Hoseheads Sprint Car Photos & News

Eric Gordon

Manifesto from a Madman

We’re Number One – Son Jake and father Eric celebrate an eighth Gordon Little 500 triumph. (David Sink photo)

Everywhere we look, it’s a watered down world. Low-fat, non-fat, sugar free, caffeine free, diet this, diet that, no MSG, low carb, and lettuce wrapped, the product marketing departments for food and drink corporations attempt to feed on our insecurities, promoting their offerings as healthier choices for leading an enriched life.

Moderation will always be the key but in a health-conscious society, consider the fate of the McDonald’s cherry pie. Once deep fried with cherries as hot as liquid magma, at some point the tasty confection became baked and vents were added, allowing the scalding heat to escape. Healthier, safer, and eventually relegated to limited menu status, in my opinion, the baked version will never compare to deep-fried. Eating is one of life’s simplest pleasures, but if we derive no taste, sensation, or enjoyment, why do we even bother?

For those of us who’ve sampled the various forms of motorsports, few would argue that the purest form available is sprint car racing. Bombarding all the body’s senses, like devouring mouth watering, artery clogging double cheeseburgers and chocolate shakes, attending or participating in a sprint car event is an addictive experience like no other. But much like the aforementioned McDonald’s cherry pie, racing organizations and track operators are finding ways to lessen the impact of sprint car racing, trying to make the once barbaric sport more user-friendly.

Pulling positive safety innovations aside, things like wings, wide tires, mufflers, minimum weight rules, curfews, dry slick surfaces, and the addition of provisional starting spots all reduce sprint car racing’s volatility and purity. Today’s formula seems tame when compared to decades ago when drivers toiled in t-shirts without the protection of roll cages, but wouldn’t you rather enjoy your sprint car racing as deep-fried as possible? It’s all about savoring the experience, right?

The emasculation of sprint car racing is just one indication of a watered down world where so many things are less harsh and more politically correct. Today’s generation of youthful sprint car drivers serve as a prime example. Auditioning to become million-dollar remote controlled corporate robots operated by NASCAR that the Sunday afternoon audiences adore, whatever happened to the original, deep-fried formula of the sprint car shoe? I don’t know about you, but baked simply bores me.

I’m talking about men who liked to pull pranks, speak their mind, and defend their turf if necessary. Hard-nosed racers who lived life on the edge, they celebrated with equal intensity and shook off the effects to race the next day. And what about those who pulled a forty or fifty hour work week, toiling until 1 or 2 in the morning night after night to ready a racecar for Friday? Those guys are still my heroes.

First impressions mean everything and my earliest exposure recognized true-blue sprint car racers like Jack Hewitt, Sheldon Kinser, Rich Vogler, Steve Butler, Tray House, Jac Haudenschild, Rick Hood, Bob Kinser, Chuck Amati, Robbie Stanley, Kevin Thomas, Tony Elliott, and Dave Darland. Colorful characters full of personality and life; they held nothing back, took chances and even climbed in less than stellar equipment just to get the opportunity to compete. Hardcore racers to the bone, they lived, ate, and breathed the sport, appreciative of its history and willing to sacrifice nearly everything to survive and succeed.

Chauffeurs from that era are quickly becoming extinct, as very few from the above list are still active. One name previously unmentioned who could certainly fit into that deep-fried category is Mohawk, Indiana native Eric Gordon, who after twenty years in the sport has certainly paid his dues, is not afraid of telling the truth, and owns several afternoons of stories worth listening to.

Starting his sprinting in the fall of 1985 at Chillicothe, Ohio, he was an infrequent World of Outlaws, All Stars, USAC and United Sprint Association combatant in those early days and after a trio of winged wins in 1988 at Liberty, Indiana, he changed paths and became a USAC regular for 1989, adding asphalt assignments to his syllabus. Rookie of the year and second to Rich Vogler in the championship chase, he notched his name into the esteemed sanctioning body’s record books by nipping Bob Frey at Toledo, Ohio in September of that same season.

Just a year later, near wins at the Indy Mile and IRP and a trophy hoisting in Milwaukee got him to within eleven points of a Silver Crown championship in yet another stellar rookie campaign. Trained in the virtues of blue-collar work ethic, honesty, and humbleness by his father Fay, he was also taught to be fiercely loyal to those who helped him along the way. As you will eventually learn, that loyalty cost him his best shot at a big-time championship.

Three times settling for second in the USAC sprint car standings, another three times of having to stomach a hard-fought third, once fourth and another time fifth, in Gordon’s twenty plus years of USAC competition, a coveted championship somehow managed to escape his grasp. In a sick form of irony, Eric did manage to claim the 2007 PRA Big Car title in an abnormally abbreviated three race schedule, but that series is no longer around to allow him the honor of defending a championship crown.

Champagne Shower – After winning his 8^th Little 500 in 2007, Eric prepares to celebrate. (David Sink photo)

When car owners did not come through on their original promises, Eric’s allegiance to honoring commitments and a necessity to put food on the table blocked any possibilities of bailing. Guided by those simple principles instilled by his dad, the satisfaction of living life to the specifications of his own moral obligations may not have been evident in those early years, but at the end of the deal, titles or not, at least he can say he did things the right way.

Earning star status just before “the other” Gordon became a household name to millions, once Jeff found Southern options to his satisfaction one would have assumed that USAC would be Eric’s playground and he would not be far behind. If only life were that easy, perhaps he too could have joined his namesake in the suffocating lifestyle of the NASCAR racer. Enjoying his freedom and the badge of honor that comes from being a lifelong open wheeled warrior, maybe things do happen for a reason?

Still, in those early 1990s, he did manage to test the waters of NASCAR, dipping his toes at IRP in August of 1993 after his initial Little 500 victory a few months earlier. But after a planned full season of Busch bashing stalled out in 1994 Daytona rookie orientation, he returned to focus full-time on USAC. Unfortunately, home cooking did not taste so good this time around.

Forced to make up the difference and over-extend himself in many of his sprint car deals, so many times he not only raced the equipment but also maintained it, acted as the chief mechanic, and shoved toothpicks in his eyelids to make the long haul home afterwards. Painful injuries from midget (Lakeside ’91) and sprint (Eldora ’92) spills added to the difficulties of battling week after week with Stanley, Butler, Keeker, Irwin, Bliss, Stewart, Michner, Kalitta, Tyler, and Steele.

Quality seats were few and far between and the loss of his longtime friend Robbie Stanley was extremely hard to overcome. The 1995 season was particularly demoralizing after a championship run with Dick Fuller imploded, with many outsiders placing uninformed blame on the driver. Scrounging a ride for the ’96 opener, after loading the car in a rented Ryder truck and towing all the way to Odessa, Missouri, he claimed a stunning victory, showing Fuller and the rest of the USAC faithful just how badly he wanted to race – and win.

His next two years were without question his most difficult, as for the first time in his adult life racing took a back seat. Serious health issues for both his father and wife kept his mind and heart occupied. But just before Fay’s passing, he would be there to witness Eric’s second Little 500 score. Essentially rideless and with serious medical bills mounting, at a career crossroads Gordon teamed with Waynetown, Indiana’s Jack French for a spirited and emotional come from behind victory, overtaking Bentley Warren late in the going.

Rejuvenating his financial outlook and desire to race, that pairing with French proved to be one of his best decisions ever, winning with him three years later, the first of five Little 500 victories in a row for the combination. Also producing top dollar in 2007 for Mike Bowman, Eric’s record-setting eight Little 500 wins seems insurmountable, as it is doubtful that there will be anyone else as passionate and focused on succeeding in that mentally draining and physically demanding event.

After 1998, twice more he would campaign an entire USAC sprint car season but since 2001, he has limited his appearances. Calling Mike Bowman’s Banjo Corporation sprint car team home since 2002, now working a full-time construction job, operating his own business in off hours, and acting as husband and father to a teenage daughter and a seven year old son who so desperately wants to race quarter midgets, there has been talk that 2008 will be Eric Gordon’s last year of competition from behind the wheel.

Normally quiet, pensive, and private, recently Eric offered a rare opportunity to talk in depth about the last twenty years of racing; open, honest, and without filter. As deep-fried as they come, Eric will be the first to admit the craziness of his actions at times in chasing his dreams, calling himself a “nut” for being so hardcore in his pursuit. But at the end of it all, despite not nearly achieving everything he had hoped for while staring off into space during elementary school art class, he is now able to look at the big picture and fully appreciate the opportunities, excitement, and adventure of being a lifelong sprint car competitor. It was never an easy road to follow, but those vital lessons and values learned from his father prepared him for every step along the way.

Traffic Master – Gordon peeks low in heavy 2007 Glen Niebel Classic traffic. (David Sink photo)

A special thank you goes out to Mike Bowman for providing his impressive racing compound as the setting to reflect on the last two decades. Another huge thank you is extended to Anderson, Indiana photographer David Sink, who went out of his way to dig up some special shots of Eric. If you find yourself interested in purchasing some of David’s pictures, shoot him a message at MRLITTLE500@aol.com. One would think that e-mail address should be reserved for Gordon, but it only seems natural that someone equally passionate about the Little 500 should aid in celebrating Gordon’s storied career.

Without further interruption, enjoy!

KO: Remember the newspaper from the early 1990s called Sprint Car? They used to have driver bios where they asked some basic questions. I always enjoyed that section, getting to know the personal side of drivers. So if I may, I’d like to do the same with you.

KO: Hometown/Current residence?

EG: Hometown is Greenfield and current residence is Indianapolis (Acton).

KO: Ahhhhhh….The Acton Assassin?

EG: Yeah, that’s what I’ve heard.

KO: Current family – wife, children?

EG: Wife – Jamie and I have two kids. I have a son Jake who is 7 and I have a daughter Erica who will be 13 on April 1^st.

KO: Brothers and sisters?

EG: I have four sisters and a brother.

KO: Current job?

EG: Construction.

Tire Man – Eric’s son Jake inspects Hoosier rubber at the Bowman shop, anxious to get his own career started. (Sam Brooks photo)

KO: Favorite track(s), least favorite track?

EG: I had a lot of favorite tracks. I don’t know if there’s just one. There’s a lot of neat places in this country that you can run. But there’s also a lot of crap holes you can run at too. I really can’t answer that. We used to run down there at I-44 in Missouri and I always thought that was a neat place.

KO: I would think Anderson would be pretty high on your list.

EG: Of course Anderson Speedway is a place that means a lot to me. I can’t stress how much it has meant to me and my career. They’ve done a lot of things for me over the years. And if it wasn’t for the help of guys like Glen Niebel, Jack French, and Mike Bowman, I wouldn’t be where I am today.

KO: You liked Berlin didn’t you?

EG: I like Berlin. I like the banks. There’s a lot of neat places to go. There’s places we went to that were NASCAR associated facilities that were beautiful. I really liked running the big tracks like Phoenix and Richmond.

KO: What about Milwaukee?

EG: Milwaukee wasn’t bad but it wasn’t near as nice a facility as Phoenix. Phoenix was just great. Colorado was great too. But there were a lot of absolute crap holes that we ran at too.

KO: Favorite food?

EG: I don’t know. Beer? My favorite would have to be Chinese. General Tso’s chicken or something like that.

KO: Favorite restaurant?

EG: Wherever they have the Chinese at and it’s properly cooked.

KO: Favorite band – music?

EG: That changes. I’ll go through phases where I’ll listen to somebody like Korn for awhile. Metallica. And then I get into the classic stuff with Skynyrd or Allman Brothers Band. And then I’ll listen to something like Limp Bizkit for awhile. That changes constantly. I don’t stay in one spot too long on anything. You always have to have constant change.

Timing Light Tango – Gordon is in the middle of his four lap qualifying run for the 2007 Little 500. (David Sink photo)

KO: If you ever had any time to watch TV, do you have a favorite show or movie?

EG: Anything on The History Channel.

KO: Favorite sports teams? Judging from your sweatshirt it looks like you are a fan of the Buckeyes.

EG: Yeah. Ohio State football. Although I don’t want to talk about the last two years in the BCS.

KO: Heroes?

EG: Actually, anyone who puts in their time at work during the week and goes home and takes care of their kids.

KO: Dreams as a kid?

EG: To be a professional racecar driver.

KO: All-time favorite drivers to race against, or are there too many?

EG: There’s a lot of good guys that I raced against. Yeah, there’s too many – the same deal as racetracks. I’ve run too long. There’s a lot of good guys that you raced against and then there’s a lot of first class assholes you raced against too.

KO: Personal vehicle? I imagine it’s your work truck.

EG: Yeah, I have a GMC pickup truck.

KO: If you didn’t grow up to be a racecar driver, what else did you want to do?

EG: That was it. I didn’t have a backup plan. That was the whole deal.

KO: All right, now on to the rest of the questions. Take me back to those Big Z quarter midget days, the mecca at I-74 and Post Road.

EG: I drive by that every day.

KO: How did you get interested in racing in the first place?

EG: I grew up in a little town called Mohawk, outside of Greenfield. There was a kid in town named Jamie Matthews who had quarter midgets. We were buddies and we ran around together and I was just fascinated with those quarter midgets to the point to where I finally pestered my dad into getting one and that’s how it started. We ran at Big Z and over at Columbus indoors at the fairgrounds and just all over the Midwest.

KO: How old were you when you started?

EG: About Jake’s age – I was about seven.

KO: Any competitors’ names that you remember?

EG: That’s where I met Robbie Stanley at. We were less than one day apart in age and we started about the same time. That’s where we met and became friends. I also raced against Stevie Reeves. Jimmy Vasser. Mike Groff. Robbie Groff. There’s a few others in there too.

Thinking Man – Eric is deep in thought before PRA action at Lakeland, Florida in December of 2006. (David Sink photo)

KO: What was the atmosphere like there?

EG: It was pretty neat. You could go out and play football, tag, or play with hot wheels or whatever. Then, as soon as your parents yelled at you that your race was getting ready to come up you’d run back into your pit area, put your helmet on, and hop in the car and beat on each other. Then when the race was over and the parents were working on stuff you went back out and played football.

KO: Nowadays, even in quarter midgets there is tons of money involved, with parents towing with massive toter homes and shelling out top dollar for the latest in engine and shock technology. Back when you started, was there money involved or was it just talent, skill, and desire?

EG: Well I’m sure there was money to a degree. But when you’re that age you didn’t pay attention to it. Everybody back then threw their cars into the back of a pickup truck. I remember them having station wagons and the cars had removable roll cages – and just throwing it in the back of the car. If you had a trailer, you were big time. I remember when one of the first enclosed trailers I saw rolled in. We all thought that an Indy car had come rolling into town. Oddly enough, that was Jeff Gordon. He came rolling in with a 24 foot enclosed trailer. Everybody thought – wow, there’s big money.

Sam Brooks: Didn’t you say back then that your driving suit was a leather jacket?

EG: Yeah, it was a leather jacket with leather gloves. And a helmet. There was no Nomex. There were no five point seat belts. They just got roll cages a couple of years before that.

KO: What kind of success did you have at an early age?

EG: I won a bunch of races. I don’t know how many I won – hundreds of races in those cars.

KO: At what point did you know that you were ready to jump to sprint cars?

EG: When my dad told me I was. You’ve got to retire from quarter midgets by the time you’re 16. I got out long before then. It’s like soap box derby – once you start growing and gaining weight, it’s hard to compete against someone like my son who is skin and bones. We talked about it – actually we were going to get in a three-quarter midget and we didn’t have very much money, so we knew we were only going to be able to get one thing. I worked a couple of summers for my dad – not for pay – just to save up money to get something. We decided we were going to spend the same amount of money on a used sprint car that we were on a used midget or a used three quarter and it should be able to run more places for more money. So that’s how I jumped straight into a sprint car.

KO: So what age was that when that finally happened?

EG: Fourteen I think.

KO: What kind of equipment did you have?

EG: I bought a used Oz-Car with a steel 377 in it. It didn’t have power steering. It had the wing. I don’t even remember who I bought it off of. Oh – I bought it off of Ron Stanley but he had bought out someone else. He was wanting their open trailer. They had an open trailer that had three racks on it for the tires which was a big deal. He wanted the trailer and I got the car. It was something like that. He had bought somebody out who had ran it a few times. But it had a steel 377 with the Pink steel rods. I don’t even know what heads were on it. And real small – like 2 inch injectors. No power steering. It had the in and out box. It didn’t have the nice rear ends like we have now. It was a real piece of crap but at the time I thought it was the neatest thing in the world.

I remember stepping on the gas the first time at a wing show. The first show I ever ran was at Chillicothe, Ohio with a wing. That’s a fast joint – 3/8ths mile. I remember the first time I stepped on the gas going down the backstretch. I thought a bomb went off. I just thought that was the most instantaneous power I’d ever felt in my life!

The Team – Standing from left to right are Brent Elmore, Mike Bowman, Sam Brooks, Jim Dillon, Eric Gordon, and Mike Thompson. (KO photo)

KO: So that might have been around 1986?

EG: I think I ran a few shows at the end of ’85.

KO: Would you have gone to Mount Vernon High School near Fortville?

EG: Yeah. I graduated from Mount Vernon High School in ’86.

KO: Were you a good student there? Did you play any sports?

EG: Yeah, I played sports. I was on the wrestling team. I won three sectionals, a regional and I made it into the state tournament where I got my fanny thumped in the first round.

KO: So as far as hitting the books…?

EG: That wasn’t an option. I never cracked a book and I got decent grades. I actually got good enough grades and a good enough score on my SAT that I was actually accepted to Ball State University on an engineering degree. Every kid that my mom and dad had went to college except me. My older sisters and brother graduated from Ohio State. My younger sisters went to University of Indianapolis. They wanted me to go to school. And I was going to go to Ball State because it was close to home. I was registered for school – the room and the whole deal. I was going to go with a friend of mine, that way we’d pair up and we’d know who our roommate was. I stiffed him and never showed up. I figured if I went to college for four years that I was going to miss out on running the sprint car and my career would be completely over with and done. That would be four years you wouldn’t be able to get back. I remember having an argument with my parents. They said you can run a sprint car when you get out of college. I said, “No you can’t. You’ll miss that four years and never be able to get it back.” Ryan Newman went to college and proved that wrong.

KO: To my knowledge, in the early days you were a winged racer at places like Bloomington, Paragon, and Liberty. So why not a wingless racer at Putnamville and Kokomo?

EG: Because my dad didn’t want me running without the wing until I was 18. And my mom didn’t even know I was running. When I first started running the sprint car, she didn’t even know I was running because my dad knew that my mom would kill him. And I remember I got hurt at Gas City and had to have plastic surgery because I got my face cut up real bad. On the way home, we were trying to figure out what we were going to tell my mom because obviously she was going to figure it out as soon as we opened the door. And we concocted some lame story and told her with a straight face. She said, “Just how stupid do you think I am?” And we said well – that’s what happened. I never told her I ran a sprint car. When I ran on the Thursday Night Thunder shows and Saturday Night Thunder shows, she wouldn’t watch the race. She’d sit out on the front porch and make one of my sisters watch the race and then they’d come out and tell her when the race was over and how I did and where I finished. Then she’d go back in the house.

KO: The first time I really remember noticing your name was when you made a World of Outlaws feature through your heat race at Bloomington in September of 1987. If I may recall, you might have even won the heat race. Knowing that you had made the feature against that kind of a field, were you nervous at all in the moments leading up to the feature?

EG: I was probably just wanting to make enough money to get home that night. Really. The outlaws paid good money. You usually spent your rent and gas money trying to make the show. You were running against Wolfgang, Swindell, and Kinser and Bobby Allen and all those guys. Plus back then you had ten Kinsers running too. In fact that night, didn’t they have the Kinser Klash where they had all the Kinsers run against each other? There were like 10 or 12 of them that made up their own feature. Dallas was running then. Sheldon, Kelly, Randy…and you had Mickey Smith who was related. Who was the other guy who was related to them?

But there was a bunch of them. I wasn’t so much nervous about it as I was wanting to make sure I made enough money to get home and make it to the next race.

KO: Your good friend Sam Brooks recently told me that you are/were a pretty big Sammy Swindell fan.

