Backstage Passes, Baby
I’m just going to start off by saying I have never been a fan of NASCAR and frankly I’m not sure if I am now or what. I do know that I’m a HUGE fan of the racing teams’ crews and their hard work.
It’s a coveted experience of a lifetime for anyone to get passes into the pits AND the garage at a NASCAR race. Each racing team is given a limited number of passes per race to invite happy citizens to hang around the behind the scenes action. By the good-graces and generosity of Matt “Matty” Aschbrenner (Front End Mechanic for Joe Gibbs Racing’s #20 car), Home Team crashed (total pun intended) the Nationwide Series race on July 31st at the Newton Speedway in Newton, Iowa. Matty, being an Iowa native (who attended high school with LAS’ favorite amazon, Jamie, in Waterloo), could’ve invited any number of people to see him in action. But for some reason he chose us. Maybe he likes us. Maybe he wanted to impress us. Maybe he wants a job with LAS someday. Maybe Jamie made him do it. Maybe he wanted to take a pair of impartial people and turn them into fans. Who can ever know a person’s motivations, really? But we’re guessing it’s because we’re rippin’ cool and he wanted to be seen with us in public.
So from our end getting these passes wasn’t a big deal. We just sent Matty some vital personal information, viles of our blood, our mothers’ maiden names, and signed affidavits from a psychiatrist that we don’t display any intentions to harm others or ourselves. From there the NASCAR legal monkeys conducted background checks. And after much persuasion on phone call to explain that I didn’t START that knife fight back in my college days, NASCAR gave us the green light (total, yeah, pun).
We arrived in the early afternoon and after funneling through the sheriff-directed traffic, past the general parking (suckers), and campgrounds (plan-aheaders) we found the building that releases the passes. We filled out our necessary paperwork and signed some sort of contract that said we promise not to take out our knives and go after anyone (or was that just me that had to sign that one?) and they gave us our groupie passes. Jamie, who had camped with Matty’s fabulous parents, Larry and Kathie Aschbrenner, met us up at the building and we went into the speedway to begin what would be a long, interesting, educational, exciting, and at times, painful day.
Jamie gave us the initial tour, showing us the haulers, garages and pit row. Matt waved us over to where he was standing, with the #20 car and some of it’s team, in a line of race cars leading up to a shed-looking building called The Scale House. Matt instantly explained to us purpose of the Scale House, aka Room of Doom.
Room of Doom
“Its one of the last check points in the inspection process. When we enter the room, we push the car up on to a leveled platform to check the heights of the quarter panels, roof height, and crankshaft height. If the guages read green on all of the measurements, we pass and roll forward. If not, we have to fix it, and go back around in line. The next station in the room of doom is the scales. Same platform but it contains four scales. Just before we get to the scale pads, we stop and the check the camber of the tires (lean of the top of the tire in relation to the botom of the tire). Since we turn left a lot, we lean the left side tire out, or left, and we lean the right side tire in, or left. There are maximum camber limitations that NASCAR allows us for each side. Once we are cleared, we roll onto the scales and check our right side and overall weights. We must weigh 3200 lbs total, and 1625 lbs on the right side minimum. We can weigh more on each of these, but why would we want to? We turn left, so it would be to our advatage to load up the left side with weight so we turn better. It would be like being in a canoe, sticking your oar in the water on the left side while you were trying to turn left, and dragging it in the water. NOT paddling, just dragging. You dig?” Yeah, Matty, I totally dig.
Iowa Delicacy
When the #20 car completed inspection Matty gave us a tour of the hauler. The hauler is a tricked-out semi that carts the team’s cars (the main car, and a spare car), plus everything necessary for the team to make it go. Spare engine, nuts and bolts, an entire garage. It was immaculate, meticulous, and impressive. Toward the front there is a kitchenette and an entire livingroom type area with couches, tv, video games, etc. When we exited the hauler from a side door there were a dozen or more bags of sweet corn next to the semi; a gift from Matty’s awesome parents for the #20 team. Apparently when the team is racing in the home state of a teammate it’s fairly normal for that team mate’s family members to bring a dish specific to the state. In our case, of course, Iowa sweet corn. During a race in Maine, one of the teammate’s family brought live Maine lobster. Live. Alive. What a bunch of confused lobsters that bunch must’ve been. Also, eww.
We waited while Matty was accosted and interviewed by a reporter from the Des Moines Register. Matty wasn’t too interested in being interviewed but went ahead anyway. Racing in Iowa always brings out the press seeking Matty, so he’s no stranger to being interviewed. He was once interviewed along with his brother, Chris, who is an IT dude also with NASCAR. Cooool.
I learned a couple of things right away hanging with the behind the scenes crew. One thing is that they don’t really think it’s all that funny to ask if you can drive the race car. I asked twice. It may have pegged me as an idiot but I couldn’t help it. I reeealllly wanted to drive the car. After being told no in a non-amused way I gave up and immediately noticed that the Pace Car was sitting all alone, window down, keys in ignition… Another thing I learned is that you have to keep your head on a swivel at all times because cars are moving constantly and you do NOT have the right of way. If you are not paying attention and are accidentally bumped by a car and fall onto the hood/ground, the team is very unsympathetic. For the record that didn’t happen to me, but it happened.
