Lee Montgomery
Staff Writer
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Posted Tuesday, August 14, 2001 |
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1/10
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Confidence is often a fleeting thing. Circumstance sometimes dictates how we feel about ourselves.
Race drivers are no different. Well, OK, maybe they’re a little different. It takes a large amount of ego – courage, guts, “The Right Stuff” – to drive 200 mph into a turn and know you’ll make it out.
Still, confidence can come and go for a driver. One bad race – one bad lap even – can sap the self-assurance of even the most headstrong driver.
Imagine, then, getting fired. That’s essentially what happened to Hut Stricklin and Robert Pressley last week. For one race – at Watkins Glen International – their teams parked them. Stricklin was sent to the sidelines in favor of Brian Simo, and Pressley was dumped for Boris Said. Both Simo and Said are road-course specialists.
This week, Stricklin and Pressley are back in their regular rides for the Pepsi 400 at Michigan Speedway. Their jobs are safe. If anything, they weren’t really fired.
Their teams decided to use a backup quarterback, if you will, at Watkins Glen. They did the same thing, using the same drivers, at Sears Point in June.
It would seem, however, that seeing someone else drive your car would be a torturous experience. And in many ways, it was.
For Pressley, though, it was a learning experience – not a confidence-shaker.
“We’ve been building this race team at Jasper Motorsports for the four years I’ve been here,” Pressley said. “One of the weak points was the road courses. We wanted to look at it and find out exactly what we could do to improve it. So we went out and got the best there was: Boris Said.”
Pressley said he did indeed learn some things from Said.
“He was right there, putting it on the edge every lap,” Pressley said. “That’s what it takes to win Winston Cup races.
“It’s helped me a whole lot, learning some of the things Boris is doing on the road courses. It also shows there is some room for us to improve as a team on the road courses.”
Does Pressley lack confidence? Hardly. He’s already looking for improvement, hoping to move the No. 77 up the car-owner points standings. Doug Bawel’s team is 19th, 234 points behind 15th-place Haas-Carter Motorsports’ No. 26 driven by Jimmy Spencer.
“We’ve got 14 races left, we’re in the Top 20,” Pressley said. “We’re setting our goals right now. We want to finish in the Top 15 in the Winston Cup points. ... That’s what we’re focused on the rest of the year.”
This weekend’s race at Michigan could go a long way in getting the team there.
“One year ago, going to Michigan, we had just left Michigan in June and finished fifth,” Pressley said. “It’s not like we’ve just snuck up there all of a sudden. We have been very competitive for the last 18 months.
“Michigan is a fun race track to run. I had never run that great. I’ve had some 15th-, 17th-, 18th-place finishes, but last year, with our first time with Ryan Pemberton, he had a great setup there. Man, it just took off. It was like a totally different race track. I’ve always enjoyed going back to Michigan since that day.”
And he’s buoyed by some recent success. Pressley was ninth at Pocono and second at Chicago – all within the last month.
“All year long, we have been right around the Top 10,” Pressley said. “We have made some mistakes; we have had mechanical failures.”
Pressley also points to two races where the team ran well but finished poorly. At Martinsville, Pressley qualified fifth but ended up 40th after “something came off the track and busted the radiator.” At Charlotte, “we really thought we had a shot to win that race,” but Pressley got involved in an accident.
“We are very confident on our race team, that it is a competitive, top-10, top-12 team,” Pressley said. “If we can continue to (run there), then we’re going to win races.”
Stricklin’s confidence is high as well. But it doesn’t necessarily come from of a good-running race team. Stricklin hasn’t finished better than 28th and failed to qualify for Daytona since the last Michigan race.
“I’m very good at keeping myself pumped up for some reason or another,” Stricklin said. “I’ve had, and I’ve always had, a lot of inner confidence. There are times that I get in the car that I know, probably deep down, we don’t have any kind of chance at all of winning the race. But I always trick my brain into believing that we do.
“That’s what makes a lot of the great race drivers. To overcome the mental end of it is such a big part of it. If you’re able to keep that confidence up and keep it going you can do an awful lot more by being confident than you can not being confident.”
Going to Michigan, however – a track where he finished sixth in June – doesn’t pump Stricklin up too much.
“It’s not really one of my favorite race tracks,” Stricklin said. “For some reason or another, I always run good there. … I’ve always left there with some good finishes.”
Like in 1989, his rookie season, when Stricklin was fourth behind race-winner Rusty Wallace, Morgan Shepherd and Harry Gant.
“Davey Allison and I used to talk about Michigan a lot and how much it reminded us of the track in Birmingham (Ala.),” Stricklin said. “The track in Birmingham is a five-eighths-mile track, but Michigan is just a larger version of that. You drive down in the corner the same way, you get off the corner the same way.”
Stricklin had plenty of confidence at the track in Birmingham, and he has plenty of confidence in himself. He really shouldn’t, based on his career numbers. His career-best finish has been second, and he’s done that twice – the last being 1996 at Darlington.
But confidence doesn’t always come from on-track performance.
“There are an awful lot of guys out there that are really good race drivers,” Stricklin said. “Some of them will get a chance to show it, and some of them won’t. There’s a lot of difference in the race teams: the good teams, the bad teams, the mediocre teams. If you’re lucky enough to get with one of the good teams, you’ll run good.”
And if you’re not with a good team, well, you better learn how to keep your confidence up.
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