s-length, has stood trackside.

“People are generally amazed by Greg,” Moore said. “A lot of people who come down think he’s half blind or he can see out of one eye. You work with him, and pretty soon you forget he’s blind. You’re working away and he’s walking around.”

Moore admits to handling some mechanical chores. Kauffman’s wife Maureen, and Gary Bickmore, his brother-in-law, also offer helping hands. All agree that Kauffman is chief mechanic.

“Greg does all of the work and comes up with all the ideas and what he wants to do,” Bickmore said. “It sounds stupid, but I mostly just hand him tools.”

In 1971, Kauffman’s dream of becoming a race-car driver was snuffed out like a candle. Hiking with a friend in Big Sur on the Central California coast, Kauffman, then 17, slid off a trail, tumbled down a hill and fell over a cliff. He remembers that he somehow managed to land on his feet while sustaining fractures from head to toe, the most serious in his head.

“I broke every bone in my face,” Kauffman said. “My nose, jaw, cheeks, everything. . . . my legs in three places. I was with a friend of mine. It’s been so long, I don’t even remember his name. Jim, I think it was.”

Kauffman spent the next 3 1/2 months in a hospital and the next year searching for a car. He has spent the past two decades adjusting to blindness and honing his mechanical skills.

“The only ambition I ever had in life was cars,” Kauffman said simply. “And they’re all basically the same. I feel like if your mind is put to it, you can do anything. Some people believe it, some people don’t.”

Some people, aware that Kauffman cannot see, nevertheless approach him in the pits with their mechanical problems. Since Ventura, a quarter-mile dirt oval, began featuring stock-car racing in 1986, Kauffman has been involved with a handful of drivers and taken a wrench to several cars.

Last season, Moore, already an acquaintance of Kauffman, agreed to be his driver.

“I hadn’t planned on racing because I was building a house and I didn’t have time,” Moore said. “Greg said all I’d have to do is drive. It’s worked out really well.”

Their first meeting offered Moore insight into Kauffman’s world. “The first night Paul came down to meet Greg, I had gone to the store and Greg was home alone,” Maureen Kauffman said. “After a while Paul called and said he drove by but all the lights were out, so he thought no one was home. Greg was in the garage waiting for him. He said, ‘I don’t need lights.’

“Now, Paul says he’s used to working in the dark.”

Kauffman understandably relies heavily on his senses of hearing and smell, although he says he can’t say whether they have become more sensitive by two decades of blindness.

“People say that they do, but I can’t tell,” Kauffman said. “I can pick out cars wherever they are on the track. My car’s relatively quiet. When there are a lot of cars around, I can’t tell them apart. But if we get out in the lead or the cars get fairly stretched out, I can pick this one out. I listen.”

Earlier this season, when Moore and several other drivers were ordered to disassemble their engines as part of a large-scale postrace inspection, Kauffman was the second mechanic to complete the task.

“People were watching him and wondering, ‘How can he see anything in the dark?’ ” Bickmore said. “Well, he doesn’t need to.”

Nor does he need sympathy or special attention. Kauffman is humble and unassuming, at a loss to express himself. He repeatedly has declined requests for interviews, agreeing to meet for this story only after Moore had arranged the interview.

“A lot of people want to praise him because of his handicap,” Maureen Kauffman said.

“But he doesn’t want that. He works on cars because he wants to. His blindness has nothing to do with it. That’s why he’s so quiet. Now, if you want to praise him because he built a good race car, that’s fine.”

Ventura Promoter Jim Naylor, who doubles as the track’s announcer, has repeatedly invited Kauffman to drop by the press box for a between-race live interview. Kauffman has politely declined.

“He’s just really shy,” Naylor said. “He doesn’t think what he’s doing is that special. But he’s special to me. A guy like that should be featured on one of those magazine shows. He’s that amazing.”