EG: (Laughing) I was!

Thanks Tracy – Preparing to uncork his own champagne bottle after winning the first-ever PRA meet at Illiana, Eric gets doused by second place finisher Tracy Hines. (David Sink photo)

KO: At least at the time, what traits did you admire in him and did you ever approach him as an up and coming racer seeking advice or help?

EG: Yeah, yeah. Before I’d started running sprint cars or when I first started running sprint cars – Robbie Stanley got his sprint car before I got mine and I went to the races down there at Paragon to help him out to see what was all involved. I was helping his brother change tires and stuff like that. I went to a World of Outlaws show down there at Paragon and Sammy was running the Old Milwaukee cruiser for Raymond Beadle. I just thought that was the neatest deal I’d seen. He always keeps his stuff spotless. He was meticulous. He has good work ethic. I always admired him for that. He raced it. He wrenched on it. I had Sammy Swindell shirts and the whole bit.

And in ’92, Robbie and I were hanging out in Foyt’s garage at the Speedway because they were talking about putting a third car together for Snider to run. And we were trying to leech on there in the garage to get on the crew for that team. We were going to help out, get experience, shake hands, and try to get in at the Speedway. Robbie and I were walking around on pit lane one day and Sammy Swindell walked up. He was asking Robbie a question and Robbie went to introduce him to me. And the prick wouldn’t even shake my hand. I went home that night and threw my Sammy Swindell shirt away. I ain’t thought much of him since. Robbie introduced me to him and he lifted his arm up real slow and his hand real slow and he acted like he didn’t want to shake my hand. So I thought – here’s a guy I had mistakenly put on a pedestal. His boy gets it honest, let’s put it that way.

KO: I remember seeing the Oz-Car name on your car in Liberty victory lane photos in Speed Sport News during the summer of ’88. It seems like I was reading your name quite a bit. How many feature wins did you have there that summer?

EG: I remember we won three in a row. I do remember that. We won three in a row and finished second and other than that, I don’t remember.

KO: Was that a big confidence booster for you?

EG: Yeah, that was. It was to a point where it was going to be a make or break deal. And then we had kind of gotten hooked up with a group of people who had ran with me for a long time: Tony Epperson and Jay Manship, who was a crew member who went on the road with me for a long time. And Oz, with the brand new car. I’m trying to remember who did the motors then. I can’t remember if it was Hickernell-Williams or Donnie Ray Everett. But that was a neat car. I really liked that car.

KO: At that time, did you have a special relationship with Lee Osborne? Any thoughts on the man?

EG: Well, I looked at him as a mentor. Here was a guy who could not only drive the car, he won three championships with the All Stars, then he’d go back to his shop in Jamestown, which was a little mini barn basically, with a heater in it, and he’d build 85 cars a year. 85 chassis a year! The best year he had I think he told me was over 100, but he was building 85 cars a year. He was building cars for Randy Wolfe from PA. He’d have guys like Karl Kinser calling him on the phone. And Foyt. And Snider. Haudenschild would stop in with his World of Outlaws team. It just seemed like that little bitty barn there in Jamestown was the center of the sprint car world, at least at that time in my life it was.

KO: That’s cool. Moving on to 1989, you started the season at East Alabama with the USA, but then you ventured out and put together a full-time USAC effort, which at the time was primarily winged dirt events along with wingless pavement. You already mentioned the name of Tony Epperson and then there was Lester. Both names were proudly displayed on the car – big and bold. How did the relationship form with those two men and what kind of influence did they have on you?

EG: Lester was Tony Epperson’s partner. He wasn’t into the racing. He was into horses. That was Tony’s deal. Tony was in the commercial construction business just like my dad, my uncle, and I am. Basically it was from work. Tony was just a fan of sprint car racing. He’s a good old boy. He just started going out to the races as manual help. He went to races with us for years. However he could help us out, he’d help us out. He also got to be a very good referee. He was a really good buffer between me and my dad. We’d have knock down, drag out fights - screaming matches - because we were at work together all the time. We were working all the time just to keep the lights on at the house. His business wasn’t doing well, so that meant I was working more for free. And I was tired and irritable. He was tired and irritable. And we’d just come undone on each other, just like every father and son. And Tony would always be there to split us up and calm us down.

One time I ran the Florida Fairgrounds – where was that – Tampa? It was during Sprintweeks. It was the All Stars. There were 70 some cars there. And they said, “We don’t have time to screw around. You get in line for qualifying. If you’re not in line for qualifying where you’re supposed to be, you only get one lap. We’re going to penalize you one lap.” I don’t know who it was because if I knew, I’d tell you. But some moron jumps out of line and goes all the way to the front, because the track’s going to be shot. So he jumped out of line and went all the way to the front and got his two laps. So that made all the rest of us, the back twenty cars, get penalized, because we were technically out of line. So we get one lap. I go out and run my one lap there at the end. I came in and my dad goes, “Why did you only run one lap?” I said, “Somebody jumped out of line and we all got penalized.” And he came undone. We had an observation deck on top of the trailer with lawn chairs. And he was sitting up there pouting. And I go up there to see what we’re going to do for the heat race. And I sit down in a lawn chair and he looks at me and goes, “What are you doing?” I said, “What do you mean what am I doing?” He said, “Don’t sit in that lawn chair.” I said, “What are you talking about?” He said, “That’s Rocky Hodges’s lawn chair. Get out of that lawn chair.” I said, “What are you talking about?” He says, “That’s who we’re hiring to drive that car the rest of Sprintweeks. You need to get out of Rocky’s lawn chair.” And I looked at him and said, “ARE YOU SERIOUS?” And he said, “Yeah, I’m serious.” And I stood up and folded that lawn chair and threw that lawn chair as far as I could off that trailer. And I said, “Screw you and screw Rocky Hodges and go get Rocky’s chair.” Actually, I said some other words. I had to climb down the side of the trailer and there again was Tony Epperson. My dad was up there laughing his fanny off because I did that. But Tony put that fire out. He was good at putting fires out. He and my uncle Jerry were very good at that.

PRA Hardware – Winner of the South Shore 125 in June of 2006, Gordon displays the fruits of his labor to photographer David Sink.

KO: Later on in that ’89 season, your pavement prowess was pretty evident. You had finishes of 8^th, 8^th, 7^th, 7^th, 6^th, 5^th, 7^th, and 4^th before your first USAC win at Toledo on September 10^th of 1989. What was your key to such early pavement adaptation? Was it from running winged sprint cars where they teach you to drive straight? Was it the car that had the parallel bars in the front? Was it a certain mechanic’s expertise? It was probably a combination of everything, right?

EG: Well, the car had a lot to do with it. Lee and Phil Shuler built that car. It was a parallel bar front which no one had done since Paul Leffler had done it.

KO: Things were clicking?

EG: Yeah. But we had excellent motors then too. One thing I will say is that we always had good motors. We’d argue over everything. You know. I remember when we first started running a winged car. Everybody would be changing torsion bars. Everybody would be changing their tires and their stagger as the night wore on. But my dad would say, “Just put fuel in it and run it.” And I’d say, “Evidently we’re supposed to be changing on these bolts – that’s why they have adjusters.” And he’d say, “Nope. You just need to learn how to drive it.” And we’d argue and argue and argue. And that pavement car, me and Jay just kind of disregarded him. Tony would always take him to get a hot dog and when he took him we’d change the stagger, the gears, and the shocks real quick. And we kind of hit on something to where that car was starting to click.

KO: So that first win at Toledo, you beat Bob Frey and Glen Niebel that night. I’m sure you have memories of that first win at Toledo, correct?

EG: I was just relieved. Because there again, it was literally, we were going to have money to run a couple more weeks.

KO: You finished 2^nd in points to Rich Vogler in 1989, claiming rookie of the year honors. Just 21 years of age at that time, you already had decent success and at that time, that was a young age. You said that you were working full-time with your dad but did your success in ’89 give you false visions of grandeur, thinking that maybe you could survive off your racing full-time, making a living?

EG: Well, that’s about the time I went full time. Actually, there for a few years I did race full-time. That’s how I paid the bills. That’s what I ate off of. No, it wasn’t illusions of grandeur. You got to the point where you were running that many shows that you were going to have to decide what you were doing. In ’90, I ran 100 races. I went to Australia and ran down there in the winter. And then I came up and started at the Copper and ran clear up until El Centro, right after Turkey Night. 11 months…but there’s no way you can run all those shows and work. I felt I wasn’t getting paid to work anyway, so I might as well go race. And taking care of the cars too was a full-time deal.

KO: Early into the 1990 season, you had a memorable week around the Indy 500. You won on a Sunday night at IRP for your second career USAC victory. Then a couple of weeks later, you led 44 of 60 laps of the Hulman Hundred on Memorial day, but a broken oil pump sidelined you in only your second Silver Crown start. Given the great run on the mile, were you heartbroken or excited about the possibilities?

EG: I was sick to my stomach that particular day. Jack Hewitt was second, in Hamp’s car. I was going to beat Jack Hewitt, in Hamp’s car, at the Fairgrounds. And you don’t get that many opportunities. And because of a rubber belt, not only did it cost me a chance at doing that, but if that belt would have stayed on, I would have won the championship that first year out, not Jimmy Sills. You know: woulda, coulda, shoulda. We all have those.

KO: Debuting 9^th at the Copper, you had a very strong initial Silver Crown campaign. After Phoenix, Indy, and an 18^th at Sacramento, you led 89 of 100 IRP laps but in another heartbreaker ended up 3^rd to Snider and Schrader. I remember you were a very humble guy, thanking Phil Shuler on ESPN. How did you get hooked up with Shuler?

EG: Phil started out with me specifically on the champ car because that’s something I never messed with before. I had no idea what I was getting into. That first year, that’s all Phil did pretty much – most of that year – was taking care of the champ car. He had worked for Foyt and he quit Foyt’s Indy car team and had come back to Indiana and was wanting to get into racing part time again. So the champ car really appealed to him. And I loved champ cars. I really liked that 81 champ car too. That was a neat, neat car. When that car was built and rolled out of Oz’s shop, the day it rolled out of that shop it was the most technologically advanced champ car around. You know, that was pre-Beast, pre anything else. That was it. That was as good a car you were going to get at that day, which made my job a lot easier.

KO: So what did Shuler bring to the table that helped you be so successful right out of the box?

EG: Well, on those champ cars it’s a big deal to not have anything fall off and to also be ahead of the curve on fatigue. That’s the main thing. That’s what he brought. He knew how many miles you could run on a crank before you had to get ‘em swapped out. He knew how many miles on a clutch. He knew how you were going to abuse a clutch and if you take all that stuff off a guy’s mind who is normally driving it, taking care of it, and driving it to the track, it makes your life a lot easier. Phil is a grouchy, grouchy individual. But, nothing fell off his car. He was very good at being ahead of the fatigue curve. Stuff usually didn’t break on his car because it was worn out.

Straight and Smooth – Looking at the placement of Gordon’s hands in this shot from Lakeland, Florida, he has the right mindset for pavement. (David Sink photo)

KO: That definitely helps on 100 mile races.

EG: Yep, yep. You have to run the 100 miles first before you win it. He just had experience dealing with those cars so that put us a lot further ahead than other people.

KO: 1990, at least in my mind, are the good old days. It wasn’t too long after I just started getting into sprint cars, champ cars, and midgets. Things seemed to be a lot different then than now. Do you wish you could go back to those days and savor those solid runs and that kind of innocent success?

EG: There were a lot of things that happened that year that I didn’t really understand or comprehend at the time. The other reason too that I ran really well in the sprint car and champ car was because I was a contract driver for Goodyear. I mean, I was Goodyear’s guy. And they were at war with Hoosier. So I wasn’t paying for tires. If Hoosier beat them the week before, Goodyear’s engineers would make a tire that was going to beat them this week. I got a truck, once a week, from Akron, Ohio, with some tire that had a goofy name on the side of it that said run two laps only – take it off the rim and ship it back for destruction. It was a tire war. That’s what I remember. It was an all-out tire war at that time and I benefited from it. I was Goodyear’s guy. I was lucky. They were a Fortune 500 company. They were into every kind of racing in the world. And I’m their man! But when they left the sport too, though, they also left me out there alone.

KO: So later during the summer of 1990, you landed one of the top midget rides in the country in the Larry Howard 71 for Kokomo and IRP. How did that come about?

EG: I think Gary Sokola had talked to him because he called me right after that race in the champ car at IRP. He said he was going to be swinging through the Midwest. What he did at the time, he took care of the Dave Ellis cars that P.J. Jones drove. And they always carried extra cars. And he said if P.J. wasn’t tied up, they wanted me to run a car, or they were going to run two cars or something. And he had the best stuff you could get, equipment-wise. He had Ellis chassis and he had Fontana engines. But they also told you up front - I remember going over to the shop that they were using off 15^th Street. It was somebody’s old Indy car shop and they told you up front that P.J. was their guy. American Racing was their sponsor. That was P.J.’s sponsor and if P.J. needed something, P.J. got it. You were a second class citizen. They told you that going in. If you had a problem with it, they’d find somebody else. If you didn’t have a problem with it, they’d do everything they could to make you fast. So I thought it would be cool to run for Larry Howard. So I did it.

KO: So was it a good deal or were you the second class citizen?

EG: No, I can say I ran for Larry Howard.

KO: Not a lot of guys can say that. The drivers of his cars are all top notch.

EG: If you are going to do this for a certain period of time, there were certain people I wanted to say I ran for when I left. And I’ve been able to get most of them.

KO: Looking at the rest of the 1990 Silver Crown summer – you were 7^th in the Hoosier Hundred, 2^nd at Springfield, 9^th at DuQuoin, and then the win at Milwaukee after taking the lead from Dave Blaney with 3 to go. I don’t know if Blaney ran out of fuel or whatever, but with three to go, you were the leader. Everything was clicking and happening so quickly for you. How were you handling all that success?

EG: Well, I was able to eat. We were making money. It was $10,000 to win at Milwaukee. I was so happy that I went out drinking with Jimmy Sills until 4 o’clock in the morning. He took me. And he bought! That was even better yet! I crawled in the next morning. I rode the truck back to Indianapolis. I rode the hauler. I didn’t drive it that day.

KO: That’s cool!

EG: Yeah, but back then, you didn’t have the migration south. Back then, it was still the illusion of Indy. I was born and raised in Central Indiana. I used to sit in art class in elementary school drawing up Indy cars with my name on them. That’s what I wanted to do - run the Indianapolis 500. Then you start getting to the stage where you have some success and all of a sudden, people come out of the woodwork, saying, “You want to run the Speedway?” And I’m like – sure, that’s all I ever wanted to do. And that’s kind of when you learn how the world really works. Sure, we’d love to have you in our car. All you got to do is bring X amount of dollars. And I was in shock! I was like, “Pay to drive a racecar?” No, I’m not going to pay to drive a racecar. I haven’t even taken the tour bus around the speedway because I felt that was sacrilegious. If I was going to make a lap around the speedway, it was going to be in a car, an Indy 500 car. That’s just how I felt. I’d get physically ill at the racetrack because I wanted to run there so bad. I’d get worked up. After ’92, that kind of passed really easy.

Storyteller – Extremely patient, Eric awaits another question in a grueling three and a half hour long interview. (Sam Brooks photo)

KO: At the Eldora finale, your new buddy and points leader Jimmy Sills crashed early. Unable to capitalize, you started and finished 7^th, falling 11 points short of the title.

EG: If we would have had McCrearys on that day, we would have won the championship. I have a loyalty thing, a loyalty issue until it faults. I remember before that feature started, Chuck Kopatchee, who was the head of short track racing for Goodyear, came to me, and he said, “We do not have a dirt tire than can compete with McCreary, today, at this track. It will not happen. I do not want to cost you a championship. Goodyear officially gives you a release to run McCrearys at this track.”

And I didn’t do it! I rode the pony this far. I’m gonna ride it the rest of the way. And he begged and pleaded with me to run McCrearys. And I wouldn’t have anything to do with it. And as soon as that feature was over, I realized I should have run McCrearys.

KO: Was that a crushing defeat or was it too early for you to realize how significant a Silver Crown or any USAC championship would be?

EG: It was too early for me. I thought, well I’ll just get it next year. It’s no big deal. I’ll just get it next year.

KO: Talking about it today, you second guessed yourself. Do you still second guess yourself? Or do you still feel good because you were loyal?

EG: That’s just how I am. With Goodyear giving me tires, it enabled me to become a full-time racer. If Goodyear had not given me tires, I wouldn’t have been able to race full-time. That was saving me $30,000 a year.

KO: Wow, back then that was A LOT!

EG: Today, that’s a lot! But we were running 100 shows. Anything I got in, it had Goodyear tires on it. And Goodyear supplied them. I felt, in my heart of hearts that I was going to run the Indianapolis Motor Speedway some day and Goodyear tires, at the time, were at the Speedway. I felt obliged to stick with them.

KO: You picked up another sprint car win at Berlin in 1990 but again that year you had to settle for 2^nd in points. Remembering just how many dirt winged races USAC had on their schedule, how tough was it just making the shows when so many All Star and World of Outlaw guys would come in and cherry pick?

EG: They weren’t hard to make, but they were hard to win because of what you just said. I didn’t mind running with the wing because that’s what I started running on. I really had a hard time when USAC did away with the wing entirely and went straight to non-wing. We were behind on technology. It takes a whole different car to do it right. It’s like dirt and pavement. You had no prayer to win one of those shows because Bobby Allen would come in or Wolfgang…whatever Outlaw guy needed money was going to come in and run. Whatever All Star guy needed to pay a tire bill that had mounted up was going to come in and wax everybody’s fanny.

KO: You had a few battles with the other Gordon, that being Jeff of course. I’m sure there was some confusion having the same last name. How many times did uninformed people ask if you two were related?

EG: I lost count. No really. I have no idea. At one point, it irritated me. But you know what, it doesn’t anymore. I’ve got a kid with the same EXACT name down at IU you know. I’ve gotten phone calls at the house looking for him. You know when he got hurt a doctor called my house offering some treatment that was going to get him back on the court. I said – you watch – he’ll get drafted by the Pacers and I’ll have to put up with it for 16 more years!

KO: How weird is it to be seeing your name on the news and reading your name in the paper so much?

EG: It’s not, because the Jeff Gordon deal got me prepared for it. It’s no big deal. I’ll tell you a funny story about Tony Epperson while I’m thinking about it. He’s a super guy. I’d give him the shirt off my back if he needed it. If there was anything he needed, he’s just one of those people. He’s just a good dude. He used to ride with us in the hauler. We had a crew cab dually and an enclosed trailer back then. We were going to Hazard, Kentucky for a USAC race. Have they already told you this one?

KO: Yeah, but I want your version.

EG: Well, we pull in there. It’s raining off and on. Off and on. We pull in and all the haulers are waiting in line. I’d gotten to know Richard Hoffman and Old Timer because we raced against each other every week. All our haulers are lined up waiting to decide whether or not the race is going to run. The promoter, it was either a woman or it was the promoter’s wife, I don’t know who. But she was from the track and she came down and she was throwing a fit! She goes, “Oh no no! This hauler can’t be here. You’re going to have to cover this trailer up.”

And we’re like, “What’s going on?” And she said, “Don’t you realize who’s on the side of your trailer?” And I’m like, “No. Epperson and Lester. They’re painting contractors out of Indianapolis.” And she goes, “Oh really?” And we explained it to her. And she laughs…she said, “The fans are going to have fun with that tonight. If you hear some guns going off in the stands, people shooting in the air – there used to be a guy here in Hazard, Kentucky named Doc Brown. He was the town doctor who didn’t believe in banks. He kept his money in his mattress at his house. This fella named Epperson found out about it and broke in his house one night, shot him, and stole his money. They’re going to think it’s Epperson, the guy on your car.”

Well, I said, I’ve got Lester on there too. And she goes, “No, no, no! Here’s the best part. He was awaiting trial and this attorney named Lester got him out on bail and they both skipped town.”

Post-Qualifying Pose – Relaxed and smiling, a relieved Gordon is photographed after his 2007 Little 500 qualifying run was complete. (David Sink photo)

KO: WOW! What are the odds? That’s amazing!

