By: Zach Catanzareti, Staff Writer
Mentorship is and has always been a leading player in the roots of all sports. From a father playing catch with a future MLB outfielder to a game of touch football in the backyard of an upcoming Super Bowl champion, motor racing is not much different.
It starts in the regional and local ranks of racing: The legend cars, super late models and modifieds. From there, the lessons learned from those wise characters along the way helped elevate some of NASCAR’s top XFINITY talents to championship-contending performance in 2018.
For Justin Allgaier, driver of the No. 7 Chevrolet for JR Motorsports, a dirt background gave him a new challenge when he made his NASCAR debut in 2005. His shoulders to lean on came from two experienced drivers in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series, who each had similar backgrounds in their run up the racing ladder.
“Mine’s growing up was Ken Schrader,” Allgaier said. “He was the guy who helped me the most. Once I got to the sport of NASCAR, honestly, Carl Edwards was the guy I leaned on. We both grew up driving the Mittler Brothers truck. When I was driving that truck, he helped me a lot just because he knew some of the things I was going through in the No. 63.
“Carl is a great guy and someone who would help at a minute’s notice.”
Though even the sport’s top drivers are shuffling in and out of rides, sponsors and competitiveness, Allgaier knows the importance of simply reaching out to these veterans during your rookies years.
“That’s what makes this sport so much fun,” he said. “You have guys and gals who will help you get through whatever you’re going through. A lot of drivers are willing to give information, but you have to be willing to go ask them.
“As a young driver, especially a rookie, that’s not the easiest thing to do.”
With the days of rookie learning far behind him, mentorship is something new for Katherine Legge. This British sports car talent ran the Indianapolis 500 twice (2012, ’13) and made her XFINITY debut for JD Motorsports last month at Mid-Ohio.
Running her first-ever oval race at Richmond Raceway, she hasn’t been afraid to ask for advice.
One is Andy Lally, the 2011 Cup Rookie of the Year, who has similar jumps from sports cars to NASCAR.
“It’s been huge with the things you don’t think you wouldn’t know,” Legge told Kickin’ The Tires. “He was telling me where to get down on the line, where to brake. All these little bits of information. How you do pit lane. There are so many things. It gives you a little more of a calm feeling inside.”
One driver she reached out to was Ross Chastain, who has run most of the season with her team, JD Motorsports.
“She asked me after practice some questions,” Chastain said of Legge. “I was like, ‘Ah, you got to go find someone better than me! Don’t do what I’m doing!”
With more than 200 NASCAR starts, Chastain is now considered a veteran of the XFINITY Series. And now a series winner with Chip Ganassi Racing, the Floridian hasn’t forgotten a few champions who helped get his start in the Camping World Truck Series.
“Once I got to this level, I had a mutual friend and knew Todd Bodine a little bit,” he said. “Getting into the Truck Series, he was the man. He still would be if he was out there. He would talk to me a lot. I lived with [Ron] Hornaday a little bit. I lived with the guy, picked his brain and eventually, he’d tell me to go to bed, quit asking questions.
“There are too many to count. I take in as much information as I can and pick what I want to remember.”
In the current days of high-tech software and iRacing, mentorship is one thing that has stayed stagnant in NASCAR. It can come in the form of active drivers, past drivers like Mark Martin and Blake Koch, or crew chiefs and spotters who have worked with countless talents.
And it can come at any time, too. For 2017 Truck Series champion Christopher Bell, his greatest mentor was Rick Ferkel, the man who got his sprint car racing career started in 2011.
“He gave me my first shot in a sprint car when I was 16 years old,” Bell said. “I lived with him for a while and he taught me a lot of the mentality of racing for a living and how to be a professional racecar driver. He’s my biggest mentor.”
The XFINITY Series is where names are made. And in the case of mentorship, many of those names are built off the track as much as on it.
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