Sponsors Are Tools of the Trade

Sponsors are the lifeblood of motor racing. Without them, it would be almost impossible to finance a NASCAR Nextel Cup team, or even a car in a lesser series, without outside funding. One of an owner’s most important chores is to find a solid sponsor -- and then keep it.

Bill McAnally, who has put together a West Coast version of the multi-car Nextel Cup teams of Jack Roush, Rick Hendrick and Joe Gibbs, has had NAPA Auto Parts sponsoring his Chevrolets since 1990 in the Grand National West (formerly Winston West) circuit and the Dodge Weekly Series in Northern California.

Three Monte Carlos, driven by veteran Steve Portenga, former Indy Racing League driver Sarah Fisher and rookie Andrew Lewis of Corona, compete on the Grand National West series and will be in the King Taco 150 at Irwindale Speedway on July 23. Two others, Allison Duncan and John Moore, drive in weekly series events at Stockton 99 Speedway.

And, like his Nextel Cup counterparts, McAnally has been a winner. In 1990 and 1991, driving his own car, he won Winston Racing late model division championships. After giving up his seat in the race car in 1998 to become an owner, he won consecutive Winston West championships with Sean Woodside in 1999 and Brendan Gaughan in 2000 and 2001. Austin Cameron won the inaugural Toyota All-Star Showdown, a national championship event, in a Mc-

Anally car in 2003.

Although he did not know it at the time, McAnally began cultivating his relationship with NAPA long before he entered the racing game. As part of his high school auto shop class in Ukiah, NAPA had a program in which for $5 a week a student would get one tool.

“You could eventually receive a complete NAPA tool kit, which of course I did,” McAnally recalled while testing his cars Wednesday at Irwindale. They came in handy a couple of years later when he and a buddy built their first entry-level Chevelle and went racing at All American Speedway, a quarter-mile bullring in Roseville.

“It was difficult juggling my racing schedule around my day job with a utility company, but things were going along pretty well with NAPA’s help when I built a car in 1994 to run for Winston West rookie of the year,” McAnally said. “The first race was at Mesa Marin [in Bakersfield] and the day before we left, we showed our car at the Pinewood Derby Nationals for Cub Scouts in Sacramento.

“That night someone stole everything, the car, trailer, all our equipment, from in front of our house. We found it later in a rice field with all the tools and stuff gone and what was left had been torched. We didn’t even have a screwdriver left.”

What seemed to be life’s darkest moment for a 28-year-old racer turned out to be a windfall.

“A few days later I came home and had a message on my recorder from Richard Childress, saying he’d like to help me out,” McAnally said. “At first I thought it was a bad joke someone was playing on me, but I called and it was Childress. I couldn’t believe it, the guy calling me had won six Winston Cup championships with [Dale] Earnhardt.

“He told me to come back to North Carolina and get whatever I needed to go racing. I rented the biggest U-haul I could find, it cost me $2,200, but he told [shop foreman] Cecil Gordon to load it up with every piece of equipment I needed to build a new car. Then NAPA gave me a new tool box, full of tools. Gary Bechtel offered me a car to drive while mine was being built, so I was able to go forward. It was a wonderful feeling to get such support.”

Trying to juggle family responsibilities with a wife and two children and a racing program finally got the better of McAnally, who will be 40 on Aug. 28.

“I was at California Speedway in 1998 and realized I was burning the candle at both ends and something had to give,” he said. “Gary Smith told me his father would be interested in my preparing a car for Gary to drive, so I was about to become a car owner. It was something I had never thought about before. Gary finished second in his first race and beat Kevin Harvick.

“That was good enough for me so on April 10, 1999, I quit my job to become a full-time race car owner.”

Five years later, McAnally is building a 22,000-square-foot racing shop and NAPA parts distributorship in Roseville to fuel his racing ambitions. Although he has thought of moving to Charlotte, N.C., to be near other NASCAR racing teams, he plans to remain home, at least until his children -- not yet teenagers -- are finished with school.

The association with Childress has continued and flourished until McAnally is now running a development team for his former benefactor.

“When the Drive for Diversity program started in NASCAR, I thought right off that Bill would be someone great to work with because of the first-class operation he has,” said Childress, whose team is headquartered in Welcome, N.C. “We worked together in the past with Bill testing Clint Bowyer and Kerry Earnhardt so we decided to run Sarah in a race in Phoenix and see if that was a direction we wanted to go. Bill’s feedback was that she has a lot of potential in a stock car. We may run her in some Busch races this year.”

Duncan, of San Rafael, Calif., is also part of the Childress development program. She became the first diversity driver in NASCAR to win a main event when she took the 30-lap late model race on June 11 at Stockton 99 Speedway. She won her second race last Saturday and is now third in points at Stockton. McAnally teammate John Moore, who has four wins, is the points leader.

Moore, 42, lost his 16-year-old son in a racing accident at Stockton in 1999 and has dedicated the season to his son’s memory.

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Southland Scene

Robby Flock hopes to continue his drive toward a fifth U.S. Auto Club western midget car championship when the series resumes Saturday at Ventura Raceway. The 5 p.m. show includes VRA sprint cars.

Irwindale Speedway and Perris Auto Speedway will feature busy multi-class stock car programs Saturday night. Irwindale will have six main events on the pavement. PAS will showcase its racers on dirt.

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The closing date for Mesa Marin Raceway, originally slated for Sunday, Oct. 16, has been changed to Saturday, Oct. 15, track vice president Larry Collins said. The final event at the 28-year-old track will be a NASCAR doubleheader with Grand National West and Southwest Series night races.