Motorheads know where world driving champ Lewis Hamilton is now. But who besides AutoWeek (and Ron Dennis) knew where he was when he was 13 years old, five feet tall and the centerpiece of AW's "10 Secret People" cover story (Nov. 23, 1998)? For grins, we've tracked down a handful of drivers and racing executives who have starred in AW's Competition pages over the decades.
Boston Reid
He was Jeff Gordon's protégé and our pick as oval racing's future Big Thing. Reid was 15 and just starting in sprint cars when he was featured in "10 Secret People," and while he hasn't reached Hamilton heights, he's only 25 and digging hard.
Reid was USAC Sprint Car Rookie of the Year in 2002, the same year he reached the finals in the Red Bull Driver Search despite a dearth of road-racing experience. He excelled at every level until he started in NASCAR. He was released from a development contract with Hendrick Motorsports after a handful of Busch starts in 2005. After 20 Craftsman Truck starts in 2006, with a best finish of 17th, he was replaced at Woodward Motorsports. Reid has broken ties with his father and first coach, sprint-car owner Lynn Reid, and now lives near Charlotte.
"I've done some testing, because if you don't have money to bring, it's the only way you can get back in the door," says Reid. "I'm trying to do a deal to run the Chili Bowl this January, and thinking about moving back to Indiana to do some open-wheel. Beyond that, I have no plan of attack."
Grumpy Jenkins
William Tyler Jenkins was studying at Cornell in the 1950s when he began tinkering with other people's engines to earn cash. By the 1970s, he was a fixture at NHRA national events, having embraced fat cigars and the nickname Grumpy. It was less a description of his general demeanor and more of his no-nonsense attitude at the track.
In 1972, the Grump won six of eight NHRA Pro Stock nationals in his revolutionary small-block, tube-frame Vega. He completed 250 consecutive runs without missing a shift--in the era of clutch-less planetary gear sets. Sports Illustrated reported his income at $250,000, second only to Wilt Chamberlain among pro athletes. Jenkins quit driving in 1976, but his renown rests equally in his skill as a car owner and engine builder. He is credited with innovations such as strut-type front suspension, electric cooling fans, dry-sump oiling and quick-shift transmissions. A Jenkins engine powered Pro Stock national winners as recently as 2006.
At 78, the father of Pro Stock builds Sporstman and Comp class engines in Malvern, Penn., outside Philadelphia.
"I'd been losing money with the Pro Stock engines, so I said hell with it," he says. "You never know where you'll end up, but I never had it in my head that I'd end up here. If anything, I would have predicted I'd be a metallurgical engineer, but I was never a very good student."
Les Richter
He was known as the Enforcer through eight Pro Bowl seasons with the NFL's Los Angles Rams, and as Coach in race paddocks around the United States. Leslie Allan Richter was the second overall pick in the 1952 NFL draft as a linebacker/guard out of the University of California, Berkeley, and he was immediately traded to the Rams for 11 players. He got involved in racing by investing his NFL earnings in the new Riverside International Raceway, of which he was named managing partner.
Richter ran Riverside through its heyday in the 1960s and '70s, handling everything from security to track announcing, then sold the track property to developers in 1983. He brought NASCAR to the West Coast and created the International Race of Champions, where he was chairman through the series' 34-year run. He also has done long stints with NASCAR and Roger Penske's racing operations, and supervised construction of the California Speedway in the mid-1990s.
Richter still consults on special projects with NASCAR's International Speedway Corp. At 78, he resides adjacent to a golf course at his longtime home in Riverside.
Andrew Craig
Craig successfully managed Championship Auto Racing Teams' public stock offering in 1998. He ran CART before and immediately after Tony George created the IRL, until he was fired at the urging of a handful of team owners midseason in 2000. In retrospect, the personable Brit might be considered the most effective executive CART ever had. We can only speculate about the direction open-wheel racing might have taken had he remained at the helm.
Today, Craig still lives near the old CART headquarters in Troy, Mich. His Craig Company LLC advises international sports organizations and corporations that sponsor athletic competitions. His specialty is working with committees bidding on or staging the Olympic Games, and he claims to be the only consultant to direct three consecutive successful Olympic bids: Vancouver 2010, London 2012 and Sochi, Russia, 2014.
