This was another excitement filled week in racing. The Cup series was at Texas Long Beach
Last week I was telling you about how the season was turning out. Although I was sitting second in points, we had not won yet, and racing was starting to take a very real and heavy toll on my relationship with my fiancé. I was struggling to once again find the money in the latter part of the season to finish the year, and this year we had a wedding to pay for as well. The track took away our only weekend off, and I started a new job working for Bobby Gerhart for significantly less money than I was making before.
I know it seems as though there isn’t much that is positive about these last couple of weeks. In looking back at my early years of racing, there weren’t many overly joyous moments. The problem was that I didn’t have any real racing experience to pull from to make my situation any better. Most of the guys I was racing against had been in the sport longer than I had been alive. I guess that is something to be proud of, in and of itself. We were hanging tough with the fastest guys in our class.
I was introduced to Bobby Gerhart the beginning of the summer 2004, and over the summer hung around enough to be offered a job by August. I took the job and was instantly immersed in one of the best ARCA programs at that time. Bobby was working very closely with Hendrick Motorsports at that time. He was part of Hendrick’s Driver Development Program, back when ARCA and NASCAR were using the same body templates. I had no idea what I was in for.
One of the guys that Gerhart had working for him at that time was Karl. Karl is a very smart guy that knows his share of the racing world. As knowledgeable as Karl was, he was not very student friendly. It was very rough working under Karl, but it was one of the best learning experiences I have ever had. You learned how to listen very carefully and not screw anything up, because he would send his wrath down on you, in front of the whole shop to see.
I was learning so much of what I thought I knew all over again, and I was learning how to do it the right way. The 2 years I spent with BGR was undoubtedly one of the most beneficial things I have done for my racing career. It might not have been the best financial decision at the time, though. My fiancé was putting the finishing touches on our wedding, and the bills were starting to come due. We were having some real trouble juggling all the finances at the time. We were going to be married the weekend after the season was over, and that was only a month away.
Although the championship was still mathematically attainable, by all accounts we were out of it. Less and less cars were showing up at the track, so that meant it was harder and harder to gain ground on the point’s leader. I was pretty far ahead of 3rd place in points, so I wasn’t really worried about falling in the championship. Some hard decisions had to be made, and I couldn’t be totally selfish anymore, I was going to have a wife to worry about soon.
Next week we look at the end of the season, and the tough choices that have to be made sometimes. I will have some updates on our season up on our website soon, and stay tuned on twitter @justinonderko for the very near future at track updates as well. Check out my peerbackers.com page too. Type “Onderko Motorsports” in the search bar for opportunities to become involved in our race team. Check out our sponsors on this page as well. Till next week. . .
No comments:
Post a Comment