EG: We crawled in the trailer real quick and we were trying to find duct tape to cover up the names. Luckily that show got rained out that night but I remember we pulled out of the track and my dad was driving. And he goes, “Man I’m beat and we’ve got to race at Glasgow, Kentucky tomorrow night. Let’s get a hotel here and get some shuteye.” And I was like, “HELL NO! We ain’t staying in Hazard with a hauler that has Epperson and Lester all over it. We’re getting the hell out of town.” And he said, “Awww, there isn’t going to be anybody who will be messing with it.” And we stood there in the parking lot arguing about it for ten minutes. And he finally said, “I’m going in the hotel. You can stay out here in the hauler.” But that was hilarious.

KO: TV and the Thunder Series obviously influenced the career of Jeff Gordon. How did it affect you?

EG: We were able to get a lot of product help a lot easier. I’ve been with Simpson since 1990 as far as factory support goes. I’ve been with Weld Wheels since 1990 with factory support. Just with stuff like that. If they see you on TV, it’s easier to get parts for your racecar. It’s also easier for you to get phone calls from people promising you this or that and then you find out they’re full of crap.

Half the people in racing are full of crap. The other half aren’t.

KO: At least it’s not 60/40!

EG: Some days it seems like it’s 90/10.

KO: People tended to make plenty of comparisons between you and “Flash” Gordon, but at the time did you think there was too much hype surrounding Jeff?

EG: If you win the show, it’s not hype you know. Jeff, from that day, to this day, lives in a glass bowl. Everything he’s ever done has been scrutinized. He gets divorced, it makes the national papers. Nuts to that. It’s crazy, for just wanting to be a racecar driver.

KO: I know how badly Vogler wanted to beat Jeff Gordon. How badly did you want to beat him? Or was he just another guy on the track?

EG: Well, you wanted to beat him. He was Hoosier’s guy at the time. Goodyear was making me special tires to out-qualify Jeff. And Jeff was getting special tires from Hoosier to out-qualify me. But you know what, I took pride in beating a guy like Vogler. I remember going to the Speedway to watch him qualify Jonathan Byrd’s car on bump day. And Rutherford was in Stoops’ car. Watching him qualify, Rutherford went out and bumped him from the show. Vogler hopped in his “T” car. He went out and it was 5:58 but he was going to be able to get his run in AND Rutherford was going to be able to take the track before the gun sounded. So Vogler went onto the backstretch and about parked it, until he heard the gun go off and then he took off. He made it so that if he was going to make the show, Rutherford couldn’t get back in. But Vogler was a guy you wanted to beat. At the time he drove for the Hoffman family who later on I was privileged enough to drive for.

KO: Back to Jeff, did you have any kind of relationship with him at the time?

EG: I mean, we knew each other and we were acquaintances, more so through my good friend Robbie Stanley, because he just lived down the road from Robbie and he’d hang out at Robbie’s shop because he just moved here from California. We knew each other and we were acquaintances. Anytime we see each other now we’ll talk and shake hands but we weren’t buddies.

KO: Speaking of Rich, we of course lost him in that 1990 season at Salem. What about your memories of racing against him?

EG: He was one tough, ornery dude. I mean he was probably 140 pounds soaking wet. But when he put that helmet on, he didn’t care who or what you were, he was going to go over you, under you, through you. Self-determination is what I remember most about Rich Vogler.

KO: Has there been anyone to come along since his passing that’s been more fierce or intense?

EG: No. There’s always people that are intense. Every day you go to the racetrack there’s people that are intense. But it’s a whole different deal now. I’m not saying it’s good. I’m not saying it’s bad. You’ve got a guy like Rich Vogler, who could go to the Speedrome – and I watched him at the Speedrome on Thursday nights – when it was him and Mac McClellan in the UNO Badger midget – stuff like that – and he was running for Jonathan Byrd. But he could take his midget to the Speedrome and wax their fanny and then run at the 500 and then go run a sprint car show and then run a champ car. He was kind of like an anomaly.

KO: You couldn’t define him.

EG: No, you really couldn’t. He was just ornery. When he got in the cockpit, he was ornery. He was there to win. He wasn’t there for anything else.

KO: I cannot find it in the record book, but why do I seem to remember your first Turkey Night appearance in 1990? I thought I recalled seeing video of your incident.

EG: Oh yeah. I flipped that car clear out of the park. I did. I destroyed a brand new racecar. BRAND new everything. A guy named Ed Shefchik, out of Oregon…no…Washington. But he had built a brand new midget. It was a Challenger copy and Stewart VanDyne had built him a motor for it. And VanDyne was the one that told him to hire me. And I heard Ascot was shutting down and I wanted to run Ascot to say I ran Ascot and Turkey Night. So I flew out there with Tony Epperson and my dad. Those two went out there to keep an eye on me. I think I drew 107 out of 117 cars qualifying that night. 12 or 14 cars were locked in and the rest had to run a qualifying race. So I knew if I didn’t make it through qualifying that I wasn’t going to make it. It had the big, old, famous Ascot ledge and cushion. And I got the bright idea that if I flat-footed it, I was going to make the show. So, that’s what I tried doing.

KO: And it ended up going out of the joint?

EG: It flipped so hard, that it cracked the block, the crank, the injectors, the cage came off, tail tank gone. I remember coming to on the track and my dad ran over there and he goes, “Boy, tell me something broke on the car. Don’t tell me that you just didn’t let off of it like I think you didn’t. Tell me something broke.” I said, “No, nothing broke.” He just kind of shook his head and walked off. Tony Epperson was standing there and he goes, “Well, you better get the backup midget so we can get it in line for qualifying.” And the guy goes, “That’s the only midget I’ve got.” And Tony said, “What kind of Mickey Mouse operation is this? You’ve only got one midget?” But I remember the next day I got up in the morning and my eyes were completely full of blood. I went to Mesa Marin to watch CRA run and that’s the day Vukovich got killed. That was a rough trip.

KO: For 1991 you moved to the black number six Molds Unlimited car owned by Ohio’s Terry Winterbotham, a seat once occupied by Jeff Gordon and Kevin Huntley.

EG: Andy Hillenburg, Kerry Norris…

KO: Was there any added pressure to get wins and a championship just for that reason alone – those names?

EG: No, because Terry was going through a lot. He was getting divorced. The deal wasn’t what it once was. His business had taken a turn. Actually, what the pressure was; was to keep the thing running from week to week. Whatever the cars took in is what they ran on. He had a lot going on. He had gotten divorced and got hooked up with some gal who got pregnant and had a kid that required a lot of medical attention and had a lot of medical problems. I only saw him at one race that year.

KO: So did Phil Shuler come along for the ride too?

EG: Yeah, I drug Phil into that deal too. That quagmire.

KO: 1991 saw the emergence of 1989 All Star champion Robbie Stanley at Winchester, winning the opener and the show in mid-May. Didn’t you give him a ride in your own car at Winchester at the end of 1990?

EG: Yeah, I did. Yeah I did.

KO: Was it for fun or did you have issues with your car?

EG: No, we took two cars because I was running for the championship. We were trying to compete with the Hoffmans and they started taking two cars to every race at the end of the year. So in case your main car broke in hot laps or heat race, you’d have someone qualify your backup car and then jump out of the seat to run the feature. I went to Winchester with both cars and asked Robbie to qualify and race the one in case I needed it for the feature. He ran it and when it was all done he said he had a blast and that probably precipitated him running in ’91. So I probably should have kept his fanny out of it.

KO: Given the fact that you two were friends, was his success in USAC easier to swallow?

EG: The thing about Robbie is that he was also like Vogler as far as determination. But the other thing he had going was that his whole family was that way. Robbie, when he was 16, had knee surgery, and they botched it. They destroyed his knee. I remember him telling me that being a racecar driver, you know how people have a dream, saying that’s the only thing they wanted to be? He knew that was the only thing he COULD be because he physically was never going to be able to have a regular job. So he had the determination, every time he got in the seat, to whoop everybody’s ass because that was it. He told me that was all he was ever going to be able to do because he could not physically stand up and do a normal job.

Playing the Banjo in Berlin – Gordon wheels Mike Bowman’s champ car in PRA action at one of his favorite venues: Berlin, Michigan. (David Sink photo)

KO: So was the rivalry between you two fierce or friendly?

EG: It was actually pretty tame, because we had raced against each other for so long in the quarter midgets and with the All Stars and the Outlaws. It was pretty tame. We’d sit there and hang out together. We’d ride to racetracks together. We’d drink many a beer together afterwards. We told each other many a lie, you know.

KO: 1991 - you scored three wins that season, using a pavement car of your (or Shuler’s) design I believe, which may have been new for 1991. I liked to call that particular piece “the low rider”.

EG: That was Shuler’s deal.

KO: It seemed like it sat on the ground. I seem to recall you running Penske shocks and Goodyear tires too, when no one else did that. Was there anything different or special about that car, because you seemed to run it for several years?

EG: Well, it was a good car. It took us about two years to figure the Penske shocks out for that car. And once we figured out what that car liked as far as the shock package went and the stagger package, it just became an issue of repeating those exact settings. That car and that Little 5 car sitting over there are kind of the same thing. As long as you hit those same numbers, it was going to do the same thing. You could keep your eyes closed, and it was going to run itself at a particular venue. That car was the first car I’d been involved in that actually made money. That car was a money making racecar. Every time it went to a racetrack, we felt it was going to be a top three car. We were getting tires – it was going to be a money making car. There’s a handful of cars that people can say do that. Glen had one with the 20 car. I’ve been fortunate enough that I’ve had two of them.

KO: In July, you won at Winchester, which had to be a big deal. And you won the Hulman Classic when it was at IRP, a big name race. Given the names and venue, were those extra satisfying or were those just races on the schedule that you happened to win?

EG: No, they were special and now that I’m older, it’s neat to see your name in the record book for those races. But at the time, it was literally survival. It was – get to the next race.

KO: The ride with Winterbotham – you talked about what he was going through at the time – so it wasn’t everything you’d hoped it would be. What was really missing? Was it his presence or was it money?

EG: Money. Whatever the car was taking in is what it was running on. That’s it. If it took in $1200, that’s what you were running it on at the next race. That counts putting fuel in the hauler and any bent or broken pieces. I’d have to beg, borrow, or steal parts. Plus my food. That was it.

KO: That sounds pretty stressful.

EG: Very. It sucked. Really, now that I think about it. I was a crack head.

KO: So another Berlin win in ’91 – even one more in ’92 – including the win in ’90 that made three in a row. Why did you have so much success there?

EG: Because of that car. We had kind of come up with a combination of stagger, shocks, and bars on that car. Plus that’s such a really odd layout for a racetrack. I remember watching hot laps – Randy Sweet was running a stock car there in hot laps – and decided I was going to do something different, as far as where I was going to run. And it seemed to work. I’ve always liked that place because they had packed stands. They always had knowledgeable fans. They always had people come out of the stands and talk your ear off about racing. I wish we could go up there more. Or move it down here.

KO: Early in the 1991 season, they ran at least three shows at Granite City. Did you ever get tired of towing across Indiana and Illinois on I-70?

EG: Yeah, because you could only go 55 in Illinois back then. They were like Ohio. They had cops at every other exit. You’d haul ass to Terre Haute and then you’d have to climb on the binders and go 55 through Illinois.

KO: So that kind of got old I would imagine.

EG: Well, also the thing that got old about the Granite City thing - I think that was a Wednesday night winged series and Doug Wolfgang came in there and cherry picked – exactly what you said earlier. I’ve run with USAC for 20 years or just shy of 20 years. I was a big supporter of USAC. And they have some things that people don’t realize that made them a good series to run with. The insurance for drivers. I got hurt at Lakeside, Kansas in a midget one time and I spent four days in intensive care at the University of Kansas hospital. I never saw one bill. People don’t think about that when they’re 18 years old. But USAC has also made a bunch of bonehead moves and the Wednesday night winged thing at Granite City was one of them.

KO: At the end of 1991, you scored your third runner-up finish in USAC sprint car points, only 35 points behind Stanley with Butler not too far behind you. I remember driving up there and it was too cold to race.

EG: That was the one that got snowed out. I remember that. We were only 30-some points behind Robbie. I crashed at the Four Crown. Tray House spit out a set of quick change gears right in front of me and Robbie. I was ahead of Robbie at Four Crown in the feature, late in the show. Now Winterbotham’s dirt sprinter – that was a good car. That was the best dirt sprinter I’d ever driven. It was a flop-tube super lightweight throwaway World of Outlaw car and I loved it. We ran good with it. I think we were running 6^th in the feature and Tray House spit out a set of quick change gears right in front of me and Robbie.

We both hit Tray. We were spinning down the track and I thought, “Well, I’m going to hit Robbie as hard as I can because if I’m out and I take him out, I’ll be able to save points.” My front end’s collapsed and I gassed it as hard as I could. I aimed to knock his front end out and I missed him and hit the inside wall. He kept going and finished 7^th. He passed me in the points and then the deal got snowed out at Winchester and I never had the chance.

KO: Was the fact that they didn’t bother to reschedule that race upsetting?

EG: Yeah, but there again, what are you going to do? It’s November. We shouldn’t be running at Winchester in November anyway. They should have run the thing in October that way if the weather was bad you’d have enough time to reschedule it.

KO: Also in ’91, you ran the Hut Hundred for Rollie Helmling and drove Claire Pattee’s 37 Silver Crown car at the Four Crown, having a nice duel with Jack Hewitt for the win. Those were some good opportunities. Did you turn down any rides over the years that you may have regretted just because you were a loyal guy?

EG: I turned down the Hoffman ride for Dick Fuller. How’s that for stupid? I turned it down because Robbie got killed in their car and it was too soon after that had happened. And because my wife told me to.

KO: Any other one-off rides that you remember being big deals?

EG: I’ve run the Tamale Wagon and got fired out of it. Let’s see here…I’ve run a bunch of stuff. I’ve run cars for Bob Parker a few times. It seemed like for a while there were a string of cars I turned down that really weren’t too swift for turning down to stay in the deal I was in. I remember the Hoffman deal, but there were some when I was running for Print Express. Bob Parker wanted me to run for him and I told him I couldn’t, that I had to finish the year out for Print Express and that I was loyal to Print Express and that I was going to run for them. Parker went and got Hewitt instead and then the next year took him to the Speedway. So how’s that for smart?

And I got fired by Print Express that winter. My loyalty got me a long way on that one.

KO: More midgets in 1991 – remember that Stapp chassis number 6?

EG: Oh yeah! We actually ran pretty good in that one until we put that Subaru in it.

KO: It was owned by John Black. What was the other guy’s name?

EG: Scott Anderson.

KO: Tom Hooker built the engines and it had the Cosworth in it at first.

EG: And that thing was a screamer.

KO: In ’91 you ran the number six the first night at Belleville and then you must have had problems because the second night you ran for Dave Ellis.

EG: We were running in the top five of the feature on Thursday night in Black’s car and we had a cushion. That’s the way Eldora should be. Belleville is what Eldora should be. A ten inch tall cushion six feet off the fence so you could flat foot it! They do a phenomenal job on their track.

I remember running in the top five and I told John Black it was like a religious experience. The car was handling so great you could flat foot it, you could run the cushion, you were up high and everything was working well. Then the crank came out of the bottom. And Friday I tried getting a ride. Keith Rauch was running for Ellis and that was the house car. They put a brand new Gaerte in there. There was something experimental about it and Rauch didn’t like it. So he quit Ellis Friday night after the show. He went to run for somebody else in a Beast. And Ellis came up to me and said, “Well, both of us towed all the way here. Why don’t you hop in my car and start on the tail? Let’s just see what happens.” And we made it all the way through those deals and made it into the A. We started on the tail and finished 8^th I think. As long as you didn’t let off, the car was fast. There was something with the barrel valve that if you let off, it took you half a lap to get going. Well Dave said, “Just don’t let off.”

Niebel Classic – Exiting one of Anderson, Indiana corners, Eric is on the gas and has the wheels cranked left at the 2007 Glen Niebel Classic. (David Sink photo)

KO: You knew how to do that from Turkey Night.

EG: Yeah. But it actually works there. See, he had a flop tube rear, lightweight midget too.

KO: Neat. You finished off the year running Manzanita for Ron Hughes, right?

EG: Caught on fire I think.

KO: You’re not a real flashy guy and it’s just not your style to seek out a midget ride to get more attention to make it to the big time. You had a lot of midget rides early. But later in your career, why didn’t you seek out more midget rides?

EG: Because they hurt. When they crash, they hurt.

KO: And you found that out.

EG: I found that out.

KO: Was that in ’91 also?

EG: Yeah, at Lakeside, Kansas I crashed. They put that Subaru in there. I can’t tell you what happened. There’s three weeks leading up to that I don’t know what happened. In fact, when I came to in the hospital, I thought it was a result of that crash with Robbie Stanley at Four Crown. And when I came to in the hospital, I said, “That no good, dirty, rotten Robbie Stanley. You wait until I choke the shit out of him.” And my dad said, “What the hell are you talking about? You’re in Kansas.” I thought I was in the Dayton hospital.

Yeah, midgets hurt. I remember running the Phoenix mile in a midget and you just burp ‘em. I was running the feature. I don’t know what year it was. ’93 maybe? And I remember going down the backstretch. And I remember thinking that this was one of the most asinine things a person could do. And then I said, “Well I don’t think I’m doing this anymore.” So I don’t think I’d run a midget on a mile after that. I remember watching Drinan about get killed at Springfield. And then I ran a midget a few times at 16^th Street. I had fun there and finished third a few times in Ingram’s car. And then one night I tried flipping that thing out of the park and I said, “That’s it for me.”

KO: 1992 saw a new Silver Crown deal with Gary Hill. Tell me more about Gary Hill and why you went with him.

EG: It was a deal Phil Shuler put together. Gary Hill’s daughter is Heidi Garner, at the time that’s what her name was. She was with Goodyear. And my deal was coming to an end in the Silver Crown, so I didn’t have a ride. She put that deal together. He used to be a TQ racer. He owned ABC Cutting Contractors here in Indianapolis. They cut, core, and drill concrete on the interstate. He’d known Phil a long time too, so that was kind of a Phil Shuler deal that Phil and Heidi got me in on. That was a pretty stressful year too. ’92 was a bitch of a year. I’ll just tell you that right now. That was one of the most miserable years of my life.

KO: You had Valvoline decals on both your sprint and Silver Crown cars and they were both numbered six. So was that Valvoline deal something special? Or was it just small-time dollars?

EG: Just oil and paint jobs. They came to me. Gary Hill was trying to get the deal for the champ car. And then Valvoline countered and said, “We’ll give you the deal for the champ car but we also want the sprint car.” He told them that he didn’t own the sprint car; that they would have to talk to Eric about that. That was Winterbotham’s car. And any help we could get to continue to run was good. I went in there and had a meeting with Jim Reynolds of Valvoline and he said he’d give me $5,000 for the whole year plus all the oil, paint jobs, and uniforms. I didn’t want to be the one responsible for screwing up Gary’s champ car deal. And I needed the $5,000 because that’s when Terry’s business hit rock bottom. So I took it.

KO: Early in the season for ’92 they had a pair of CRA shows at Eldora, which were always something to look forward to from a fan’s perspective. The first night you finished 18^th but the second night…

EG: We crashed that first night. I remember going to Jack Steck’s shop and using his welders. Somebody spun out in front of us that first night and we were on Penske shocks and we finally figured them out on that dirt sprinter. I remember being at Steck’s shop that day and Terry pulled up, because I told him, “Hey, I’m in Dayton. Why don’t you come over and say hey?” And he came by and goes, “I need to talk to you for a second.” He took me around the corner and shoved a newspaper in my hand. And he goes, “Read this.” I remember reading the front page and said, “What’s this got to do with us?” He said, “No, read the back page.” And it was an IRS notice that they just seized all the assets of W&W Plastic Injection, which is Winterbotham and Winterbotham and Molds Unlimited. It had a list of all his machinery and all of his assets. It had a list of the hauler. It had a list of the racecars. It had the list of the damned racecar stuff I had. The IRS was looking for it. And he told me, “Give me a dollar.” I gave him a dollar and he goes, “You own it now.” And he goes, “It’s yours.” And that night at Eldora we changed the name, changed the registration on the car to Jay Manship, who was a crew member, who had been going with me forever. We put it in his name. And that’s the night I destroyed it. Because after I destroyed it, they brought back the remaining pieces, which was the seat and the engine and the steering gear. They set it down in front of the trailer and the IRS had come to the track that night to seize the assets, plus my pay. And they looked at my car and said that there was nothing left. They turned around and walked off. That’s when I said, “What’s going on?” And they said we’re here from the IRS and we are here to seize the assets but you pretty much took care of that.