Somewhere along the way Home Team had the distinct pleasure of meeting and hanging out with Kathie and Larry Aschbrenner, Matty’s devoted parents. Being around them was definitely fun as I thought they were how proud parents should be. According to Kathie they were not NASCAR fans previous to their kids being involved in the business. After Matty became a mechanic they made it a point to watch the races from bars that would tune in their televisions. At Matty’s insistence, Kathie even reluctantly share with us with a story about how she was kicked out of a bar for NASCAR related reasons (truly you don’t insult a woman’s son’s job. And you REALLY don’t want that woman to be a NASCAR momma). After retirement they bought an RV and started traveling to Matty’s races in person. They picked up these handy-dandy headphones that tune into NASCAR channels and let you eavesdrop on the crew chief, spotter, and driver talking to each other during a race. They even use them for races they don’t make it to in person and watch at home. They turn their tv down (to clarify, they can watch races from home now and don’t have to go to bars…or maybe the bars won’t let Kathie in anymore?) and listen on the headphones to hear what’s going on with the #20 car specifically. Kathie and Larry were so kind as to let us borrow the headphones here and there during qualifying and the race itself. It was pretty cool, and felt a little dirty listening in. Heh.
Qualifying is before the actual race when each car takes its turn going around the track as fast as possible. Their fastest speed earns them a better starting spot than those than didn’t go around as fast. There were actually more crashes during qualifying than usual. One team went through both their main and spare car, just in qualifying alone. They had to quick borrow their sister team’s spare car. We watched them change out the decals and all (check out the gallery for the photos). And then there was that Pace Car again. Lonely. I’m pretty sure I heard it sigh out of boredom, and whistle at me.
Shepard keeping watch
Moving forward a few hours, some chicken strips and beer, a few trips to the bathroom to take advantage of the only air conditioned spot around, later, it was time for the race itself. It started with a Production. That’s Production with a capital P. First came the skydiver jumping onto the track. Then came the 4 jets flying above. Then came some fireworks. And the shindig hadn’t even started yet. From our position in the pits when the race did start it was impossible to see the entire track, so I was mildly disappointed. At times it got a little boring and found myself zoning out. I felt awful about that, so I blamed it on the day being long and hot and weary. The real excitement for me was when the car came in for a pit stop. Watching these boys run out there and do their thing in mere seconds is almost like watching something in fast forward. And then once the car was off again it almost looked like some of the team became bored themselves. Can’t blame them, though, since they had been working all day and were subject to the same heat and length of day. Between pit stops Matty took a standing position on the wall and watched over the race like a shepard watching intensely over a flock of sheep with a wolf nearby. For the most part Matty watches, and after a pit stop he handles the tires that were just taken off the race car. During the race the tires heat up so much they become like glue and everything on the track adheses to them. One dude takes a torch and scraper to the tire and Matty takes some measurements. In Matty’s words this is what they are doing:
“When the car comes in from the track, the tires are so hot and have so much adhesiveness to them, that they pick up anything & everything, including extra rubber. When we take a torch to them with the paint scraper, we are basically getting down to what the tire’s surface is when it is at full speed, in full slip. Meaning, when the car goes in to the corners there is some degree of slip to the tires. They are not perfect and they have a heavy load upon them, so there is some slip. A lot if your car’s handling sucks. Its called lateral friction. Meaning a sliding laterally, or sideways (because the car is in a turn). Once we get down to the actual surface of the tire, we measure from the outside surface to the bottom of the wear-indicator holes (which we recorded when the tires were brand new) and then do the math to see what and how the tires were wearing during the race. When we know this information, we can can decide an adjustment for the next pit stop and see what our limitations may be with those tires. Every track has a different compound of tires (rubber material) specific for that track.”
Pork to Sunoco
The great thing– no scratch that–one of the great things about Matty is that he is VERY good at teaching you what’s happening. He doesn’t just do his job and show off for you. He wants you to understand what’s going on. He wants to make you feel like a part of it. All along during the day, at the times when he could be with us, he was always showing us something, telling us about something, sharing stories, and so on. During the race was no different. Even though it was terribly loud and we all had ear plugs in, he would still put his face in our ear and tell us something cool. Like from the “Sunoco” billboard to the “Pork” billboard is where you will see most of the crashes. Turn two. You’ll see most crashes here because the drivers are just pulling out of turn one and accellerating. There were plenty of crashes that evening.
Eighteen year old Matt DeBenedetto drove the #20 car into 9th place in that race. Did you pay attention before when I said he was 18 years old? Maybe this boy started racing go-carts when he was 8 and moved on from there, but still, he’s EIGHTEEN. And he is a racecar driver for NASCAR. And he came in NINTH place. Incredible! Joe Gibbs’ other car in the race was #18 driven by Kyle Busch, who did win. I guess because I wasn’t previously a NASCAR fan, I don’t know anything about the drivers, or care about them to be frank. I don’t even think I noticed where the drivers were during the course of the day before the race. I didn’t really care because it was much more fascinating to see everything that happened with the car before the driver was in the picture. Don’t get me wrong, I understand speed. I think racing is thrilling. But there’s something to be said for witnessing the nitty gritty of it all. And to be hosted by Matty, Kathie, Larry, and Jamie was the most excellent way to experience NASCAR.
In the end I’d like to blow a hole in the redneck stereotype of NASCAR. Well, I can’t speak for NASCAR fans, to be honest, maybe the majority of them are rednecks for all I know. But the people involved in the actual racing itself are an intricate, admirable, and intelligent group of people, and Home Team thanks them all for a killer July 31st.
Your turn. Are you a NASCAR fan? A Matty fan? Do you have any questions about Matty? Do you want a signed photo of Matty? Do you want a lock of Matty’s chest hair? Let us know below!
*Check out Matty Aschbrenner’s profile in the Athlete Profiles section. Check out the photos of this race in the Gallery.
Tags: garages, haulers, Home Team, Joe Gibbs Racing, Kyle Busch, Matt Aschbrenner, Matt DiBenedetto, Matty Aschbrenner, NASCAR, Newton, Newton Speedway, pits, racing, sweet corn
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