(NOTE: I wrote this for a magazine, not sure which one, in the 1990s.)
The Brothers Labonte
Terry Labonte was happy. More importantly, he was
satisfied. And he felt safe.
He’d just captured his second Winston Cup championship,
and brother Bobby had just won the season-ending NAPA 500 at Atlanta. Things
couldn’t be better.
The problem, though, was that he was sitting in the
Atlanta Motor Speedway pressbox, and inquiring sports writers wanted to know
what other interesting things the Brothers Labonte had done together. Terry
couldn’t think of anything – maybe intentionally—but car owner Rick Hendrick
piped in, “What about the truck? You know, you and Bobby shooting the truck?”
The Ice Man began to sweat. His eyes said, ‘How could
you?’, and he obviously wanted to change subjects. Finally, he gave in.
“Daddy (Bob Labonte) had this truck; it was a piece of
junk, and I borrowed it and it broke down on me,” Labonte began. “I hated that
truck. It broke down on Bobby one day, and he hated it, too.
“My dad called me one day and told us to take it to the
junkyard. We called out there to tell them to come pick it up, but I told
Bobby, ‘You know what? We ought to do something with that truck before they
come get it.’
“He said, ‘What do you want to do with it?’ I said, ‘Let’s
shoot it.’ ”
So Terry went home, got a .44 magnum, and they killed the
truck. Repeatedly.
“Mom comes driving in, and we had one bullet left, and I
asked her if she wanted to shoot it,” Labonte said with a choked laugh. “She
didn’t want any part of it.”
Good thing. Bob Labonte called home to say he had a buyer
for the truck, and he wanted it retrieved from the junkyard. Before they could
do anything, their dad went to the junkyard and found the vandalized vehicle.
As the media members laughed, Terry went on:
“Bobby calls me in a panic and says, ‘We’re in trouble.
Dad has sold the truck you shot.’ I said, ‘You shot it, too,’ and he said,
‘Yeah, but it was your gun.’ ”
The argument resembled the TV commercial in which the
brothers argued over who’s the better driver. And the tongue-lashing by Bob
Labonte probably resembled some of the confrontations the boys faced when they
were boys.
“It took six shots to get it,” Terry concluded. “But we
got it.” Indeed
they did.
The thing is, Terry and Bobby Labonte aren’t necessarily the quiet guys they appear to be. Bobby has one of the better senses of humor in big-time stock-car racing, and Terry has a dry wit. Both men are ready to needle each other— and everyone else.
The thing is, Terry and Bobby Labonte aren’t necessarily the quiet guys they appear to be. Bobby has one of the better senses of humor in big-time stock-car racing, and Terry has a dry wit. Both men are ready to needle each other— and everyone else.
Terry also likes to hunt, and he’s been known to trek to Montana a time or
two with Dale Earnhardt. When Earnhardt nudged and wrecked him last year at Bristol, the
standing joke was that
Dale wouldn’t be going hunting with Terry anytime soon. And he’d keep all of the gun
cabinets locked.
Oh, the Labonte brothers try to keep a good humor on
track, but even
the Ice Man (Terry) and the Ice Man Too (Bobby) can get a little hot. Take the
race on April 26, 1998 at Talladega. Terry was leading with two laps to go when Bobby,
looking for that first
carburetor restrictor-plate victory, linked up with Jimmy Spencer and drafted
past Terry. Bobby won the race, and Terry fell back to fourth.
Afterward, Bobby wasn’t worried about any .44 magnums or hunting guns, but
Terry’s wrath was going to be terrible. He’s just like their dad, you know.
“I haven’t talked to him,” Bobby said then. “I’m sure I
will call him
or he will call me. I think the best thing to do is to call my dad first
and see if Terry called him and is mad. I’ll call my dad first. Then I will go from
there, down the chain of
command.”
Still, Bobby was sure that, deep in his heart, Terry would understand. That’s
racin’, after all.
“I wanted to win as bad as he did,” said Bobby, who turned
36 on May 8.
“It’s kind of hard to have friends (in a race). When it comes down to the last lap or two
and or catching him, I
think of him as just another driver. Just like he’d be with me. “If the roles were reversed, the same
thing would happen. It’s
just another driver you’re trying to outrun.” Maybe, but Bobby was worried about
Terry during a big wreck
earlier in the same race.
“When that wreck was happening, I was screaming in the
radio until I
got off turn two,” Bobby said. “ ‘Find out where he’s at! Find out where he’s at!’ ” Terry, of course,
was safely in front of the wreck, which started when Ward Burton got loose and hit
Dale Earnhardt, sending
Earnhardt’s car into Bill Elliott’s and setting off a storm of smoke and flying car parts.
But that’s the way with brothers: At one point, you’re terrified that he’s
hurt. Later, you’re just happy to dust him in the draft.
“You never know what’s going to happen,” Bobby said. “...
I had to try to
pass my brother some time or the other.” Oddly, Terry and Bobby also hooked up that
fall in the fire-delayed
Pepsi 400 at Daytona. It would seem that Terry would have learned his lesson, but the
Labontes hooked up again. And, again, Bobby was the main
benefactor.
A red flag on lap 154 set up the final run of the 160-lap
race. Bobby was seventh on the restart, and
he quickly passed Ward
Burton for sixth and immediately hooked up with Terry. The brothers charged
forward, with Terry drafting behind. On the last lap, Bobby passed Mike Skinner and dove
through a tiny hole.
This time, he finished second to Jeff Gordon. Terry finished out of the top five.
“It was pretty obvious I couldn’t have done it without
Terry’s help,”
Bobby admitted. “He pushed me three or four times pretty hard.”
Terry won’t say how he felt about either race. He might
say, “That’s
racin’.” Or he might not.
The Labontes say the 1996 season finale was their favorite racing moment
together. After Bobby won the race (with Terry a solid fifth), the brothers took a victory
lap in tandem. “I don’t think I ever saw such a big
smile on his (Bobby’s)
face as that day,” said Terry, whose first title came in 1984. “That was probably the neatest thing
that ever happened to me at a race track.”
The Labontes, you understand, like to say “neat deal” or
“cool” or
“awesome.” It’s their thing.
“To win the championship and have Bobby win the race was awesome, it really
was,” said Terry, who will turn 44 on Nov. 11.
“I’ll never forget that.”
It may not seem like it, but Terry knows a thing or two
about beating
little brother. Through mid-May, he had won 21 career races to Bobby’s 13, he had started a
series-record 649 straight races and he has three more nicknames (Texas Terry, the Ice Man and the Iron Man)
than his brother.
Last year, Terry beat Dale Jarrett and brother Bobby at
Texas Motor
Speedway, the “home” track for the native Texans. “Most
of the time when you’re racing, you don’t notice the people in the stands. I noticed them
there (Texas),” Terry said. “The whole place was
standing up cheering. It was pretty exciting.”
And on May 9, 1997, Terry finished .146-second ahead of
Bobby and won
the DieHard 500, at Talladega. Yes, it was a restrictor-plate race, and, yes, Terry had
to depend on Bobby. This time, though, Bobby didn’t leave
him in the dust. He just
congratulated him in victory lane.
“If one of us has a problem the other one doesn’t say,
‘Hey, I beat
you today,’ ” Bobby insisted. “You know you’re out there to do your job, but
we’re very close.”
As close as two hard-headed leadfoot brothers can be.
EMAIL: nc3022@yahoo.com. TWITTER: EDITORatWORK.
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