KO: But you found the lead in the feature. But you also found the wall coming off of turn two, setting an altitude record at Eldora.

EG: It was a bad one. Seventeen times. Seventeen cartwheels coming down the backstretch. I started coming off of turn two and landed in three. But see they paid a $10,000 bonus if you could beat the CRA regulars. And after what Terry just told me earlier that day, that $10,000 was going to make it where I could finish running the year. That’s all I was thinking about. Earlier in the race, I ran the wall in three and four with my two right side tires on top of the wall going around the corner and just by sheer arm strength; I just jerked it down off the wall and kept going. I had to win the show that night. Period. Nothing else. Win it or destroy it. I destroyed it. That win it or wear it speech is highly overrated.

KO: Obviously that crash affected your body and your life I’m sure.

EG: Yeah. I carry the remnants with me to this day.

KO: So a broken neck?

EG: Pretty much.

KO: Did you go to Dayton or anything to get checked out?

EG: No! I was out. My body was limp and the whole deal. But I came to when the firemen were extricating me from the car and I said, “What are you doing?” They said, “You destroyed the car and you’re going to the hospital. You’re in bad shape.” I said, “No, I’m not going to the hospital.” And the fireman said, “Uh, yeah. You’re going to the hospital.” One thing I found out, whenever I have a concussion, I get real belligerent. And I didn’t know that. And I told them all, “There’s none of you sons of bitches big enough to get me in that ambulance.” And the fireman looked at me and said, “Well I hope you die asshole!” I turned around and walked off. And I got taken back to the truck.

I remember sitting in the trailer in a lawn chair. I slumped over and put my hands on my face and got really upset. And my dad said, “What’s the problem?” And I said, “I destroyed the car. I don’t have money to put that car together. Terry’s business has been seized. I don’t even know how I’m getting home tonight.” And he goes, “Well it ain’t worth crying over. Just put the damn car in the trailer and let’s go home.” And then halfway home, I came to again. And I said, “What are we doing going home? We’re supposed to go to Fremont tomorrow.” And they all looked at me in the hauler. Tony Epperson, Jay, and everybody else in there turned and looked at me and said, “Are you SERIOUS?” And I said, “Yeah, we’ve got to run Fremont.” Well that car is destroyed. I said, “Well can’t we fix it?” And they said, “There’s nothing to fix!” And I made them pull the hauler over along interstate 70 and open it up to prove it to me. And I went, “Wow, I really did tear that thing up pretty good.”

And then I laid on the floor of my apartment for probably three weeks. I couldn’t move. Actually the following Wednesday, I was supposed to test a car for Gary Hill at IRP. I took a handful of pain killers and went to IRP and ran a hundred lap test session for him and then went back home and laid back on the floor of the apartment for a couple more weeks. If I wasn’t running I was laying on a floor. That crash affected me for years. I never went to the doctor. I went to the hospital – a band aid clinic you know. That was a waste of time. I should have went somewhere that had knowledgeable people. No, I’m serious! I went to a vet clinic. Years down the road I finally got the point where I would lose days of mobility. All of a sudden I couldn’t move. I finally went to a specialist. I had dislocated the vertebrae in my neck from that crash and every now and then the vertebrae would rub up against the spinal cord and make it swell. It would swell and it would look like I had a stroke. My right side wouldn’t work. First off, I couldn’t afford to go to the doctor to get it taken care of. And if I took the time off to go to the doctor I couldn’t go run the race to pay the bills that week. So in hindsight, it wasn’t very bright. I should have took a couple of months off and gotten healed up and then jumped back in the car. But I didn’t do that. I jumped right back in the car.

KO: Jumping back in, you got a third at IRP not too long after the Eldora crash.

EG: I was fried. I don’t care about telling the truth. I was lit on pain killers. There used to be sprint car drivers that practiced herbal therapy, but I wasn’t one of them.

KO: Even after that, you had your first ever Little 500 week and you did so running a car for Bob Parker, retiring because of an accident. Afterwards, what were your thoughts on that race?

EG: I thought that was the neatest thing I’d ever seen. That was a car Glen Niebel put together for Bob Parker. Parker was a supporter of Niebel for a long time. I remember standing in the infield and watching the rest of that race. And at some point, somewhere during that race was a yellow flag. Glen Niebel was a monster of a guy, height-wise, big hands. He couldn’t talk to you from here. You know what I mean? He put his arm around you and his nose was touching your nose. That’s how he talked to you. He came up to me and said, “You kind of went out early, didn’t you?” I said, “Yeah.” He was watching his car with Bentley and they were running well of course. He just made the comment with his arm around me, “You don’t make much money here in the infield, do you?” Huh…by golly, he’s right!

All I was doing was trying to force the issue with one of those roadsters. And those things after thirty laps push the front end off of it. I was trying to pass him off of turn four and the front end pushed up and pinched me into the wall and took me out. If I’d just waited a straightaway and made a run on him into one – different story.

KO: So did it seem like an impossible dream to win that thing after your first year?

EG: It’s tough to do when you’re sitting in the infield with a front end knocked out of it. The next year I went back with the low rider car and by then I was hooked up with Print Express and I won.

KO: So not so much an impossible dream.

EG: There again, it was survival. I made $19,820. It’s the most I’d ever made in my life. I was able to pay off all the bills I’d incurred from running the Molds Unlimited car. Racing’s put me in a helluva hole and racing’s also gotten me out of a helluva hole.

KO: So in your 16 starts at the Little 5, 1992 was your only accident. What is the key to avoiding accidents in that race?

EG: You’ve got to look at the straightaway ahead. When you’re coming off of a corner…I ain’t saying, because I’m running this year! I don’t know what the keys are. I’ll tell you in June!

KO: Working traffic, I see you primarily employing the high line to pick and choose your moves. Does staying up high give you any better options or does your car just work better up there?

EG: There’s too many cars running down low. Everybody and their brother is running down low. I ain’t telling you crap about that race anymore. I tell you what the biggest motivating factor is for that race. You have to get into debt up to your eyeballs, and then somebody offers you a lot of money. That’s what worked in ’93 and then in ’98, my wife had cancer so we had mega bills again. Debt is a very big motivator. That’s all I’m telling you.

KO: So do you talk to yourself during the race, telling yourself to be more patient?

EG: I cuss myself out all the time. Sometimes I have the button on too.

KO: So later in ’92, you climbed into the Niebel 20 for the start of the Four Crown feature. Was that for points? Did you ask Glen for help or did he suggest it?

EG: No, I begged.

KO: And he obliged.

EG: He left it up to Chip Thomas and Chip Thomas was a nice enough guy that he realized that I was running for the championship and he climbed out of the car.

KO: So 1992 was a bitch of a year. A lot of disappointment. A lot of bad stuff happening with the Eldora deal.

EG: That was my first IRS audit too.

KO: That can’t be fun.

EG: No it wasn’t. I was a young kid compared to where I am now. And since the IRS had gotten into Terry’s business, audited all of his stuff and seized all of his assets, they wanted to know where all the money went. So they were under the impression that we had funneled a bunch of money through the race team, which was far from the truth. But they audited me so they could look at my personal assets so they could determine if money had been funneled through the race team or not. So they found out in a hurry – hell no! In fact the comment was made, “How do you live? How do you survive?”

KO: So was that crash still bothering you pretty bad at the end of ’92?

EG: Oh yeah. I was miserable.

KO: For 1993, you managed to find a ride with the Print Express guys. Was that really just your equipment with some sponsorship from Print’s Randy Steenbergen?

EG: Randy Steenbergen, who worked for another printing company and went out on his own with Print Express, he’d always been a racing fan. He started going to the races and actually one of the first things he’d done for me was that he paid for my hotel bill at Four Crown in ’92 and left a note at the counter, wishing me good luck. And then during that winter, we talked. He had talked to my dad and my dad told him that the Molds Unlimited thing was done. So Randy and I got together because I already had the equipment and he was just getting in, so he gave us a place to work on the cars and money to run. It was neat having money come in to run the cars on and have a warm, dry place to work on ‘em. Because I remember before running Manzanita in ’92, I tore the dirt sprinter apart inside my trailer during the winter and put it back together because I didn’t have anywhere to work on it. So it was neat. It was neat having matching hats and jackets and decals.

KO: So was it Shuler again or was your dad helping?

EG: No. It was mainly me and Jay and I think Sam started going then. Tony too.

KO: Even with Print sponsorship, was money an issue in ’93?

EG: Oh yeah. Money’s been an issue until ten minutes before I pulled up here.

KO: Back in ’93, there was a lot more testing on pavement and I imagine things were pretty expensive even back then.

EG: Oh yeah. Well see, the thing that was good about getting hooked up with Print was that USAC had run Goodyear off. I don’t care what they said. USAC had enough of the tire war and they had a lot of people complaining on the pavement deal about how much it cost to run. If you weren’t on a tire deal, I can completely understand. It was costing you a fortune to keep up with people. We had a set of tires for hot laps. A set of tires for qualifying. A set of tires for the heat races. And a set of tires for the feature. Hell, I wasn’t paying for them. But if you were somebody who wasn’t on a deal competing against that, that was a pretty big nut. So USAC decided that they would kill two birds with one stone. They’d try and rein in the costs and two; they weren’t getting any kind of a kick back from Goodyear or Hoosier because they were spending all their money on the tire war. So now they were able to get money for the point fund.

KO: The Bob and Tom Show at IRP – you and Tray House let them drive your sprint cars. Who drove yours and how much coaching did you have to provide?

EG: Chick McGee ran mine. Dave The King Wilson couldn’t that year because he was too big. That’s what made him go on the Nutri System diet. Tom drove mine too. Christy Lee drove Tray’s and Bob wasn’t there that day. Bob came next year. And they put Dave in the car. Capels was there and we had to put a stop on the throttle so they couldn’t get it past idle because they were just terrified that the radio stars would be creamed against the fence. We had a lot of fun doing that though. We came back and did it with them again next year. Bob ran my car the second year.

KO: And he had fun?

EG: Oh yeah. That day, the first year, was the day Chick McGee got pulled over by the cops on the interstate coming to IRP. He got a speeding ticket right there on the air. That’s still on their best-of because I hear it every now and then.

KO: So 1993 - some highs and lows. The highest came when you won the Little 500 in only your second start, leading 215 laps and again beating Bob Frey and Glen Niebel for another memorable first win, like USAC at Toledo. How special was it beating Niebel at that race?

EG: That’s his deal. Even though I’ve won it as many times as I’ve won it, I still view that as Glen’s place. That’s his deal. Always will be.

In Victory Lane with Larry – Eric and car owner Larry Contos each hold onto a piece of the PRA trophy from Scherrerville, Indiana in June of 2006. (David Sink photo)

KO: And about winning that race with your dad?

EG: That was survival. That was mere survival. I already told you that we took in a ton of money and it paid off. We were back to zero. We partied like it was 1999. We were out of debt that day. We slept pretty good for a week or so.

KO: So winning the big money at Anderson…

EG: I was able to finish the rest of the year.

KO: And you were somehow able to seek out a NASCAR Busch ride.

EG: Yeah, that was Print Express that did that.

KO: So even back then, did teams want money or sponsorship instead of talent?

EG: Oh yeah. Randy’s main customer then and now was Kroger. He prints everything for Kroger, basically east of the Mississippi over to Virginia. He wanted to go truck racing because he’d heard about the new series that NASCAR was going to start. He got me to call down there to talk to Ken Schrader. Schrader hooked us up with Ingram. And Ingram and Randy met…actually we drove down to his shop in Ashville, North Carolina. I watched Jack and Randy pound beers…POUND ‘EM…and they struck a deal. It cost him like $10,000. We tested and ran the race at IRP plus the car was up here for several store shows. It was a neat deal.

KO: So you didn’t have to go knocking on doors?

EG: Randy did that. That was all Randy. I think he had better vision on that than I did. He was really pushing me to go that direction. I was like, “Man, if I quit running sprint cars to go down and mess around with that, what am I going to eat on?” I had to run the sprint car. I remember one time in ’92 some attorneys met with me with some sponsor and we were trying to put together an Indy car deal. And this attorney said, “Well if I have to represent you on this, I represent you on everything. Do you understand that?” “Well, yeah, I would understand that.” “This means that you’re not going to run sprint cars anymore.” I thought, well if I run the whole Indy car deal, yeah, I’m not going to run sprint cars anymore. I’ll make enough money to eat, pay the bills, and do what I want. But the deal wasn’t going to come together really. I was going to run one show that year or something, so I was still going to have to run local shows to survive. And he wanted ten percent of everything I took in. I remember sitting there at that meeting, at that big old table, and I said, “Wait a second. So if I go run Putnamville Saturday, you want ten percent of my money?” And he goes, “Yep.” And I said, “This meeting’s over.” And I stood up and walked out. How smart was that?

KO: That Busch race at IRP in ’93 – how did that go?

EG: I had a ball as far as the event. They treat their events kind of like USAC and how they used to treat their Silver Crown series. Back when you went to The Copper, it was an event. It was a happening. But as far as driving the car, that’s when they had the V-6s in them. It was like driving a buzz-bomb. And also with the windshield, from driving the sprint cars all the time, with the windshield it was kind of like you were watching it on TV.

KO: So do you feel like you could have fit in down South?

EG: Yeah, I think I could have.

KO: But in reality, it was Randy pointing you in that direction. It was almost like society telling you that you had to do NASCAR. You still wanted to run Indy, right?

EG: Well, I wanted to run Indy. But the other thing too…I remember Randy was talking to me one time. And he said, “You know what? We ought to just sell all that sprint car stuff, champ car stuff, and all that stuff we had down there at the shop, which was a lot, and get one of these new Craftsman trucks they’re talking about because everyone will make the show the first year. He said, “I’d pay the bills on it but you’ve got to take care of it and haul it to the track and all that.” I didn’t know anything about it and that probably wasn’t a smart decision either. But I said, “No man. I can’t miss a bunch of sprint car shows.” That’s how I was keeping the lights on. That’s how I was paying for my apartment. I was driving the hauler back and forth from the shop to the apartment. I didn’t have a car. I had the hauler. You know what it looks like sitting in the apartment complex? We didn’t have the crew cab. We had the Top Kick with the box on it.

KO: So did you have any other possibilities come about in NASCAR?

EG: I went down to Daytona with Randy to run the opener at Daytona. They thought they had a sponsor lined up if we could make the show. We were going to run the first ten shows. Randy was going down there and he was going to sponsor the car for the first ten shows. And then there was some casino out of Vegas that had just opened up and if we were running decent in the first ten shows, they were going to pick up the rest of the year. I went down to General Motors test day – rookie orientation at Daytona. I had to meet with NASCAR – Jim Hunter – at the time – and talk with him and go through an interview and get cleared to run the Super Speedways and get my Super Speedway license. I went out there and nothing had been worked on. The car hadn’t been taken apart. So, we didn’t run. Nothing was ready. They didn’t think Randy was going to show up with the money. And when he showed up with the money, they hadn’t even left the shop yet. We were like, “Hey, we’re down here at Daytona.” And he’s got the check and they’re like, “Aww crap. We’ll be down there in like six hours.” They got down there and nothing was ready. Randy got mad and rightfully so. He took his check and we got on the plane and went home. We said screw it. Let’s just run sprint cars.

KO: So that was the end of the NASCAR dream huh?

EG: Yep.

KO: Your wife was telling me in ’93 you got married. I had written down here - again like ’92, ’93 may not have been anything to remember. As a young bachelor getting married, that would be something to remember.

EG: Oh I got married in December of ’93. It was really a neat deal because of all the racing people we had at the wedding and at the reception. I just remember people like the Stapps were there. The Hoffmans. Conroy. Robbie Stanley. Man, there was a ton of racing people there and I know we had a good time.

KO: Speaking of Conroy, a week after finishing 5^th in the Florida 500, you picked up a feature win at Senoia, Georgia in a winged AWOL race driving for Joe Conroy. Winged racing on pavement – was that cool?

EG: It took a little bit to get used to. (Tony) Elliott had broken his back at Sacramento – at a winged show – when we ran Sacramento with the champ cars. And I remember going home and Joe Conroy called me and said Tony Elliott had broken his back. “I’m down here in Georgia and I need someone to run my car at this winged show and it pays a couple thousand to win. Would you be interested?” “Well when is it?” “It’s tomorrow.” “Yeah, I’ll be there.” Me and Jamie hopped in the car at the apartment. We drove straight down there. Her bridal shower was coming up too. Like in a couple of days. We drove straight down there. Ran the race. Won the feature. He paid me. We got back in the car, bought a fuzz buster, drove home, and made it in time for her bridal shower.

KO: Wow! Always by the skin of your teeth!

EG: Oh yeah. I’m a crack head bud!

KO: For the longest time, you had been a Goodyear loyalist. When did the switch to Hoosier come? How much money did that cost your team a year?

EG: During the course of ’92 is when USAC switched over. I’ve been on USAC’s committees for years. I remember going to that meeting and just throwing an absolute fit when they announced they were going to do it because “you’re gonna cost me $30,000 a year. You’re in effect going to eliminate me from being able to be a car owner.” And they said they were looking out for the good of the series, and not the good of one person. And in effect, they removed me as a car owner. I couldn’t do it.

KO: 1994 – you had Kroger sponsorship on your sprint car. You found a Silver Crown ride with Bob Hoerner. You had a renewed focus on open wheel racing. There were 14 top-five finishes and one win at the end of the year at Charlotte County, that might have been with a wing again?

EG: No, that was the V-6.

KO: Was that the Beast car?

EG: Yeah.

KO: You were fourth in sprint points – your lowest finish ever at that point in time. After having so much success in the early ‘90s, was frustration mounting? It was harder to win and harder to survive more than ever.

EG: Well I’d been putting so many hours in that I was starting to get burned. We went to Print. We took care of the cars. We loaded them in the trailer. We’d drive ten hours to the race. We’d run the race. We’d come back to Print. We’d roll the cars out. You’d get the other car ready, and then you’d go run three nights in a row somewhere and come back, have to get the other car ready. They ran a lot more shows then than now. We’d run forty shows a year. We were running Winchester five times…and Eldora five times. And IRP three times. And Salem two or three times. Then you’d go to Georgia or you’d go to Missouri or Granite City. I was starting to get worn down and burned and a guy that was putting in a lot more hours than me was in the stall right next to me. That was Tray House. We had the cars all there in the same shop. He had half the shop and I had half the shop. He’d go work and then show up about 1:00 in the afternoon and work until 8:00 at night and then go home. It was just starting to wear on me.

KO: Of course 1994 was rocked by the death of your friend Robbie Stanley in that ugly crash at Winchester. Did you go to the hospital that night?

EG: No.

KO: So when did you hear the news?

EG: Right after the feature. I was leading the feature at the time of his crash. There was a red flag. I remember parking down in turn one and Bliss was running Niebel’s car. Kalitta was second at the time. Or was Bliss second at the time? I was leading and I parked down there in one. My dad came up and stood next to the car. He said, “Just stay in there.” And I said, “What’s going on?” And he watched everything that was going on and he said, “If you want to get out and go to the house and not do this anymore, I wouldn’t think any less of you.” I said, “What in the HELL are you talking about?” And he goes, “Nuthin.” And I said, “What’s going on?” And he goes, “Awwwwwwww, it just doesn’t look good.” And he told me to stay in the car. He wouldn’t let me out. And when the feature was over, I ended up finishing third. Bliss got me and Kalitta got me. I still didn’t know something had happened and Norm Shields came up to me and he goes, “Do you know if Robbie was saved?” I said, “Saved?” I thought he meant pulled from the fire and I said, “Yeah, yeah.” Well he goes, “That’s good.” And I said, “What the hell are you talking about?” And he said, “He didn’t make it.” And that was the first I found out about it.

