Home Is Just a Pit Stop on Never-Ending Road

Phillip Kennedy is glad he doesn’t have to do it.

Pete Wright doesn’t really have a choice.

Wright is the lead mechanic and a co-car chief on the U.S. Army Chevrolet driven by Joe Nemechek. Kennedy, 27, is a body man for MB2 Motorsports, the team that fields cars driven by Nemechek and Scott Riggs.

The subject is traveling.

“I’ve got a 5-year-old daughter and a son due in six weeks,” Kennedy says. “I don’t want to be on the road.”

It may seem a glamorous life traveling with the NASCAR circus, but it can take a toll on the 12-man road crew. A heavy one.

Bristol, Tenn., is one of eight races -- including the All-Star Challenge exhibition a few miles from the race shop in Charlotte, NASCAR’s hub -- that teams drive to themselves. A week ago, they flew to the race in Michigan. Next week, they’ll fly five hours by chartered jet into Ontario for the race at California Speedway.

Although Thursday is a travel day, it is considered a day off by management, but fighting traffic more than four hours along a winding, single-lane road in the Blue Ridge Mountains hardly classifies as a picnic.

“It’s a day off, but it’s not like you get to sleep in,” says Wright, who awoke at 5 a.m. and vacuumed the pool before sunrise. His “day off” was just starting: He paid bills, washed two loads of clothes, made beds, went to Wal-Mart for groceries, the bank, the dry cleaner, the DMV and the post office, then drove an hour to the MB2 shop to catch the van for Bristol.

They left at 4 p.m., and will be gone nearly 2 1/2 days -- they don’t expect to return until about 4 a.m. Sunday. That day will be one of six Sundays off during the race season, but what kind of day off is it when you get home a few hours before sunrise?

Because this race is Saturday night, this weekend’s schedule is easier than most. Sunday races add nearly another full day to the itinerary.

The schedule is hard. “Years ago, we were on the road a lot longer than now and we had more time on our hands,” says Mark Bieberich, a co-car chief and catch-can man. “After 15 hours on Friday, and 17 on Saturday, you don’t feel like doing anything.

“The biggest challenge is getting dinner before the race fans get there.”

Wright has been doing this since 1969, when he was asked to pull gas at the Daytona 500. He missed the birth of his son, Adam, because he was at a race in Dover, Del. “I dare any of these guys to go on the road when their wife’s having a child,” Wright says. “My ex-wife, to this day, won’t let me forget that I wasn’t there when Adam was born. There’s always going to be another race.”

Clayt Spruell, who admittedly does “stupid things for money” to keep the team loose, has been married four months. He’s riding shotgun in the van, but he’s usually in the driver’s seat. He drives the motor coach for crew chief Ryan Pemberton, and at the track, he’s a mechanic. He has just had two days off -- after being gone for five weeks. “It was the worst stretch of the year,” he says. “Other times I can get home for a day and a half. I do my laundry and go.”

At least Spruell is married. Dave Weiss is 36. “Try being single on the road and trying to find a girlfriend,” said the front tire carrier who made the trip on his own. “Try telling a girl, ‘I’m never home on weekends, but we can go out on Wednesday night.’ ”

It’s a grueling life, but this team is happy. “We’ve eliminated the bad apples,” says Sean Kerlin, a fabricator who handles the team’s tires on race weekend.

Wright is one of the few who hasn’t been burned out by the road.

“It’s easy to complain,” he says. “If you surround yourself with a good bunch of guys, you can have fun. But if you’re with bad guys, the season can be slow and miserable. This has been a good year.”

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Pete Wright, 51, is a NASCAR lifer, a mechanic seemingly riveted to stock cars nearly from the time he saw his first race more than 40 years ago. During the next week, Martin Henderson will be reporting his experiences with Wright and the Concord, N.C.-based MB2 Motorsports team as it prepares for the Pop Secret 500 at Fontana on Sept. 5.