Harvey’s Skill Takes Him Only So Far : Auto racing: Driver is making a go of things but lacks the proper backing to move up in the sport.

Nick Harvey’s professional debut did not go as planned. But it did not go down the toilet, either.

Lap 1, Turn 8. The black Honda Prelude Si that Harvey is piloting is hit from the side and goes into a spin. By the time he straightens out, he is in last place, 100 yards behind on the 2.1-mile road course.

Under a full-course yellow, 1 1/2 hours later. Harvey pits and turns the car over to his partner, Rich Rutherford, another Newport Beach resident. They are in sixth place in the 18-car touring class.

Checkered flag. After three hours in the IMSA Firestone Firehawk Series in Portland, Ore., Rutherford brings the car across the finish line in third place for the Caribbean Motorsports racing team.

Harvey said his July 31 debut felt good. “Damn good.”

And when it was over, so was his racing season. Unless he and Rutherford can generate $4,000 in sponsorship so they can compete in the last race of the season, 12 Hours at Sebring, in October, the 1993 scrapbook is complete.

It is at Sebring where they hope to attract a sponsor for next year’s Firehawk and Zerex Saab series. If not, there might be not be a 1994 scrapbook at all.

Theirs is a common struggle of those who would get behind the wheel and go very, very fast.

“The unfortunate thing with car racing is that there is no scholarship system,” said Harvey, a driving instructor at the Skip Barber Racing School in Northern California. “It purely comes down to finances. If you’re not blessed with a wealthier background, you’re reliant on the corporate backing. It’s the chicken and the egg: You have to prove yourself to get corporate backing, but to get out there to prove yourself, it takes money.”

It is a chicken-egg scenario that has created some tough times for an aspiring driver with dreams of Indianapolis. Harvey, 27, and his wife, Erin, know that sacrifice has been a key element in their marriage.

“I can vouch for that,” said Erin Harvey, 29, a Newport Beach native. “We’ve been struggling for 4 1/2 years of our marriage. Every penny we have we try to put toward his racing. I know his parents sold their house and moved to a smaller home to keep him in racing when he was on the British Junior National team (as a child). We’ve all sacrificed because we know he has the talent; we just need to get him out there.”

There were some lean years. As newlyweds, they sacrificed privacy, taking on a roommate to help pay the rent. To finance Nick’s 1991 Skip Barber Racing Series season, they sold one car and shared the other. Their vacation time, says Erin, an escrow officer whose paychecks reflected the depressed real estate market of the early 1990s, “is spent driving all night to race weekends and staying in total low-budget motels.”

Nick and Erin’s sacrifices also included putting off a family.

“We wanted to make sure that he could pursue his career, but I might be getting impatient soon,” Erin said, laughing and recalling that the original plan was to have a child four years ago. “It’s that old biological clock.”

Tick, tick, tick. Time, as well as money, has taken stabs at the racing relationship.

Nick has worked the past two years at Sears Point International Raceway in Sonoma, where his talent is evident. He teaches racing wanna-bes in Formula Fords over a three-day course, and also one- and two-day driving schools. He is away from home six months of the year.

It is a long way from parking cars, which he did for less than a day and represented rock bottom on the demoralization meter.

“He had to buy a bow-tie and a name badge, and he came home at lunch,” Erin said. “They were just a bunch of snot-nosed kids who had an attitude, who would peel out of the parking lot. He is still humiliated about it. A bunch of kids younger than him trying to tell him what to do.”

But through it all, the common goal has been Nick’s career.

“I believe in him completely,” Erin said. “He just needs the right break. The whole reason he’s working as an instructor is to keep him in racing; he’s on the road more than he’s home.

“We wanted to start a family, but we wanted to wait until things with his racing career settled down. It’s a way for him to meet people in the racing community and to keep driving.”

It’s all part of networking, of making the right connections, of hoping to meet a potential sponsor.

“In the back of our mind,” said Newport Beach’s Kris Wilson, another member of the Caribbean Motorsports team and also a Skip Barber instructor, “we hope we hook up with someone through the school and become the next Danny Sullivan or Mario Andretti.”

Danny Sullivan taught for Skip Barber. The precedent has been set. The dream lives on.

Harvey has competed in two racing series, in the Marenello Ferrari Championship in Britain, and after a four-year hiatus from the sport when he arrived in the States, the Skip Barber Racing Series. In both, he finished second in total points and was named Rookie of the Year.

“I am Mr. Second Place,” Harvey said jokingly. “I don’t mind the rookie-of-the-year title, it’s the second-place I’m trying to change.”

There have been victories along the way. He had two in the seven-race Ferrari series, and seven in the 16-race Skip Barber Series. Winning, he says, is the biggest rush of all.

“Unless you’ve done it, it feels like nothing you’ve ever done before,” Harvey said. “I should imagine it’s like standing on top of a mountain you have just climbed, a feeling of total accomplishment.”

But he knows second-place, too.

“It’s a disappointment,” Harvey said. “People only remember the guy who finished first. I don’t want to be better than everyone else but one person. I truly believe to be successful in any line of sport, you must only accept being the best, which means finishing first.

“The biggest struggle is keeping yourself going when you go six to 12 months and you don’t have a serious drive in the car simply because of money and not because of talent. It can wear you down mentally, and you have to be tough. It’s important to stay focused and positive about what you can achieve.

“I have forsaken a regular way of life.”