And then I go home and went to the fairgrounds the next day to run Bob Hoerner’s car and there was a guy sitting there from Channel 13 wanting to do an interview with me about Robbie. And I told him no…didn’t feel like it. Wasn’t up for it. That was a tough deal. That week was a tough deal because they had the funeral on Memorial Day Monday. I was one of the pall bearers and one of the eulogists too. That was a tough deal.

KO: How soon could you really shake that off and go a day without thinking about that?

EG: It was awhile. It was awhile. Because we’d known each other for so long and were best friends. Crap happens though.

KO: Soon thereafter, the Robbie Stanley “No Regrets” decal came out and I remember you saying how so many racers, particularly at Indy, couldn’t carry Robbie’s helmet bag. Obviously you had a ton of admiration for the guy.

EG: He was one of…and I’m glad that Knoxville realized it…he was one of the best all-around racers that had come around in a long time. Because he was one of those guys – if you took five nights in a row and went to five different tracks and you ran a wing, then take the wing off, then go pavement, and then go this, that…mile, half-mile or whatever – he was going to be one of a handful of people that was going to be able to win each night. That’s just tough to do. It’s tough to win period. But to be able to unbolt the wing at the drop of a hat and be a terror and then go to a pavement track…the thing that helped him out a lot was when he got hooked up with the Hoffman family. That was just an unbelievable combination. You had Old Timer’s money, Richard’s knowledge, Rob’s knowledge, and Robbie’s right foot. And they didn’t care how many cars he tore up. As long as he was going forward, they’d keep bolting ‘em together.

His brother was there and Ron took care of the dirt sprinters there for awhile too, when things got really busy for them. They’d send a whole ‘nother rig up to Stanley’s shop and they’d take care of the dirt sprinter. Ron called the shots on the dirt sprinter.

Another reason why Robbie and I were such good friends is because we were both starving. We both understood that if you walked in the shop and there were no lights on, it wasn’t because the light bulbs burned out. It’s because somebody didn’t get a payment mailed off.

KO: Two nights after Robbie passed away, you ran the Little 500 in what may have been a second car for Niebel.

EG: That was Parker’s car again. The same one I crashed in ’92.

KO: You started 11^th and fell out with suspension problems, but led 88 laps of that race.

EG: We were leading when it broke and we should have won that race.

KO: Did Glen have any influence on that ride?

EG: That was more of Parker’s deal that year. Glen was doing his own thing with Keeker and Bentley. That particular car was Parker’s deal. It was a Niebel car. It was a car Glen put together. And it was a Niebel V-6. But it was Parker’s deal. He had a heart attack too during that race.

KO: Bob Parker?

EG: Yes. And he wouldn’t leave the track because we were leading. We broke the birdcage on the right rear after the second pit stop. We loaded it down with fuel and a tab broke on the birdcage from the weight. We were leading when we went in for that second stop. We were going to win. And he had a heart attack and refused to leave the infield.

KO: Hardcore!

EG: Different!

KO: So you said you had the opportunity to run for the Hoffmans in 1995 but you passed that up for a new deal with Dick Fuller?

EG: A brand new team. Dick Fuller’s STL Racing.

Illiana Action – Eric steers the Larry Contos machine through Illiana’s tight corners in the inaugural PRA Big Car event. (David Sink photo)

KO: And on paper, it looked pretty good!

EG: It looked like it was the shiznit. (Laughing.) It looked like it was the deal man.

KO: The guy had tons of equipment.

EG: Naw, naw. He had tons of haulers. And half of them weren’t worth a shit. But he had a ton of money. You know, you were talking about the early years and all that. The year with Fuller was a watermark year. That was the most difficult, pain in the ass year. I’m gonna say this too. He did things for me that no other car owner has ever done. Ok. He has also done things to me that no other car owners have ever done! When I went to interview with him to put the deal together, he was impressing me with his money. He took us out to eat in his limo. We were sitting in the limo and my wife was pregnant with our daughter at the time and he said, “What do I have to get to make you my driver to go after the championship?” I said, “Well, just buy me whatever I want.” He goes, “What do you want personally? I see your wife’s pregnant. Do you have insurance?” And I said, “Hell no I don’t have insurance. I don’t even have a full-time job.” He said, “Well, I’m going to put you on the payroll at the factory so that you have insurance.” When my daughter was born she had complications. The insurance took care of that.

KO: That’s a great deal.

EG: Yeah. But then when he got a belly full of booze, the real Dick Fuller appeared. When he was sober, he was one of the most brilliant people I’ve ever met in my life. He had meetings one time when Neil Bonnett got killed. His firm was doing the forensics on the tires for Hoosier. And they flew all their engineers into his shop. He was sitting at that table and he was sober. He was rattling off all kinds of stuff and the engineers were writing it down and they finally had to stop the meeting. They said, “Stop. You’re talking on levels way above us. We don’t even comprehend.” But then three hours later he’d be at the Honky Tonk down the street, shooting a gun in the air and wearing nothing but his underwear.

KO: Holy COW!

EG: Yeah. We should have won that championship in ’95. Because we had went and bought two brand new J&J dirt sprinters. We ran well on dirt. We should have won the Hulman Classic at Terre Haute. We let Jack Hewitt get us. Stewart started out the year off a little bit. We started out strong. But then when it came time to get serious for a championship, Glen got serious. Kalitta got serious. And we dropped the ball. That was our championship to lose. And we lost it. Because towards the end of the year, motors became an issue. We kept popping ‘em left and right. And instead of getting them fixed right, or getting new motors, we would stick old, steel motors in there just to get through to the next race. Here we had a big semi, with a custom lounge built in it, and we had a $7,000 motor in a car going for a championship.

KO: With all the stuff you dealt with, how did you manage to stick it out for the whole year?

EG: I had nothing else I could do. When Print Express fired me, no one would pick me up, really. And then I made the deal with Dick Fuller and then I came home…because you see, I thought the next year I was going to get to drive for Glen. And then Boles got hooked up with them and wanted Stewart. And so they hired Stewart. Well, I was left without a ride. And then I got hooked up with Fuller and that’s when Hoffman called me at home one night. Old Timer called me and said I want you to drive for me. I said, “I’m not going to run for you because I already made a deal with STL.” So I really had nowhere else to go. I just had to suck it up and deal with it because there again, if I wanted to pay the rent, I had to go run the shows.

KO: I seem to recall a slight run-in with Tony Stewart at IRP and you mentioned over the PA, “We have plenty of cars back at the shop”.

EG: We had plenty of cars. We just didn’t have plenty of motors.

KO: What were your thoughts about Tony back then?

EG: I wanted to strangle the crap out of him that particular night. But you know what, if you stay in this deal long enough, and I’ve said this before, if you stay in this deal long enough, at one time or another, you’re gonna be pissed off at everybody and everybody is going to be pissed off at you. At one time or another. You know?

KO: What are your thoughts about Tony now? Didn’t he help you replace a driveline at Winchester a couple of years ago?

EG: Yeah! You know, I don’t have any problem with Tony. I feel bad for him like I do Jeff. They live in such a glass fishbowl. They don’t have a life like we do. Don’t get me wrong, he probably has a great life but if he wants some anonymity, it doesn’t exist. He showed up at Winchester that day just to watch his cars go around the track and he was helping out an old competitor change a driveline and that’s all he was wanting to do and people keep coming up, jerking on him, pulling on him, wanting an autograph, and wanting a picture taken with him. And he’s just trying to put a right rear on the car.

KO: Despite the disappointment of the Fuller deal, you still managed a win at Winchester and a pair of seconds at Terre Haute and Salem. What were your feelings after the ’95 season concluded?

EG: I remember when Fuller fired me. He fired me right before the finale at Winchester. The year before, his car ran six shows and made one feature. And this year, we had a shot at a national championship and because we just imploded, which is what happened, we just barely lost the title. But I won him his first feature. He called me up right before Winchester and said, “I’m going to go a different direction.” And I said, “What the hell are you talking about?” And he said, “I’m going to hire Tony Elliott.” And I said, “Can I at least finish the year out? I have one show left at Winchester, for the points. Can I finish the year out?” “Yeah, we’ll put you in the backup car. You’re going to run the backup car. Tony’s going to run the main car because he’s my guy.”

I lapped Tony two times in that feature, on purpose, intentionally, and laughed my ass off every time I did it because I was getting replaced by him. But then Tony found out how great a deal it was too. He found out and then even he came up to me and said, “I don’t know how you did it for a year.” Chet Fillip said the same thing too. “I don’t know how you did it for a year.” I had to eat.

KO: A man of high tolerance?

EG: No, I just had to eat!

KO: Heading into 1996, other than a champ car ride with Stapp for the Copper, you did not appear to have anything going.

EG: Nope. I couldn’t get a ride.

KO: Really, your first feature of the year wasn’t until I-70 Speedway in April when you were in the right place at the right time when Chet Fillip and Andy Michner crashed. You capitalized and took the win in a V-6 powered car formerly belonging to Tyce Carlson. The real story was how you towed the car out there. Tell me that story please.

EG: It was a Ryder truck. I didn’t have a truck or trailer or anything. I didn’t have a ride. I’d sold everything that I’d accumulated over the years to pay off the bills I’d accumulated over the years. Fuller bought the pavement car from me. I didn’t want to sell it. He bought the low rider car from me with the agreement that if I ever wanted to buy it back, I could buy it back. Well then when I got fired, I said I wanted to buy it back. He said, “Naw, I ain’t gonna sell it.”

So I didn’t have anything. Then I got some people who were wanting me to run for them the next year - it was too late to get started that year - they wanted me to run for them next year – and I told them about Tyce’s car. And I’d went to two different people and each one said that if I went and got Tyce’s car, that they would make sure it got paid for. They’d put the money up and the whole bit. And I went to Tyce and made a deal with him. I took the car home and tore it apart because it needed a lot of attention. I didn’t have a hauler. Me and Brad Armstrong went in on the truck. A 24 foot Ryder truck. And Brad’s dad and my dad drove it out to Kansas. We had sixteen foot long scaffold planks and we rolled those two cars out of that truck and people laughed at us. They thought that was the funniest thing they had ever seen, until we won the feature. Then everybody was wanting to know where they could get their own Ryder truck.

I wasn’t even going to go to Phoenix but I had won enough money at Kansas that we went on to Phoenix and ran the next weekend at the mile. Then that deal imploded too because I started calling the people up that made me the promises for the money because Tyce was wanting his money. I couldn’t get them to return my calls or hold up their end of the deal so basically I had to give Tyce his car back plus all the parts I had accumulated for that car to settle on it.

But by then, fortunately I was hired by Niebel to finish out the year for him because he had started with McCord that year and they had parted ways. Glen hired me to finish the year out in his champ car and sprint car.

KO: Going back to that I-70 deal, heading out there how badly did you want to race and prove you still had what it took to win?

EG: Well, I mean I was willing to hock everything I had, which I did. I went into debt over twenty thousand dollars before the car even left – probably more than that – closer to twenty-five thousand dollars – before the car even left the shop because I couldn’t get a ride. Because the perception was that Fuller’s deal was the dream deal and if I couldn’t get the championship done in Fuller’s deal that it was my fault. People didn’t realize how bad it was from the inside. I towed out to I-70 and Fuller showed up with three haulers, three separate teams, and a Prevost bus. It looked like a circus coming to town. And I remember after I had won the show, Fuller came over to congratulate me and my dad said some smart-aleck comment to him. And then I looked over in his pit area and he was over there chewing out all three of his teams because a guy with a Ryder truck had beaten his deal. And that’s when people finally realized that maybe it wasn’t Eric. But for me to basically keep my career going, I knew I was going to have to do something drastic. So I did.

KO: So speaking of ’96, there were several different owners and cars. There was the 71 car, Stapp, Andy Morales…

EG: The Tamale Wagon! I got fired out of the famous Tamale Wagon!

KO: You even drove for Arlen Nofziger. You drove for Staab once. And then of course Niebel and Boles. Talking about Glen and Willie, your first ride with them came at the IRP Silver Crown show in August and you came from deep in the pack to get fifth. It seemed like the engine was off a little bit that day.

EG: It was only running on seven cylinders. It broke a pushrod in hot laps. That was the first time I was getting to run for him. And Willie’s operation was a good operation and I knew if I didn’t run well in that deal then I was really screwed. And Willie said, do whatever you want and Glen said, “Well I’ll just take the pushrod out. I’ll take the rocker arms off. I’ll take the spark plug out. And we’ll just run on seven cylinders.” And that’s what we did. We qualified on seven cylinders and we ran the qualifying race that way. We didn’t qualify quick because it took too long to get the car going because you were on seven cylinders. And then we started on the back of the feature and finished fifth on seven cylinders.

KO: I remember that! That was wild!

EG: Oh yeah! Willie was laughing his fanny off. He thought that was the funniest thing he’d ever seen. It sounded like a Farm-All tractor going around there. You had to run the fence and you had to stay in the gas because it took too long to get it going. That’s one of them funny things that happens that you remember your whole life.

KO: In the days leading up to the race, how excited were you about this opportunity? I remember going down to Niebel’s shop with my brother and doing a little interview before that race and thinking that this was the dream combination. This should have happened years ago.

EG: I couldn’t wait. I thought that I was on easy street.

KO: So even after the IRP run, were the expectations extremely lofty for both driver and owner?

EG: Well, Tony Stewart had just won the championship in that car the year before, so yeah. It was expected.

KO: I’m not sure what wintertime it was, but you were listed as living in Edinburgh, Indiana and I thought, putting two and two together, that you were driving for Niebel.

EG: I thought I was going to run for Niebel. I had just gotten fired from Print Express. Actually, I had moved to Edinburgh before I got fired from Print Express. In fact, years later Randy and I talked and he said that was kind of the reason he made his move like he did was because he saw the writing on the wall too. He saw me move to Edinburgh and thought I was getting ready to leave him to go to Niebel. But that wasn’t necessarily the case. I had just moved to Edinburgh because Mike’s (Thompson) dad had a house down there that he was renting out really cheap that I could afford. So I moved to Edinburgh and everybody said, “Well, he’s going to run for Niebel!”

KO: That’s what I was thinking as a fan, putting two and two together.

EG: It got me fired out of the Print Express car.

KO: Wow! Sorry.

EG: It happens.

KO: Really, why hadn’t you and Glen gotten together on a more permanent basis before 1996. You had run Parker’s car and you obviously had talked to Glen time and time again.

EG: Well, Glen’s deal – he had that engine shop going you know. Little 5 was his main thing and he had Bentley and Bob Frey. We just weren’t ever at a position where we were on the same page at the same time with the same goal. And it wasn’t until ’95 that Glen decided he was going to put together a full-fledged effort and go after a USAC championship. I had to run all the races. I couldn’t just run here and there. At the time, I had to run every chance I could.

KO: So if you guys had connected earlier and been able to run a full deal, do you think your life would be different now?

EG: (Long pause) I don’t know. He’s a lot sharper on dirt than people give him credit for. I will tell you that. And I also think, I know when they ran the deal, everybody said he was a nut for running a V-6 on the dirt, because in qualifying he was hurt. When the track was wet, Tony was hurt. Tony would have to drive the living tar out of the thing to qualify halfway decent. But other than that, he was ahead of his time in the feature. Because he was out there with a 900 pound racecar with a V-6 that’s not going to break the tires loose and Tony would go out and wax everybody’s fanny. The rest of us had dirt sprinters with 700 horse that’s lighting the tires up from one end to the other that weigh 250 pounds more than what his does. He can run softer compounds. He was ahead of the curve.

KO: So unfortunately, after IRP the results did not come like I had expected. You did get 3^rd at Salem and 5^th at Louisville. You didn’t really have a lot of races to run with them. Why didn’t we see a win in there? Was it just luck?

EG: Well, Glen was trying a lot of experimental stuff that year. He had a theory. He built a lot of late model engines. He used to sit there and look at that dyno and he’d say, “How in earth can I take a carburetor on a late model engine and pull X amount of horse? And they’re pulling out more horsepower than these fuel injected motors.” So there’s obviously something to that and he was messing around with the carburetor on the sprint car and champ car that year. And it just killed them motors. Because, with fuel injection you’ve got eight two and a half inch injectors and that carburetor, you just have them four little ports. And on a dyno, you can have an extended run to let it build up whereas if you’re running a sprint car, you’re on and off the gas so much that it was really down a lot of horsepower. But he was just convinced there was something there. And Glen, when he got his mind on something, that’s just how it was.

KO: Regardless of the fact that you weren’t able to get a win together in that short time frame, I’m sure you have some pretty good thoughts about the guy.

EG: Oh I do! I think the world of the guy.

KO: What did you admire most about him?

EG: His hillbillyness. He was a hillbilly. I mean we’re all hillbillies. But he embraced it. Just a lot of little things, you know what I mean? The way he’d carry on a conversation. Like I said, he’d never talk to you more than six inches away from your face. If he wanted to talk to Mike, he’d get up and walk right over and get in his face. And then right over in Brent’s face and right over in your face and my face. And he’d put both hands on your shoulders. He was a towering guy. Any time you’d walk in that shop he’d always smile and shoot the bull with you. But he was just like the rest of us. He was just trying to survive too.

KO: So were there any specific things you learned while driving his cars that you use today?

EG: I listened to a lot of what he said. He believed a lot in tire temperatures and what the shocks told you. He could sit there and look at a shock and the bump rubbers on the shock and they would tell him something. He had this little weight jacker that looked like it was worth two dollars, ok? And he lived and died by that weight jacker and he’d put that thing on the tires, lift it up, set it down, lift it up, and set it down. It looked like it was about ready to fall apart. He’d pick it up and take it to another tire and it would fall apart. But he had a couple of things that he just believed in. He didn’t care what stagger it took, it’s what the tire temperatures and the shock rubbers told him – that determined everything else. I listened to a lot of that.

KO: So were there any other unique philosophies he used to get his cars to handle other than by just reading the tire temps. He would admit that he was different but he’d never tell you what it was specifically.

EG: Yeah, you had to get to know him. He kept stuff in. His attitude was that he had spent his life learning this stuff, working for people like Siebert and stuff like that. Before he was going to tell you, you had to earn the right for him to tell you. He wasn’t just going to tell you. You had to demonstrate to him that you earned the right to learn that vast knowledge…that was it! His vast knowledge…that’s it…his “VAST KNOWLEDGE”. He liked to use that terminology a lot. But he wouldn’t tell you unless he felt you deserved to know it. Then he’d tell you but he’d only portion it out. He was a lot like Jack French is. Him and Jack French are two peas in a pod.

KO: And you’ve driven for both!

EG: Yeah. And survived them both two.

KO: But I just remember, he’d have a coil on the right rear or coils on the back and bars on the front.

EG: His attitude was, he didn’t care what it took to make that shock and that tire temperature accomplish what he wanted it to accomplish. He didn’t care. He didn’t care if that meant running a left front tire on the right rear. He was going to do whatever he had to do to get that right rear tire temperature at a certain number and that shock bump rubber at a certain height. And that was just it.

KO: Again, over the winter of ’96 and ’97, the options were pretty slim. You managed to scrounge up a Silver Crown ride with Doc Logan. You were able to make the Copper and IRP features and you were 8^th at Phoenix, which wasn’t too bad. I’m thinking you have a story surrounding this ride. Feel free to further elaborate.

EG: A pillar of the community! Awww, it was just one of them things I shouldn’t have gotten into. It was just a bad deal, you know? It was just a bad deal. That’s it. There was a lot of things that went on…

KO: You begged and borrowed to get that thing together?