"I must confess that I pay most attention to F1 these days, and probably ALMS," Craig says. "It's not business related, though; I do have a client in France that recently acquired rights to a cross-country race in Asia. It's interest, and convenience. Sundays at 8 a.m. makes a convenient time to watch a race.
"Do I have any longing toward an active role in motorsports? I can't say that I do. Not at all."
Paul Ray
When he was chosen one of the "10 Secret People" in 1998, Paul Ray had just opened Ilmor Engineering Inc.'s expansive technical center in Plymouth, Mich. A lot can change in a decade.
Two years later, Mercedes killed its CART engine program--Ilmor's raison d'être--and American open-wheel racing slid though a steady decline that only recently bottomed out. Mercedes bought out the parent company in England and pulled it under its own umbrella, meaning Ilmor USA was essentially its own entity. The racing economy tanked, recovered and tanked again.
Yet under Ray's steady hand, Ilmor's American operation has thrived. It remains the primary supplier and builder for Honda's IRL engine program. It consults with Sprint Cup teams and provides contract engineering services to OEMs. It has an ARCA engine program and a Mopar Midget program, and it has dabbled in its own NASCAR program. The company also launched a new division called Ilmor Marine, which builds V10 engines that are a preferred power source for 100-mph offshore boats, and it plans to expand operations substantially in 2009.
Ilmor employs more people now than it did during the heyday of the Mercedes program, thanks largely to Ray's ability to generate new business.
"Business is only a small bit of it," says the self-effacing Ray. "I've got the best job in the world, short of driving an F1 car. I get to play with high-tech engines and boats and travel to races and interact with a lot of great people."
Herb Fishel
The man who brought GM racing out of the closet was born and raised in tobacco country. When he graduated from North Carolina State, Herb Fishel immediately headed north.
After a stint as an engine designer at GM, Fishel mentored in various clandestine racing programs under legends such as Zora Arkus-Duntov, Smokey Yunick and Junior Johnson. He marshaled the semiofficial return of GM brands to NASCAR in the 1970s, and managed the Chevy-Ilmor Indy program in the 1980s, introducing high-tech electronic engine management to auto racing in the process. In 1991, Fishel created the rationalized GM Motorsports Technology Group, which he directed until his retirement in 2003. His career was punctuated in 2001, when for the first of two consecutive years, GM became the first manufacturer with a trans-Atlantic Triple Crown: victory in the Daytona 500, the Indy 500 and class victory at Le Mans with the Corvette C5-R.
Today, the Herb Fishel Company in Ann Arbor, Mich., consults on various motorsports projects, while Fishel tends to his expansive collection of racing and tobacco memorabilia and vintage cars. He remains an advocate of keeping racing technology relevant to production cars, and he likes the concept of green racing.
"The world's greatest race now isn't Indianapolis or even Le Mans," he says. "It's a race among manufacturers to discover and develop more efficient and energy-sustainable transportation solutions for the future."
Kevin Cogan
Hot-shoe John Kevin Cogan had a successful Atlantic career and couple of unremarkable F1 starts when he signed to race one of Roger Penske's Indy cars in 1982. Cogan set the single-lap qualifying record at the Speedway and started from the middle of front row. Then, in probably the most infamous start in Indianapolis history, he veered hard right at the green flag, collecting A. J. Foyt and sliding directly into Mario Andretti's path.
It was not good business, taking out the two greatest drivers of their generation, if not the century. Though the exact cause and circumstances of the Cogan incident remain a source of debate 26 years later, Cogan was released by Penske at the end of the season. He kicked around several mostly second-tier teams over the next 10 seasons, occasionally showing flashes of brilliance and suffering through some spectacular wrecks. When he retired after the 1993 season, Cogan had 118 Champ Car starts and 12 at Indianapolis. His lone victory came at Phoenix in 1986, and he was second at Indy the same year. He never quite lived down Indy 1982.
Cogan now lives with an ocean view in Palos Verdes Estates, Calif. He's a successful businessman specializing in residential development.
http://www.autoweek.com/article/20081229/FREE/812299981For the chaps over the pond.
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