Michael Waltrip's NASCAR debut came with Bahari Racing and team owner Chuck Rider in 1987. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
Morning light has not yet reached inside Michael Waltrip’s motorcoach, his home away from home, but still it is quite clear that his big toenails have been painted.
Yes, painted toenails. Some purplish or pinkish color of some sort. And Waltrip’s big toenails are BIG – big enough to have room for a painted M on one and a painted W on the other. Which letter is which? Well, that depends on whether you’re facing Waltrip or standing beside him.
In Waltrip’s world, a lot depends on how you look at him.
This, Waltrip says, is his final season as a full-time Sprint Cup driver. Thus will end a career that began in 1985 as something of a novelty – he was the much, much younger and practically unknown brother of that loudmouth, that television racer, that three-time champion, Darrell Waltrip. He was tall – could he even fit into these cars? – and handsome and determined. And a little goofy. No, a lot goofy, as everyone would discover much later.
All things and races considered, when Waltrip writes the finish to his driving career (he plans to run select races for some time to come) that will mark a significant turn – although not an end – in one of the most remarkable passages in the sport’s history.
The most notable statistic on Waltrip’s résumé is the one that has the big zero at its start. Waltrip ran 462 Cup races before parking his car in victory lane. That’s not a misprint: Four hundred and sixty-two starts, no victories. That long – very long – period in Waltrip’s professional life perhaps is worthy of a book unto itself. For, as Ty Norris, Waltrip’s team manager and one of his closest friends, puts it: “How many drivers do you know today who could be 0-for-462 and still be around?”
Around? Heck, Waltrip is thriving. And he is thriving despite:
• Living in his older brother’s very long shadow.
• Driving almost a decade for an “up-and-coming” team – Bahari Racing, now long defunct – that never made it to up.
• Finally winning in the 2001 Daytona 500 – his initial career victory – only to see himself simultaneously hit in the heart by unspeakable tragedy.
• Gathering his money from all those years to launch his very own Sprint Cup team – the one with the chrome wheels, a touch he demanded – but being battered by a fist to the gut before its first full-season race, the 2007 Daytona 500.
Through the struggle, grief and turmoil, Waltrip emerges as a survivor, a leading team owner, a builder of careers for other drivers and – dare we suggest – now an elder spokesman? One with purple-pink toenails?
“That’s Macy,” Waltrip says, explaining the toenails. “Sometimes I have to let her do what she wants.” Macy, Michael’s 12-year-old daughter, has been along for much of the racing ride enjoyed/endured by her father, who found himself having to explain to her why Daddy really wasn’t a bad guy after the 2007 Daytona 500 controversy involving altered fuel found in his race car.
The fact that Waltrip, 46, not only has two Daytona 500 victories and an improving Sprint Cup team but also perhaps can claim the only toenail paint on the male side of the garage speaks to the two sides of the man. Short of a final retirement and residency at a racers nursing home, we always will have the dynamic blend of Michael
Waltrip, team owner and sporting professional, and Mikey Waltrip, adventurous goofball, auto parts pitchman and a man who couldn’t fully mature even if that’s what he wanted.
And it is at that point in life that Waltrip stands as he looks at a declining driving career and what appears to be a solid future on the ownership side of the sport. He leaves full-time driving knowing that it’s time, that his results in his own cars are lacking, that others can do better.
“My goal this year was to run good enough to justify, in my mind, continuing to drive,” Waltrip says. “We haven’t contended, and we haven’t run at the level that I expect myself to. The smartest thing for me to do was to get Martin [Truex Jr.] to drive my car. I’ve always been a survivor and been able to keep racing and keep running well enough to be on the edge of winning, at least.”
For 2010, Waltrip plans to run at the restrictor-plate tracks – long his favorites – and maybe in a few other races. He also is branching out with pal and team co-owner (and financial savior) Rob Kauffman to run in the 24 Hours of Dubai sports-car race in January and has given some thought to eventually trying, along with Kauffman, the 24 Hours of LeMans in France, the world’s biggest endurance race.
And, along the way, there still will be the Marmaduke mischief for which Waltrip perhaps is best known, including more of those zany commercials in which he outperforms the professional actors simply by being himself.
Another Waltrip Arrives
This all began, really, on the back side of the infield at the old Atlanta International Raceway in 1982 when Michael pulled in with a Goody’s Dash subcompact car to follow Darrell, his accomplished older brother, into NASCAR racing. Few had heard of him – he was 16 years Darrell’s junior, after all, and wasn’t like a slightly younger brother who might wander around alongside his older sibling. However, once it became known that another Waltrip was in the house, a few reporters left the relative comfort of the Cup garage to march over to see what sort of youngster might have the audacity to try to follow an older brother with a big mouth and a bigger future.
Michael, then 20 years old, was tall, gangly, not at all shy and determined, he said, to win at this game. There was no reason he couldn’t. He wanted to, had watched his brother do it from afar and was on his way.
“No one really knew I existed,” Waltrip says. “When I was born, my brother was 16. He was off racing his car. I didn’t even know him, basically. I raced at home and won a championship then went to the Dash series at Atlanta in 1982 and won the championship in ’83. At that point, if you had told me I wasn’t going to win in every series I went into, I would have wondered what was wrong with you.”
Instead, people eventually wondered what was wrong with him.
He got his first big chance by signing with Bahari Racing and team owner Chuck Rider in 1987. The team had an impressive shop, big plans and a fleet of bright yellow race cars. Rider, a nice guy with money to spend and in need of a young driver to build a future around, saw Waltrip as the perfect fit. They could advance together and conquer the world.
Instead, Waltrip and Rider got on a treadmill going nowhere. They weren’t awful, but they didn’t shine. Year after year after year, the team was maddeningly mediocre.
Waltrip had just enough decent finishes and promising runs to make progress seem possible, but there was never a breakthrough. He raced nine seasons for Bahari and saw victory lane only from the outside.
“I wish I had been confident enough in myself at that time,” Waltrip says. “That’s probably the thing I lacked. There was a point in time when I’d been there too long and I needed to do something different and take a chance and be confident in my ability. It wasn’t happening. I didn’t agree with a lot of the choices that were made for me there. I didn’t like it, but I didn’t know what to do. We were right there, but we didn’t get over the hump.”
In 1996, he moved on to Wood Brothers Racing, which was down from its glory years but still held the promise of victory. And he crossed that street – with an asterisk for a disclaimer – in 1996, winning the all-star race at Charlotte. It wasn’t a points race, a fact he would have to read about over and over, but it was a win against the best of competition and, at long last, it proved that hope was alive, that he wouldn’t have to fade into the darkness never having known the joy of a big-time victory in the heat of major pressure.