EG: I begged and borrowed and stole and cajoled. We got it put together and went to Phoenix. I had the trailer because he didn’t have a trailer. I had a trailer sitting there at the house. And I said, “I need the truck though because I don’t have a truck.” Well my dad, whose health was really starting to go downhill, he’d retired and he said he’d drive it to Phoenix. I had went and gotten a job and I couldn’t take off and drive the hauler. But I said, “I need a truck. I need a decent truck to make it down there.” And he (Logan) brought a 1975 Chevy pickup truck that had been spliced together. And my dad drove that thing from Indianapolis to Phoenix in 20 hours. And the wheels barely touched the ground. He said the brakes didn’t work on it and a whole bunch of stuff. It dropped a valve. That’s just kind of how that deal went. I needed a pickup truck and I got a 1975 Chevy. You know that Johnny Cash song ’75 Chevy? That was it. I had a good friend of mine who had a repair shop and he crawled under it and that’s who told me. He was like, “Holy crap. This thing is spliced together from two trucks!” And I thought…shoot…rock on!

KO: When did you realize that something wasn’t right with that deal?

EG: As soon as the feature was over at Phoenix, something wasn’t right. That’s when I figured that one out.

KO: I want to hear the rest of this!

EG: We ran the show. Ok, we survived it. We finished 8^th with a dirt champ car. It was a Stanton. It was made for the dirt. And we built the motor at Indy Cylinder Head’s shop, which is where I was working. And they built drag motors and this was the first Silver Crown motor they’d built. And they did a decent job. I had a lot of people help me out. Tim Engler helped me out. When the race was over, we were going to head back to the airport the next morning. And I had an envelope full of bills. I gave them to him when I first got there. And he said, “We’ll get this straightened out.” And we were sitting down, having the free continental breakfast at the Days Inn at 27^th Avenue, and I kept asking him, “What are we going to do about this?” And he said, “Well, now is as good a time to talk as any.”

And he just laid into me. He sat there and chewed my ass out for an hour and made me feel like an absolute piece of crap and said that I didn’t have his written authorization to buy this stuff. Well I said, “I had to get the car together to get it to Phoenix.” And he said, “Well, we should have just skipped Phoenix.” And I said, “That wasn’t the plan!”

And I knew I was in trouble when he said, “You know, in a court of law, since my signature is not on anything, I don’t have to pay any of this.” And right at that very second is when I went, “D’OH!” But he eventually paid them all off – all the ones in the envelope. We had it out and he came and got his car at my house and he still owed me some money. And my dad was at the house and he said, “You ain’t getting the car until you pay Eric what you owe him.” Well, he said, “I want to talk about that.” And my dad said, “I’m going to start tearing the engine apart until you figure out you’re going to pay him, starting with the front cover. And then I’m going to spin the cam.” And he said, “Well, I’ll give you a check.” And dad said, “No check. Cash.” And then we settled and he loaded the car up. That’s just how it went. But I knew when he chewed my ass out there in the lobby and said that my signature is not on anything – I am legally not obligated to this. I’m gonna pay it, but I’m not legally obligated. I knew then that I was in deep crap.

KO: Great guy!

EG: Pillar of the community…

KO: So your 1997 action was somewhat limited and I’m guessing that was due in some part to your father’s health.

EG: My dad’s health took a turn and then my wife was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. So racing kind of took a back seat there for a little while. I think I ran some stuff here and there but I don’t remember. I think I ran for Gary Irvin at the Four Crown and finished 3^rd. John Baker – I ran for him some.

KO: I think you ran some for Brad Armstrong, Digger Sohm, Conroy…

EG: Yeah.

KO: What was wrong with your father at the time?

EG: He had a heart attack. He had been diabetic for years and his health was terrible because of the stress of his business. He literally lived day to day for twenty years, worrying about payroll. It just took a toll on him. And when he had a heart attack, they went in and saw the blockage. In a normal situation, they drill the blockage out or angioplasty, using a balloon. But he’d been a diabetic so long, they said the surgery would kill him. So they just put him on blood thinners and sent him home. He had been a diabetic so long that he had lost parts of his feet, so he couldn’t get around the house. So I had to help my mom with him getting around the house and stuff like that. Racing wasn’t a big deal right then.

KO: So how long did he last like that?

EG: He lasted for a year. He died in October of ’98.

KO: Talking about the variety of cars you ran around that time frame…

EG: I ran a Drinan. Joe Conroy had a Drinan car. Gus Sohm had an old Adkins-McQueen car. Who else’s cars did I run?

KO: Armstrong for a show. Baker. Then 16^th Street.

EG: 16^th Street was the Mike Ingram midget.

KO: Talking about the third place at the Four Crown with Irvin, did that give any you any kind of optimism when things were darkest?

EG: Yeah, that got me a ride for the following year with Gary Irvin in the champ car deal.

KO: You ran four champ car races in ’98 before the Little 500, and then you managed to land a ride with Jack French. That was a great race. You started 17^th and it took until lap 159 until you led, when you were up front for 32 laps. You would lead again from laps 273 to 321. Then with 18 to go, you were able to chase down Bentley Warren, in Niebel’s car, to win that thing. I seem to recall that you ran McCreary tires and didn’t change them all night long.

EG: I could have run the same tires the next year too!

KO: Wow!

EG: They were rock hard.

KO: Was it strategy or setup that won you that race?

EG: Both. We went out, right before the final hot lap session. And we’d been a little off on the car and I talked to Jack because there was a certain way I wanted things at Anderson. And there’s a certain way Jack wants things. And we butted heads. But we kind of came up with a happy medium between what he wanted and what I wanted. And right before the last practice, he and I talked about one last change. I asked what it would do and he explained it to me. We talked about it and both agreed on it. We made the change and we went out for hot laps and the thing was a rocket. I came in and said, “We just won tonight’s race.” Without having to change tires, back then that was the era when you didn’t change tires. When I won in ’93 we didn’t change tires. You only changed tires if you got a flat.

Also in ’98 I ran for Greg Staab at Lawrenceburg and won some shows on the dirt down there.

KO: You already knew after hot laps that the setup you had was going to win you the race. Was it any more special beating Niebel again, when that was his race? Kind of the same deal as before?

EG: I had medical bills I had to pay. I wish it had been someone other than Bentley because I knew he was going to be a real bear to pass.

KO: Yes he was. But it was definitely an exciting race to watch as a fan. I was happy for you but I had no idea what was going on behind the scenes in your life.

EG: My dad was there. That was the last Little 5 he got to go to. And then my wife was there and she had been going through chemo and lost her hair and all that. It was a pretty special night. Jack probably wondered what in the heck he got himself into by hiring me. It worked out.

KO: So how big of a deal was that race to you? Did it serve as a rejuvenator for your career? Did it rebuild confidence? Did it help you get other rides?

EG: Yeah. Staab had taken over promotion at Lawrenceburg Speedway. And he needed somebody to drive his dirt sprinter and he’d known me a long time. He let me run his dirt sprinter and we went down there – I’m trying to remember how many times. We won three times down there and we ran good at the Sprintweek show at Bloomington. I also got to run for the Booe Brothers once in ’98 too, when Tyler was off running the Indy car. That helped me get a ride with the Booe Brothers for next year.

KO: Going back to the Little 5, you got to hang out with Glen with the Parker deal. Can you compare Jack French and his Little 500 strategies and setups to Glen Niebel?

EG: Two different eras. Glen took Tom Cherry’s deal to another level. He approached it with a different view and took it to a new era. And then Jack took it to a whole ‘nother era. It is a generational thing. It’s a time thing. Somebody’s going to take it from the way Jack’s done it to something else. It’s just the evolution of the race. At each stage of the history of the race, somebody comes along and changes the attitude and the strategy of the race. Fortunately for me, I was able to be involved with two people who had a big impact on that event. But that’s comparing an apple to an orange because of the way they approached it.

Glen approached it on a fuel mileage deal. Because he was running the V-6, he could run softer tires than everybody else. He wasn’t going to abuse his equipment. He wasn’t going to need as much fuel. He could make shorter stops because he wasn’t using as much fuel. Nobody could beat that. But then Jack has the theory that – run whatever fuel you want. I’m bolting brand new tires on every time and my tires are going to outrun your fuel. So, that and the V-6 had kind of went to the wayside. If USAC hadn’t of changed the weight deal, I’m sure you’d have seen more V-6s. You were starting to see more. Hannig had one. Puterbaugh had one. Glen had a couple. Kenny Irwin had one for awhile. They were starting to take off and then USAC changed the rule and changed the weight deal. That pretty much killed the V-6. If the V-6 hadn’t have been affected in that way, the development of that engine would have continued. But when they changed the weight deal, that killed the development. Nobody was going to spend money developing heads for a V-6 that you couldn’t run anywhere.

KO: So talking about the Staab deal and going back to your dirt roots, winning three times at Lawrenceburg had to be a good time.

EG: That was a lot of fun. I always liked Lawrenceburg. That was one of my favorite dirt tracks. Before they did all the work, the old Lawrenceburg – you had the big, giant ledge, the bowl, the circle, you had holes everywhere. And I loved it. I don’t know why. You’d go down into turn three…actually you’d go down the backstretch and the car would be jumping off the track onto pit lane and then jump back over the curb. Man, that’s nothing but a good time! That’s a blast! Hitting the hole in two… See, the thing is a lot of people at Lawrenceburg, a lot of new people who have never run there before, if you run Lawrenceburg timidly, you’re gonna bust your ass. You’ve got to go to Lawrenceburg and act like you’re getting on a mechanical bull. Because that’s what it is. It’s a ball, man. I have an absolute ball there. I love it.

KO: You were having fun down there winning races again. Had you not had that success in ’98, how long do you think you would have lasted in racing?

EG: That probably would have been the end of it.

KO: I’m sure the burn out factor was there with family health issues and money issues.

EG: Yeah, yeah. And also finding rides. The majority of rides then and now are family owned deals, in one way or another. There’s a handful of people that hire people to drive for them. Most of those rides were taken, so you really got to do something to impress owners to get a ride in one of those situations.

KO: You were talking about subbing for Brian Tyler at Winchester for the Booe Brothers where you were fourth. Was that night at Winchester the key to getting that ride or was it your success in 1998?

EG: We got along really well that night. They’re pretty good old boys. They remind me of the Five Brothers tobacco pouch. The five brothers with the long ZZ Top beards.

KO: How many Booes are there?

EG: Three. Richard, Jim, and Bill. You hardly ever saw Bill. Bill would sit up in the stands. Jim and Richard were into it. Bill was into other stuff. I had a good time. I hadn’t been to Winchester in awhile. And they said that going to Winchester right out of the box and not having been there for a couple of years and running as well as we did plus getting along with them really well in the pits – because of that we were able to hook up the next year.

KO: Even though there were no wins in ’99, it seemed like it was a pretty good year for you.

EG: We should have won. We finished second five times. We were sick of it. We should have won a couple of them. But we took care of those cars at my garage. Sam Brooks and myself did. We’d work all day and then we’d come home and work on the cars until about midnight. Then we’d go to bed and then put in the trailer, haul it to the track, take care of it at the track, and run it. It was just me and him, for the whole year. We ran the whole schedule.

KO: Running yourself ragged.

EG: That’s pretty much what we did. That’s all we accomplished. But we had five seconds. We finished second at Attica with an old dirt J&J sprinter. Then we finished second at IRP, Salem, Winchester. Second at the Little 5. We were tired of finishing second. But all we accomplished that year was running ourselves into the ground.

KO: Long nights, long tows, lack of sleep…

EG: In fact one night, I’ll tell you a story about ’99. Sam was there when this occurred. He was a big part of this. But we were towing. It was April 30^th when we left the track. We were coming home with the dirt sprinter. The first night we finished second at Attica. The second night we ran like crap at Eldora. We were coming home because I only had a 30 foot trailer. We had to switch cars out because Winchester was the next day. Me and Sam were driving the hauler back with another guy named Danny, who was going to go with us the whole year. About Centerville exit – no – I remember now – Wilbur Wright Road. I had a taillight or something out. There was some light issue on the trailer that I had just bought that week. I mean, I picked it up, loaded it, and went to the track. I hadn’t had time to do anything. Yeah…only used on Sundays! It had went the whole ASA schedule the year before. This thing was worn out. Anyway, the commercial vehicle enforcement moron, make sure you put that in there…

KO: This is all unedited.

EG: This commercial vehicle enforcement moron was sitting there in the median and sees me going by without a taillight or something. And he gets out and pulls me over. By now it’s after midnight. So it’s May 1^st. He goes, “I pulled you over because you have a taillight out.” And I looked at him and said, “You’re commercial vehicle enforcement. What in the hell are you doing pulling me over?” So that probably wasn’t the best thing to say.

And he goes, “Well, what do you have in the trailer?” And I said, “A racecar.” And he said, “Do you race for money?” And as soon as he said that, I knew I was screwed. And I said, “Well, I don’t make money. It’s a money losing deal.” And he goes, “But do you take in money?” And I go, “Yeah.” And he goes, “Well, you’re a commercial vehicle by the definition of Indiana. So I’m doing you a roadside inspection.” And he crawls all over my truck, which is a diesel pickup truck. “I need a D.O.T. number. Physicals…and all this…” And I’m like, “Bud, it ain’t going to happen! This is a pickup truck and a trailer!” “Well I’m taking you out of service. And on top of that, your plates expired April 30^th on your truck.” I’m like, “Awwwwwwwwwwww crap!”

So he takes me out of service and says that if he catches me on the road, he’s going to confiscate the vehicle. So we went to a truck stop, tore the trailer apart, found the wire, got it hooked back up, had to buy a roadside flare kit, a fire extinguisher kit, and all that stuff. So we snuck back home through the country, got home at six in the morning, switched out the dirt sprinter, put the pavement sprinter in, pavement tires, and went to Winchester. Hadn’t slept. We met at the McDonald’s at Mount Comfort. And Sam went in to get some breakfast to take with him to Winchester because he was hungry. He came walking out to the truck and I was passed out asleep. And he couldn’t wake me up. And he’s yelling, “WE’VE GOT TO GO TO WINCHESTER!”

Sam Brooks: I waited ten, twenty minutes before I started trying to wake him up and I couldn’t wake him up. I was kind of scared.

EG: We went to Winchester that day and ran and I don’t even remember what we did.

Sam Brooks: We qualified ninth with no power steering.

EG: It must not have been a memorable day. So anyway, getting pulled over by a commercial enforcement vehicle is what I remember.

KO: Not a good time.

EG: Nooooooooo….

Sam Brooks: We never saw Danny again.

EG: Oh yeah, the guy that came that night. We never saw him again. So that morning, we said, “Go get a shower. We’re going to load the pavement car up. And then we’re going.” Never saw him again. He got his shower and ran!

Sam Brooks: He said that his girlfriend had given him the ultimatum.

EG: Yeah. Never saw him again.

KO: So where do the Booes rank in the car owners that you’ve driven for?

EG: They’re pretty good people. I like ‘em. They’ve done stuff to help me out, even after I was done driving for them. They are good people.

KO: Also in ’99, I seem to recall a third at DuQuoin in the Bowen champ car.

EG: Yeah.

KO: Was that a minor miracle?

EG: That was a pretty neat deal. I like Bob Bowen. Bob and I met years ago when Bob used to run sprint cars himself. Over the years Bob and I have gotten to be pretty good friends. Really good friends. Bob is too cheap to buy a plane ticket. Ok? He’d always take a car off his lot and drive. Forty hours to wherever. But it didn’t cost him anything because the car came off the lot. We’d have a lot of time to talk in those trips. And he was telling me, the first time he ever met me was at Attica oddly enough, in 1989, when I was running for the championship. Something broke on the car. Oh, no, no! It was 1990 and a head gasket blew on the hauler and the car never showed up. I needed a ride to stay in the points. I went to Bowen and said, “You don’t run for points. Why don’t you let me run your car?” And he said, “My dad doesn’t let me run very often. So I really don’t want to get out of the seat.” And I looked at him and said, “Are you F-in kidding me? You’re not going to put me in your car?” And he said, that’s the first time we met. I said, “Huh. Wow! Small world!” We laughed about it and Bob and I have gotten to be good friends.

But that day at DuQuoin was a good day. We should have won that race. I can’t even remember if we were fast time or second fast time, but we were fast that day. And if we hadn’t have run out of tires, we’d have won that show.

KO: So that whole ’99 season of running yourself ragged, were there any revelations at the end of that season. Was the full-time deal of running for a championship done?

EG: I could see where it was getting there. It was starting to take a toll on me. It was starting to physically catch up with me. Then I was fortunate enough that Bob wanted to run the whole deal so I had a full-time Champ Car ride again. We had some good runs with Bob and we had some bad runs with Bob. But I think the world of him. He’s a good guy too.

KO: Talk about your pal Sam. When and where did you meet?

EG: He and I met at a Central Hardware in 1986. I used to work part time at a Central Hardware. And so did he. And we found out that both of us had an affection for alcohol. So, it’s worked out. I knew Sam from there. Then he started going to the races and helping out. He’s been all over the God’s green earth with me. He’s a good dude. I thought we were going to lose him a few years ago.

KO: What sorts of advice, motivation, words of wisdom, and comfort does he provide you?

EG: He’ doesn’t! (Laughing) He is the snoringest dude I’ve ever met in my life. And you can ask anybody in this shop that’s had to bunk up with him, except Mike. Have you ever bunked up with him?

Mike Thompson: No, but I’ve walked in…

EG: Because he has a deviated septum. When we were running for the Booe Brothers, we’d both work, and then work on the car. And then drive ten hours to a racetrack, run a race, and since we didn’t have money for a hotel, we’d drive home. And Sam never liked driving big trucks. He never drove ‘em. I usually drove ‘em. After my dad passed on, I was the one who drove ‘em. Another guy, Jay, he drove ‘em. But when he left, it was just me. I’d be like dead tired, getting ready to fall asleep. I’d be wanting someone to talk to, to stay awake. And man, five minutes after we were on the road, you look over and his head is bouncing against the window. He’s asleep and you’re taking toothpicks and jamming them in your eyes. But you know, there again he’s one of the most loyal individuals you can run across.

KO: And you’re all about loyalty.

EG: I’m all about loyalty.

KO: For 2000, you signed up for USAC battle with a guy from Anderson named Don DeSalle whose experience as a car owner was somewhat limited. But in just your second race together, you won the Glen Niebel classic at Anderson. You would later win Salem and score 11 top-fives, several of them on dirt, including a third at the Four Crown. Why were the results better in your first year with DeSalle compared to your second year?

EG: Because we’d done pissed the money away in the first year.

KO: Simple.

EG: Simple. Well, we were running a one car team. Ok. And the second year, we went to a two car team. And everybody thinks that, “Well, I’ve got enough spare parts on the shelf. I can put together another car and all I’ll have is another set of tires in it. Well, it doesn’t work that way. If you want to do it right, you’ve got to buy double of what you had. The second year when Darland worked his way in there on the second car, it was just pulling our resources to the point of breaking. It was just too much. It caught up.

KO: Winning the Niebel classic, given your relationship with Glen and your respect for him, there had to be some special feelings there.

EG: That was a pretty neat deal because Carolyn was there too. My wife and Carolyn would write each other back and forth. It was a pretty neat deal because it was the first one too. It was a cold day that day. Frigid cold. And that’s kind of the day when we invented the Anderson burnout for qualifying.

KO: Oh yeah! The top fuel burnout coming off of two – lighting them up?

EG: Yep.

KO: Yeah, I remember some people copying you on that.

EG: They mocked me for that.

KO: You definitely have to keep those tires warm.

EG: Jack French chewed my ass out for doing that too. “Don’t do it. Don’t do it!”

KO: After three years of driving a car specifically owned by Jack in the Little 500, for the 2001 Little 5 you organized quite an effort. You purchased the former Boyce Holt Beast. It seemed like it was a ’94 Beast, a four bar back then, driven by Peter Cozzolino.

EG: Exactly right. It still had the yellow paint on it. It still had the lime green paint on it underneath the yellow paint from Tracy.

KO: Wow! You modified that car to benefit from the Little 500 rules. You leased an engine. You really put together your own version of the dream team. French was again on board for that. You qualified second for the race. You led the final 148 laps and you beat Dave Steele for your third Little 500 trophy. You proceeded to win four more Little 500s in a row after 2001 and I think all but one came with the old Beast.

