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| KEITH BUMGARNER AND HIS CREW WAIT TO QUALIFY IN 2012. (NICK AND SHERRI STEARNS PHOTO) |
(NOTE:
This story appeared in the Hickory Daily Record in 2012.)
Winning driver races
when he can
By Tom Gillispie
Keith Bumgarner has made the most of
his starts and finishes.
Bumgarner’s Late Model win last
Saturday was his fifth in nine starts at Hickory Motor Speedway. He has eight
top-five finishes.
“The first part of the year, we were
waiting on a motor; it wasn't ready,” Bumgarner said. “We don't have the money,
the sponsors, to run every week.”
With only nine starts, Bumgarner is
114th in NASCAR’s national Division
I driver standings. Another HMS competitor, Kyle Moon, is one spot (and one
point) ahead of him with 14 starts.
Bumgarner, 33, says he doesn’t have a
racing budget.
“We’ve done a lot with a little,” he
said. “Whatever we win, it takes every bit of it to go back and race. We’re
doing it for fun, and so far we’ve been able to do that.”
Why all the wins?
“This year's been good,” Bumgarner
said. “A lot of it's been being lucky and being blessed. I guess we’ve been
very fortunate, and we’ve been working hard.”
Of the five victories, “I’d say
they've all been pretty good,” he added. “You don't know which one will be the
last, so you treat each one like it’s the first one.”
He says he got the racing bug from
his dad.
“Our dad was racing when we were
small,” he said, “but he passed away before we even got started racing.”
Bumgarner, a 1997 graduate of St.
Stephens High School, says he and his brother Kevin started out racing
go-karts, and Kevin raced at HMS a bit in the 1990s. Now, Kevin helps on
Bumgarner’s car, along with car owner Ed Rosamond, cousin Wayne Williams and
friend Tommy Taylor.
“Without them, I couldn't go racing,”
Bumgarner added. “It’s a group effort to get to the racetrack.”
Bumgarner says he once might have
wished that he could drive for a NASCAR Cup team, and, indeed, he now works for
one. He says he’s a chassis man for Front Row Motorsports, which fields Cup
Fords for David Ragan and David Gilliland. That team is based in Statesville in
the buildings once occupied by former Cup owner Travis Carter.
Because Bumgarner hasn’t been a
steady Late Model competitor, he probably doesn’t know all of the competitors.
“I wouldn't say that I’ve got any
friends at the racetrack,” he said. “I go to the track to race; I don't go to
socialize.”
That’s not totally true. Wife Wendy
and children Michael, 9, and Alyssa, 5, usually are at the track. Michael
sometimes joins Bumgarner in the pits, and Keith says Michael has already
started racing go-karts.
Bumgarner says it’s been strange
running this year, since he thinks Ashley Huffman is the only Late Model driver
he’s raced against much in the past.
He says that some of the younger Late
Model drivers sometimes race beyond their experience. “They don’t care if they
tear up equipment,” he said. “Sometimes I don’t know who I can or can’t race
against.”
But he quickly adds that 18-year-old
Austin McDaniel, the Late Model points leader, isn’t one of those drivers.
“He's pretty good, especially for his
age,” Bumgarner said. “Me and him's battled back and forth. He’s one driver I
can run side by side with and we never touch each other and have a good race.
He probably wants to win as bad as anybody, but he knows his limits. He’s not
going to drive over his head and tear stuff up.”
As for Bumgarner being a patient
driver, “Yeah, I would say that I’m very patient,” he said. “A lot of that
comes from having to fix the car yourself, although I’ve got people to help
me.”
He says his upcoming schedule is
pretty sparse.
“This weekend, they’ll have a 100-lap
(Late Model) race, and I’ll try to run,” he said. “Then, it’ll probably be two
or three weeks before we try to race again.
“After that,
we’ll see what happens and try to have a good time.”
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