EG: The first two years were in the Beast. Then the J&J. Then the Beast. Then the Competition Welding car. The first two were in that Beast car. Then Jack put a deal together with J&J and they built him a car or whatever that arrangement was. And then the next year was going to be a record setting year for wins and I told Jack I wanted to run the old Beast car. And then after we did that, he had some ideas he wanted to try out with Competition Welding, so he put that car together and that was the last year him and I were together.

KO: As far as that Beast car, I’m sure you don’t want to spill all the secrets because you plan on running that thing again.

EG: Two more races and we’ll break even on that car!

KO: Why does that thing work so well at Anderson?

EG: Don’t know. I don’t know. I just like that car. It’s like the old low rider car you were talking about. I just liked that car. That low rider car won at Anderson too. I wish I knew where it was at. There are certain cars you let get away that you wished you never let get away and that’s one of ‘em. I wish I knew where it was at. We actually tried finding that car in ’01 because Jack French and I were running cars supplied by Stealth. And then Godfrey sold Stealth and they told us they weren’t supplying cars anymore. So Jack and I were out of a deal.

And then my uncle said he would put the $7500 up to buy the car. And I was trying to find the low rider car you were talking about. And we were going to buy it and lease a motor. The Booe Brothers put the money up to lease a motor (Jim Booe and his wife put the money up) and I couldn’t find the car. I couldn’t find it! The next best thing we could find was that car of Boyce Holt’s. So we got a hold of Boyce and talked to him, rode up there and met in Jack’s minivan, him and his wife, me and Jerry. We went in and looked at it, looked at all the parts, sat back out in the van, talked about it, and Jerry bought the car. We took it back to Jack’s house and Jack tore it all apart, cut it up, moved stuff around, made a bunch of new stuff for it, and it’s what you see today.

KO: So the original setup with gears, stagger, springs, and shocks - have you strayed much from that?

EG: Not really. The only time we tried making some trick front axles and I didn’t like ‘em. Jack said they were faster on the stopwatch but they weren’t comfortable. And I thought for 500 laps, you needed to be comfortable. So we went back to the old style axle. And the second year, Jack put a clutch in the car, because we were really going to speed up the pit stops and it threw off the handling of the car big-time, but those are the only things we tried. Other than that, it’s pretty much the same.

KO: We’re sitting here in the shop of Mike Bowman. For ’02, you made a somewhat bold switch by moving to Mike’s team and I think John Davis was on board then.

EG: I met with them, I think, at a Bob Evans. Phil Shuler had called me when he had heard I was not happy at Arctic Cat because we had went to two cars. Don DeSalle had went through a divorce that was really ugly and we were kind of unsure of the future of the team. We went and ran Sprintweeks with DeSalle and when we came home, his wife had cleaned him out of his house, his bank account, his credit cards – everything. That’s a major blow. I didn’t know what was going to happen. I didn’t know if there was going to be a team. I didn’t know what shows I was going to run. We had finished second in the points that year with DeSalle. Darland on the dirt, me on the pavement. We had finished second in the points to the Hoffmans. I wasn’t happy. Phil Shuler called me and I’d known Phil from years ago. He told me that there were these two guys that he’d worked for that he wanted me to meet. He thought it would be a good deal. They had another driver in their car at the time and they weren’t sure what was going on there. So we met at a Bob Evans and talked and the rest as they say, is history. John Davis had originally started the deal and brought Mike in. I’d seen over the years where sprint car teams had partners where it didn’t work, but they were able to make it work. I think it was two guys wanting to make sure that they had fun first off and they conned me into running their car (laughing).

KO: So how was the reunion with Shuler? Was he still grouchy?

EG: Oh yeah. But that’s him. Naw, he’s not grouchy. He’s a ray of sunshine. No, I mean Phil and I had worked together before. He was excited about the reunion. I’m trying to remember back that far. I think the first show I ran for them I tore their car up. So that should have been an indication to them right off the bat what they were getting into. It was at Anderson and I was going for the win. I got in a crash with McCord and Hines and tore the car up. That’ll learn ‘em!

KO: For the 2002 Little 5, you dominated that one more than any other. You took the lead at lap 168 and ended up pacing the field for 333 laps. I don’t know if that was a record number of dollars earned for the race, but it had to be up there.

EG: Yeah, it think it was. That was the peak.

KO: So on a race like that where you share ownership and bills, how much money do you actually get to keep?

EG: Jack and I split the money on that deal. We had enough sponsorship provided by Print Express and Jim Booe to cover the bills, for the most part. And then John Wilson and his wife paid for the fuel and people had done some other stuff here and there. I think we got $36,000 and change plus we each got watches and stuff like that. That was the peak year. I don't think it’s ever been that high since. But Jack and I had a deal where we split everything fifty-fifty.

KO: Winning a race like that obviously helps the annual household income quite a bit. Were you able to take a vacation? Are you able to put more down on your house? Do you invest in your kids or your business?

EG: ’02…I think I went on a vacation for three days.

KO: I'd bet that was the first time in a long time.

EG: Yeah, and that was also the last time I went on a vacation. No, that was it. That was the big splurge. That was the big thing. See, by me being able to take that money in, my wife was able to stay at home with the kids, which was a big deal for both of us.

KO: At the beginning of 2003, you ran a few dirt sprint car races in your own car (maybe Mike helped with the motor) but the effort stalled out at the end of May. What made you decide to pack it in on the dirt?

EG: Mike owned the motor. Jerry owned the car. I decided I wanted to go and take one more shot at the championship. I’d fallen short. With the Booe Brothers I finished fourth and DeSalle – I don’t even know where I’d finished and then finished second three times before that. Anyway, I’d come close enough. I decided I wanted to run the whole deal again. Mike was taking care of the pavement end. I wanted to run the whole deal and go after the championship again. Jack had bought the Little 5 car out from me and Jerry. We were out of it. It was all Jack’s. Jerry, my uncle, bought a J&J off of Jim Mills. Mike bought the motor. It just didn’t work out. We bought the wrong car for the wrong application. I’d been out of the dirt deal long enough to where the Twisters had come in, the anti-roll bars and coils and all that. I was basically racing a 1995 J&J. It didn’t take me too awful long to realize that I was wasting my time, Mike’s motor, and Jerry’s money. We just didn’t have the right car for this application. So I parked it.

KO: Also in ’03, you earned an opportunity to run champ cars and sprint cars for Bill Biddle about midway through the season, the highlight coming at Pikes Peak where you ran second. You’ve driven for all kinds of car owners - 41 is my estimation, depending on who is actually listed as owner. Can you list your best and worst car owners?

EG: No, I’m not going to do that. I’ll tell you this. Half of them are good guys and half of them are assholes. I’ll let them figure that out.

KO: So where did Biddle fit in on the list?

EG: You know, I’m not going to speak ill of the dead. But as long as he didn’t have anything to drink, he was a super guy. I drove for Bill and we ran really good – that’s where Mike Thompson and I got hooked up – that was at Bill’s. He was taking care of Bill’s stuff then, and wrenching on it. Westfall had started the year out and they parted ways. He was a hard guy to drive for just because he had his own take on things. We ran really well at Lawrenceburg during Sprintweek. We should have won the dirt show at Terre Haute, the first time I ran his dirt champ car. We were going to win that deal and a nozzle line fell off. Then we went to Pikes Peak and ran second. That was just a hard deal because there were a lot of people there at the time that all weren’t on the same page. There were a lot of chiefs but Bill and I never had bad words with each other. In fact, the last race that he ran before he died was with me, driving for him at Terre Haute.

When I ran for him at Terre Haute, my wife had sat there and talked to him for a long time and he was just finishing up his divorce, which I think was on his mind for a long time. He had himself a new girlfriend and actually, he seemed like a completely different person. We both walked away from that race saying he was a changed man. He was truly a changed man. And shortly after that he was gone.

You’d go into Bill’s shop and Bill would have thirteen racecars there. Cabinets full of shocks. Shelves full of steering gears. And the thing was, over the years he had such a high turnover, and so many parts getting switched out that you didn’t know what part was good and what one wasn’t. So you’d think you need a steering gear and you grab one off the shelf and put it in the car and go to the track and you’d find out it was leaking. Somebody forgot to tag it when they put it on the shelf, because he’d have three guys driving for him at that particular show and they’d all show up at the shop and it was survival of the fittest getting the parts from the shelf to your car. But I never had a harsh word with him. He just had his own way of doing things.

KO: In 2004 and 2005, you earned an opportunity to drive champ cars for the Hoffmans. Your best finish with them was a 4^th at IRP, with several top-five and top-ten finishes. It had to be an honor to get behind the wheel of their car. Was that one of the cars you wanted to drive before you were done with racing?

EG: Yep. It was. It was an honor to drive for them and I had a blast driving for them. They were great people to drive for. Richard told me when he hired me to run the champ car for him that the sprint car takes precedence over everything because they are a sprint car team. And he takes great pride in that t-shirt that says eight-time USAC national sprint car champion or nine time. That is HIS THING. But that champ car was kind of his hobby. It was his baby. In fact all the other guys on the team would make fun of him because of his love for that champ car. Yeah, I had a blast driving for them. I can see why they win the sprint car title so many times, because they take that serious. If you’re beating them, they are going to figure out why you’re beating them. And then they are going to go get it. It was a lot of fun running for them. It’s a shame that USAC ran off car owners like that in the champ car deal by coming out with that new champ car. You had 48 to 58 top quality champ cars at Phoenix and you used to have 30,000 people for Copper before they drug it in with the Indy cars and the stock cars. And they figured out a way of screwing that up.

KO: Yeah, that was always THE wintertime highlight for me. Going to Phoenix was a HUGE deal.

EG: It was. It was.

KO: Zero degrees to about 80 degrees.

EG: Then you go to the Big Apple, T-Bone, and Manzanita. They just screwed it up.

KO: January 18, 2004. I’ve got the e-mail printed out here. It was entitled “Manifesto From a Madman”.

EG: I wonder what I was pissed off about?

KO: Airing your concerns about an open wheeled world tainted by traction control.

EG: Ummm, ok. Now I remember!

KO: Do you feel that this is still an issue three or four years later?

EG: It’s a different issue now. It’s tire soaking. If anybody’s naïve enough to think that that stuff doesn’t go on, they are crazy. That’s what upsets me. That’s one of the things I can say – I’ve never been fined. I’ve never been punished for cheating at any race. It’s because when I die, I have to face my maker. And if I won fifty shows by cheating, then I really didn’t win fifty shows.

We talked about buying some of the components and in a closed test session, comparing them to see how much of an advantage they give. I’ve even talked with very famous car owners who said they did the same thing and they gained three-tenths a lap with traction control. They bought it, put it on, same driver, same car, and gained three-tenths. Now they haven’t raced with it because of the same deal. They haven’t been busted for something like that and they know their reputation will be destroyed. But if there’s people that think this is a purist’s world, they’re fools because it’s going on. In fact I just spoke with someone who came back from the west coast swing at the end of the year and told me that two prominent car owners were caught with soaked tires out there at California and USAC did nothing about it because they promote those car owners’ names.

So you should be able to narrow it down.

There’s always controversy. Somebody is always cheating somehow is what the claim is. There was nitrous. There was this. There was that. We’re way past that now. We’re up to really sneaky cheating.

KO: Your sixth Little 500 win in 2004 topped Bob Frey’s record. Your 7^th win in 2005 topped Glen Niebel. Five in a row at that race is almost unthinkable. Yet you did it. You’ve won more times than anybody. You’ve led more laps than anybody. You’ve had more top-fives than anybody. You’re tied with Jeff Bloom for the most top-tens. The only categories you aren’t on top of are number of starts, pole positions, and laps completed. Do the records mean that much to you?

EG: No, not today. They probably will later. The ones at the Little 5 mean a lot to me. What means most to me, this year at Little 5 for an example, is that I was able to win for Mike. Mike bought the car that we won a bunch of them races with and that I was able to win for everybody in this shop. I was able to have my son at the racetrack too and he was able to watch the Little 5. To have him down there and get pictures with him was a neat deal. Things like that mean more to me than the records. Of course you can say that if you’ve got the record, you know? But that’s what meant the most to me this year. Everybody that was a part of it this year was able to share in the win. Each one has its own special meaning to me – not necessarily the record but circumstances surrounding that race.

KO: When you decided that you loved this race, how many times did you honestly think you could win it?

EG: I figured a couple. That’s what I really figured. And then after I won it in ’98, we’ll run this and see if we can win another one. And then after I got hooked up with that car, barring a wreck, there’s no reason that car shouldn’t win the race.

KO: So what is it about this race that has mesmerized you?

EG: The money. (Everybody laughs.) No, it’s a lot of aspects about it you don’t have anyplace else. You have 33 cars starting in eleven rows of three. You’ve got the pageantry involved. You’ve got the packed stands. You’ve got the riding around in the pickup truck waving at people. There’s no other sprint car race like it. You’ve got pit stops. Strategy. You’ve got all kinds of stuff. You don’t encounter that at any other show. Not only do you have to be able to think, but it is also a sprint race where you are gassing it as hard as you can. But it’s also a physical and mental endurance deal too.

KO: So let’s move up to 2006. You ran the race without Jack French as the car was entered by Mike Bowman. What sorts of things kept you from giving Brian Tyler a fight for the win?

EG: I made a mistake and called the wrong pit on the second deal. We had calculated our fuel mileage and I felt I’d put myself into a certain window and passed that window and had to take a pit during the green. And if you pit during the green at that race, you’re done. And that’s what we did. We ended up second.

KO: So were you angry?

EG: Yeah. I wasn’t happy at all. I wasn’t happy at the call I’d made. I knew better than that. But I put myself in that position and had to live with it.

KO: There was some talk that 2006 might have been your last Little 5. After finishing second, did you decide right then and there that you had to win that thing again?

EG: I had to give my body a few days to get over it because every year after I get out of that car, I swear up and down that’s my last one because it takes me a couple of days to get out of bed after that one. It just wears you down and takes such an effort. I also want to go out of that race on top. I don’t want to sit there and hang on for the sake of hanging on. I don’t want to disrespect the race that much. But I wasn’t happy with second and I especially wasn’t happy with how I got second by making that mistake. We’ve rectified that problem.

KO: Are there any routines or rituals during the week of the Little 500 that you like to follow?

EG: Well, it just seems like I’ve been to it enough times now that it just has a certain flow. You get there early Wednesday morning and fight everybody for a pit stall. Wait two hours to get your arm band. It’s just Anderson! The greatest little crap hole in the world is Anderson you know! One year I didn’t eat or drink anything the day of the race and that about caught up with me. So now I make sure I eat and drink. You would have to ask everyone else, but I’m sure that I’m a horse’s fanny to deal with that day because internally I put a lot of pressure on myself for that day. I get jacked up. I go through a can of snuff. I eat candy bars and drink Mountain Dew. That’s a big deal. That day is. That’s the biggest paying race of the year. It’s a big deal.

KO: You kind of answered my question about what the mood is like that day. Obviously you’re focused.

EG: My wife wants me out of the house as fast as she can get me out of the house.

KO: So you pretty much get up on Saturday morning and you’re at the track as early as you can get?

EG: Well, I’ll eat breakfast with my family, with my kids and stuff. But I’ll be at the track pretty early because I just have to be. When I was running for Jack, both of us got the same way – we’d get real moody. I’m sure everybody on the crew had to act like they were walking on eggshells, which isn’t fair to them. But that’s what happens when you get two horse’s fannies together. My wife just runs me out of the house early and tells me, “Just go to Anderson. I’ll see you at 6:00. “

KO: 2006, you won the first PRA champ car race up at Schererville for Larry Contos. Tray House was the guy behind the scenes helping you there. Again, you drove for yet another guy who’d been around the sport a long time. What’s the lowdown on driving for Larry? Is he pretty much hands-off?

EG: He’s completely hands-off. He wants to show up at the track, smoke his cigarettes, and watch his car go around with his stopwatch and relax. That’s his way of relaxing. He owns a lot of businesses. That’s his enjoyment. Mike (Bowman) is the same way. But Mike is also hands on as far as if a tire needs changed or if something needs to be done, he’s going to jump in there and do it. But he still owns the cars for his relaxation from his business. Larry is the same way but Larry is 100% hands-off. Tray takes care of everything for him. And I think that deal works out really well for both of ‘em. Tray has always wanted to race for somebody with money. Then when he got hurt and he couldn’t do it anymore as a driver, he’s now able to do it as a mechanic. So Larry will buy him whatever he needs and it kind of works out good for him. Tray is going to watch out for Larry. It’s a pretty good deal. Larry wants to fly in, watch the car run, and fly home.

KO: Mike (Bowman) is the type of guy that’s actually driven one of these things before.

EG: Uh hum! He’s driven ‘em a couple of times. And Mike doesn’t want you flying in. He wants you riding in the hauler. Naw, I can’t say that because Mike actually has a jet – actually he has access to a jet that we got to fly on – but he’s a tightwad too.

KO: Hey, but in order to have money, you have to be a tightwad to an extent!

EG: Awwww, I’m busting his chops because he’s sitting right here.

KO: 2006, the IRP sprint car race and you’re racing hard with Bobby Santos to the finish. You get a little sideways and both of you end up spinning and crashing down to the checkered. Afterwards, in the heat of the battle he comes over and…

EG: Kicks my ass.

KO: Smacks you on top of the helmet. When that happened, what were your immediate thoughts?

EG: I thought a part fell down out of the sky and hit me on the helmet. I did. (Everyone laughs!) After it happened I looked up in the sky and I thought, “Man, we hit so hard there’s bolts falling out of the sky.” And then someone ran over to the car and said, “Are you okay?” And I said, “Yeah.” And they said, “I can’t believe he hit you!” And as soon as he said that, I flipped the belts and jumped up out of the seat to go kill him. Richard Hoffman and Rob Hoffman grabbed me. Rob Hoffman grabbed me. And I’ve known Rob a long time and Rob’s a big boy.

KO: It looked like Rob wanted to beat his ass.

EG: Yeah, but he kept yelling at me, “It’s not worth it! It’s not worth it! It’s not worth the fine. It’s not worth the penalty.” And he bear hugged me. I tried throwing him and there’s no way my little butt is going to throw Rob Hoffman. And I kept screaming, “Let go! Let go!” And Jamie’s yelling, “I’ll pay the fine! I’ll pay the fine! Let go!” Yeah, I didn’t even know what happened. I thought bolts and parts and stuff were flying down out of the sky until somebody told me. And then I thought, “No, that ain’t gonna happen!”

KO: So Rob’s bear hug helped control your anger?

EG: Rob’s bear hug probably saved me ten grand, whatever Tyler got fined for hitting Butler.

KO: So thank Rob Hoffman for saving you money and for saving Santos? Otherwise it would have been on?

EG: Oh, it wouldn’t have been on. He’d have been killed. Owen Snyder mishandled that too. When they finally got us together a week later at Toledo, in their trailer we were sitting across from each other at the table, I told him, “If I would have gotten to you, I would have broken you in half.” And I sat there and chewed on him for ten minutes and he told me that he was just frustrated. It was a family deal and they’d spent all their own money. He was preaching to the choir on this as far as running a family owned deal with no money. I told him, “You’re not telling me anything that I don’t already know.” I explained a little bit about my past. When we left that trailer, we left it in the trailer. It was over with. It was done.

KO: In April of 2007 at Winchester, it’s hot and heavy coming to the checkered. Tracy Hines is kind of sideways. You’re trying to avoid or pass him and Kevin Swindell is trying to come up along the inside wall…

EG: I pulled down really low coming off of four to make a run at Tracy to try and beat him and that’s where the oil dry was from the crash before. I just flat hit the oil dry and spun the car around trying to beat Tracy. I was trying to dive in under him. He was trying to crowd me down. We were all racing for the same spot of real estate. And when I hit that oil dry and the car got sideways is when Swindell’s kid hit me. And we both went to the inside wall and then afterwards he came over and mouthed off to me. That’s when I realized he was as much of an ass as his old man.

KO: So what were your words to him as he was screaming at you?

EG: I can’t repeat it.

KO: Not worth repeating?

EG: No. But the letter “F” was involved.

KO: When you entered the sport as a kid back in the late ‘80s, obviously you were green as far as sprint cars were concerned. But how do the kids of today compare to when you were a kid coming up in sprint cars? Is it no comparison?

EG: No comparison but I’m gonna say this too. I remember when I was a kid that there were some old-timers bitching about the kids coming in too. So that’s going to be a constant. But back in my day, we had it tougher than they do now. And then when they get older, they are going to say, “Back in my day, a ride only cost $80,000 a year and now it’s $200,000 a year”. It goes on and on and on but the difference is you could get a ride back then. Now there’s a handful of people – a handful – that you can get rides from. And if you stop and think about it, for me to say I ran as many years as I did in the USAC sprint car deal, is a miracle. It really is.

Yeah, it’s a different deal now. It’s developmental contracts. It’s a stepping stone instead of being an achievement.

KO: What advice or words of wisdom do you have to offer if the kids would ever listen?

EG: I’ve heard a lot of things over the years and I’ve forgotten most of them. One is to be nice to the people on the way up because they are going to be the same ones on the way down. And then the second one I heard that struck me that I heard not long ago, but kind of blew my mind was, if you weren’t a decent man without the trophy, how do you figure the trophy’s going to make you a decent man?

KO: Pretty prophetic there…

EG: That’s kind of what I thought. That’s throwing it down there. You’ve got to look at the big picture. Everybody thinks that they are going to get their deal and they’re going to go down there and they’re going to be the next Jeff Gordon or the next Tony Stewart or the next so and so. The world’s full of guys that it didn’t happen for. The world’s also full of guys that it should have happened for but for whatever reason they are stuck running their local Saturday night shows. They have the talent but maybe they didn’t have the marketability or the language skills or whatever. There’s a reason for everything. But I would just say that if you’re 16 years old and you have a development deal for somebody, I mean think about it, you’re 16. You’ve got a development deal. That’s a lot of pressure because you’ve got nowhere to go but down. That’s already happened to a few of them and it’s going to happen to several more. So there’s nothing wrong with being a sprint car driver. They shouldn’t look at it as to get in, get done, and get out. They should be educated on its history.

KO: At the 2007 Little 500, after Tim Barber fell out, it was pretty much your deal. You led 296 laps, taking home win number 8. And much like the old days, you seemed to shoulder a lot of the load in strategy and driving. Was number 8 any more special than the others?

EG: Well, it was special because it was for Mike and everybody in this shop who has put in a lot of hours. My son was there and he got to see what his dad did to help pay the bills at the house. He’s going to be a racer. He’s pounding me all the time about it. He’ll sit there and watch tapes of the Little 5 at home instead of watching movies. That’s ate up!

But as far as shouldering the load, I don’t agree with that. I’m just the driver on this deal.

KO: It’s a team deal, right?

EG: Yeah, because if somebody would have screwed up doing something, we would have finished second again. Everybody did what they had to do. We had two good, clean pit stops. We played the strategy out right. We bolted new tires on it. We had a good car. We had a good motor. We didn’t have anything fall off. That’s it. You’ve got to have a good team deal when you show up there. You have to show up thinking your team is going to beat everybody else’s team. And everybody on your team has to feel that way too.

KO: And you’ve got a good team.

EG: Uh hum.

KO: And you’ll be there again in ’08?

EG: Uh hum.

KO: Going back a long way, you were once buddies with another sprint car racer from the Greenfield area named Jamie Matthews, who you said influenced your entry into the sport. Do you two still stay in touch?

EG: No, we haven’t talked to each other in quite a long time. He started his own body shop there outside of Greenfield and I moved down towards Acton, covered up with work. We just got older, got kids. We’ve just got our own deal.

KO: Competing with USAC since 1987, since becoming a regular in ’89, what’s the best thing that you’ve seen happen with USAC?

EG: Hmmm, the best thing that has happened with USAC?

KO: Maybe there isn’t?

EG: No, you know there are car owners like the Hoffmans that have run with them forever. Larry Contos has run with them for a long time. Mike has run with them for a long time. I’ve been there long enough that there have been people who have blown in for a couple of years and created a lot of static. USAC wants to appease and yet year in and year out, the Hoffmans, Contos, Biddle, Mike – there’s several of them I can name – and they pretty much don’t give them the time of day. That’s always fascinated me.

KO: So that’s kind of a bad thing.

EG: I’ve got a whole list of those. But those are the best things, those car owners. The car owners that they have is the best thing. Because they’ve supported them through the years, through thick and thin, through good decision, through bad decision – they have supported them. I would say that their car owner loyalty ratio is higher than anybody else’s.

KO: So what are some of the worst things that have happened with USAC?

EG: Them not hiring me to be President of USAC. (Everyone laughs except Eric.) Yeah.

KO: That’s the worst huh?

EG: Because I could have fixed everything. I could have.

KO: Any things you would have changed in particular?

EG: I would not have made the Silver Crown deal what it is. I can understand them wanting to enter that marketplace, but they should have created those cars and called them the platinum series and left the Silver Crown series alone because you had car owners who had been loyal for ten, fifteen, and twenty years that you’ve run off. That’s not fair. That’s not fair to ‘em. You’re rewarding their loyalty with extinction. I would have called it the platinum series. I would have stolen an idea from Mike Bowman and offered them a rebate on the new car thing. I would have said, “If you run with us and you buy one of those new cars and run that whole first year, we’ll give you a $30,000 rebate to put towards the purchase price of that car and motor.” I would have opened the tire deal up because competition breeds advancement. I would have encouraged opening up the car manufacturing deal. You’ve got to have competition in everything to advance it and right now we don’t. Right now we’re stagnant. Right now we’re so finite that we’ve got shock dynos in our trailers and that we’re trying to figure out if we’re going to use an A shim or a B shim to get quick time.

KO: It’s kind of like an IROC series in a way.

EG: It’s getting there. It’s getting there. Rapidly.

KO: So what’s your biggest concern? That the sport won’t be around because they are going to run off the car owners? That there won’t be enough fan interest? Is there one biggest concern?

EG: Well, you know what? If you don’t have the cars, you don’t have the fans. And if you don’t have the fans, you don’t have the people paying the bills, because that’s who ultimately pays the bill on the purse, is the fan. And you cannot continually go back to the fan and ask him for higher ticket prices and providing a sub-par product. It’s a vicious cycle and once you start going down that slippery slope it’s tough to correct.

Bert Emick and his wife ran the All Stars virtually by themselves and had a very successful organization for years, with no television. So it can be done. Television is not the savior. Television is a great tool and television is a necessity, but you have to have a product for television.

You’ve got to open the deal up as far as the competition amongst manufacturers, competition amongst tires and stuff like that. And also I think too that if they are really wanting to save costs, your biggest expense is not tires, it’s motors. If you’re wanting to save money for car owners, then make a spec motor that’s going to have a longer life. And, whatever rules you make, enforce them. If I was the President for a day, I would have an inspection area like NASCAR has and set up next to that USAC hauler at every race. And everybody gets there at 8 o’clock in the morning and rolls the cars through the inspection and gets it checked just like NASCAR checks theirs. NASCAR tears motors apart. The last time I’ve seen a motor torn apart at a USAC show has been twenty years.

KO: That’s a long time.

EG: So if I run TI rods, how are they going to know? If you’re not supposed to run them, how are they going to know? They aren’t going to check. So we weigh them, we measure the offsets, and we tell them we’ll see them at the next race.

Tear that thing down! If you tear it down once, you’ll get everybody’s attention real quick. That’s what I would do on the first day. (Everyone laughs again.)

KO: Second day who knows, huh?

EG: Second day I would go in with a shoebox full of layoff checks and put the fear of God in everybody. That’s how it works where I work. If somebody doesn’t get it done, you fire everybody and start over.

KO: So what do you think about the new regime? What about the new guy on top?

EG: I don’t know him. It’s too early to tell. I’ve talked to Richard Hoffman who does know him and Richard Hoffman said that he is a decent person. I would have liked to have seen them hire Tommy Hunt. Or me.

KO: Back when you were started, it seemed like there were more pavement races and that allowed you to become better at running pavement.

EG: Everything is cyclical, you know what I mean? Everything goes through cycles. Right now we’re on the dirt thing. I remember when you couldn’t find a non-wing show to save your life. Everybody ran wings when I started. You went to Lawrenceburg, Bloomington, and Paragon because that’s all everybody was running. The non wing thing was dead. And now, it’s the opposite. If you want to run a local winged show, where do you go? So everything cycles and it will cycle around. Rules, finances, guidelines, whatever. Something will change that it will cycle around again. Somebody will come along with a better mousetrap and we’ll be running with wings again, or pavement, or midgets.

KO: What are your thoughts about USAC running more dirt and less pavement? Obviously with your deal here at Banjo, it limits the number of races you can run.

EG: It concerns me because there are car owners who have made an important investment in this equipment and they have to justify this investment and it just seems like each year we’re dwindling down on pavement races. And if it’s a deal where pavement track owners are saying that we cannot afford the purse, you can cut the cost to the car owners several ways. If you’re going to make it a true spec tire deal, I say make it a spec tire deal on price and not on brand. Tell the manufacturers, any manufacturer is more than welcome to bring a right rear tire to this show that’s $85 a tire. Cut down the expense on the owners on their engines. Cut down the expense on all kinds of stuff. Make ‘em run spec shocks. Make ‘em run monotube shocks instead of $700 shocks. There’s lots of ways to do it. You can save the money to the car owner which is going to save the money to the promoter which he’s going to be able to pass on to the fans. But as long as he’s having to pay $700 for a shock he’s got to justify that money. And running the limited number of shows they’re running in his mind is not going to justify it.

KO: When you started racing sprint cars, how long did you think you’d last?

EG: I had no idea. I just went from day to day. Still do. When I started, it was day to day – get through that day.

KO: You’ve mentioned that there’s no shame in being a lifelong sprint car racer because back in the day, that was a cool thing. Obviously there’s some sort of affection you have for the sport and you’ve maintained it.

EG: I just hope the next group of people figure out a way to advance. You constantly have to be moving forward. You can’t be stagnant. We’ve been stagnant. We need to be aggressive in our decision making. You can’t be afraid to offend somebody just because of what their name is. NASCAR could give a flying leap, you know what I mean? You’ve got to have the integrity for the sport at your core. If you have the integrity for the sport at your core, everything else will fall in place. If you whore the sport out, then it’s gonna come back and bite you.

KO: Is there something you always dreamed of saying regarding racing that you couldn’t for fear of backlash? If so, what would that be?

EG: What are they going to do to me? I’m 40. I’ve run a long time. What are they going to do to me?

KO: So is there anything you want to sound off about?

EG: I’ve been complaining about USAC a lot. I just want to grab them by the lapels and shake them and tell them to wake up! It’s easy to drive down to Gasoline Alley and listen to opinions, you know? What do you think about this? What do you think about that? They need to drive out to Anderson and ask an opinion and they need to drive out to Crawfordsville or Waynetown or go down to the Hoffmans in Ohio. They need to get out of the cocoon and ask some opinions. Everybody’s opinion on Gasoline Alley is going to be the same. They’re all suck-asses. They’re going to tell them what they want to hear because that’s what they do for a living. They don’t want to take a dump in their cereal bowl. They don’t want to rock the boat.

KO: Your most memorable moment in racing - is there one that stands out above all others? I know you’ve been racing sprinters for more than twenty years now.

EG: No. There’s a lot of different ones. I remember winning a dirt sprint car show for Staab down there at Lawrenceburg and my wife was going through chemo. She had no hair and she had a wig and she’s running across the track for pictures and her wig’s getting all out of shape. She was carrying our daughter, who was a little kid and she was burying her head because she didn’t want in the pictures. And like last year when I won the Little 5 and my son Jake is in the picture. I remember walking up the hill at Eldora with Sam when his lungs were filling full of fluid after he had his open heart surgery. I thought he was going to die right there on the exit lane. And as big as he is, and as little as I am, he was going to stay there! (Everybody roars in laughter.)

I remember driving through the middle of the New Mexico desert in the middle of the night, driving a hauler to Copper. I remember driving haulers to California. I’ve seen every part of the country ten times over. I’ve seen things that people never get to see. I’ve had a ball. It hasn’t been easy. A lot of times it’s been difficult, but I’ve got to do a lot of stuff that people have never gotten to do. Therefore, I’m one of luckiest individuals who’s walked the face of the earth.

KO: So the craziest or wildest race you’ve been a part of? Does anything stand out?

EG: The Fairgrounds.

KO: The one in ’92 where it had all the holes?

EG: It had all the holes and that’s also the one where Carl (McCormick) got killed. And it ended up being a 13 hour long show. It started out as a day show and it ended up at midnight or one o’clock, something like that. And then we had to drive to Terre Haute because the Hut Hundred was the next day, and I only got a little bit of sleep. I would say that’s the craziest race because it started off with Carl, who was an excellent USAC official, got run over and killed. And then we had to wait for all of that to get taken care of. And then all the holes, ripping cars apart, and drivers protesting, refusing to run. I’d have to say that was the craziest one.

KO: You just mentioned you are the luckiest man for being able to do so many things that others haven’t gotten to do. But is there anything you’d like to do over? Or do you live by the Robbie Stanley No Regrets motto?

EG: There is no sense in wishing because there’s nothing you can do about it now.

KO: How do you want to be remembered to the racing community?

EG: (Chuckles) I’ll probably be remembered as a horse’s fanny but I don’t know.

KO: Somebody who respected others?

EG: Na. I guess it would be something like – he didn’t screw it up too much. I never really put any thought into how I want to be remembered. I guess I would just say – a guy who had respect for other racers. A guy who had respect for other people who were working a forty hour week and trying to race. Stuff like that.

KO: Now, you are working two jobs as the second one is your own business. Obviously you learned quite a bit of work ethic from your father. What makes you want to endure the stress of owning your own business?

EG: What are they going to do, eat you? They can’t do anything to you. They can’t. You know, you were talking about wanting to go back and change anything. You can’t go back and change anything, but the biggest crime is if you didn’t learn from it. As long as I can learn from everything that’s happened to me then I think I’ll be alright. If I didn’t learn from it, then I deserve to get what I get. My dad had a business and he had a bunch of people go under on him that owed him a ton of money and we didn’t even have a furnace for one winter – we had a kerosene heater in the middle of the house. There’d be times when we’d be short on food. Payroll came first. He didn’t get paid for like seven years because payroll always came first. I’ve been through the worst and I’ve survived, so what are they going to do?

I just did things a little smarter to protect myself than he did. The first thing I did was get attorneys and accountants.

KO: So how is business? You just closed the books on 2007 and you’re seeing the numbers. Did things turn out good?

EG: We did a lot more work this year. Myself and another guy from work, Jeff Shuler, did so much side work and had so many people coming to us that we decided to start this business to keep everything on the up and up, to protect us personally, with liability insurance and accountants keeping the books and all that, just to keep everything above board. We turned a lot more work than we ever thought we’d turn this first year and we’ve got a lot more bids out right now than I ever thought I’d ever put out, in a down market. But if you find your niche and exploit it and ride that, and don’t get stupid on the overhead, you’ll be ok.

KO: Redline Construction Company, huh? And you’re doing plaster work?

EG: We’re doing plaster, historical restorations, fire and water damage, and stuff like that. We’re doing the stuff nobody else wants to do. It’s because the years have went on to where there’s been so much new building going on that a lot of the old historical restoration procedures have been lost. And fortunately, the two of us were trained on that and now with the tax benefits for saving older buildings, it’s kind of working out.

KO: So with the name Redline, are you always on the red line?

EG: I was. The older I’m getting, not so much. My son is taking that over now.

KO: He’s on the red line.

EG: He’s a hundred miles an hour. Yep. And my daughter too. I can’t forget her. I just bring him up because he’s at that age where he’s go, go, go. She’s at the age where she’s text, text, text. You know?

KO: So you guys have the unlimited text plan?

EG: Yeah. I bought her a phone for Christmas because that’s the status symbol. I got a really good deal on one because I upgraded. Redline’s got all the phones so I gave her one. And I got the unlimited text and we got our bill – she had 1500 texts last month!

KO: Wow!

EG: Yeah, that’s what I thought. So yeah, I was smart. I got the unlimited text.

KO: Her fingers are well exercised.

EG: All of them that age are. They can text without even looking at it. They text in between classes. They text as soon as they get home. They don’t have conversations anymore. They text.

KO: Glen Niebel wouldn’t be a guy to send texts.

EG: NO! Shoot! Glen didn’t even have a computer, ok? I couldn’t even picture Glen with the internet. But both of my kids have kept me busy. Erica’s been really good because she’s been really supportive of my racing. She’s asked me not to ever stop racing. Jake wants me to stop racing now so he can go racing. I just turned forty. I remember Kevin Thomas telling me a long time ago that if he made it to forty and he was still walking, he was going to retire. He went not long after that.

KO: You’ve never been one to have a nickname, although Mike Thompson tried taking care of that.

EG: (Laughs) I’ve been called a lot of names.

KO: Thompson likes to call you the Greenfield Grenade or the Mohawk Missile.

EG: You know what, that’s not just Thompson. You need to get the whole facts straight on that. That’s got (Aaron) Mosley’s fingerprints written all over it.

KO: The Mohawk Missile? The Acton Assassin?

EG: Oh yeah. Any of ‘em. I betcha those two just sit there and Nextel each other this stuff all day long.

KO: Mike likes to text me too.

EG: I’ve heard Mosley with a belly full of beer and a guitar, on a phone, calling me and singing me some made up song.

KO: Did it go something like: “A worn out Beast wrenched by Deuce?”

EG: Oh yeah. Yep.

KO: I’ve actually been through the little town of Mohawk a long time ago. I remember the old bank building there.

EG: Yeah. Yeah.

KO: There really isn’t too much there.

EG: Yep. In fact the house I grew up in is not even there anymore. The church that’s right in downtown Mohawk bought the house from my mom and bulldozed it for a parking lot. My childhood home is not even there anymore. Oh well. At least she got what she needed out of it. She was able to retire and enjoy herself.

(As the Ohio State fight song plays on his cell phone…)

That’s probably my texting daughter now.

KO: Retirement as a driver. I know that’s an ugly word but you talked about that as early as 2002. You said after your original deal with French would have run out at the Little 5 you might consider it, but also you said how that big money race weighed on your decision. But what about now? What makes you think that this year’s Little 5 could be the last one?

EG: Well, I’m working 16 hours a day, 6 days a week. And that’s not fair to Mike (Bowman), Brent (Elmore), Mike (Thompson), Sam (Brooks), or any of the guys on the crew. It’s not fair to my wife and it’s not fair to me to do a half ass job. When you’ve got that many hours in putting a car together, you’ve got that much money in putting a car together and you’ve got that much money in tires. To have a guy go out there who’s got the body of a 65 year old fall out of the seat, I don’t want to do what I’ve seen other people do at that race. I’m not going to do what I’ve seen other people do at that race, and that’s stick around too long.

I think I’m getting in the Little 500 hall of fame this year because I’m age eligible now. You have to be forty years old to get in. And if Argabright doesn’t bust my chops, I should be able to get in. I ask him each year, “NOW what do I have to do to get in?” I’m going to get in the Little 500 hall of fame and I told Mike Bowman earlier this year that I didn’t think I could look him in the eye and tell him he was getting one hundred percent from me one hundred percent of the time. And that’s disrespectful to him and his team and everybody involved. So he’s started his search for his driver for the pavement sprint car. I’ve driven for Mike longer than I’ve driven for anybody else. So he’s put up with me longer than anybody else. He’s the one you ought to be interviewing.

Mike Bowman: We have fun.

EG: Yeah. Well, like I told you earlier, he does it as a hobby. It’s his enjoyment to get away from whatever it is he’s wanting to get away from – the stresses of running a big business. I don’t have hardly any employees and he’s got a whole building full of them. I’m ready to strangle the ones I deal with.

But by the same token, when his car is there, it should be given one hundred percent. Between the injuries I’ve sustained over the years and burning the candle at both ends, I’ve just used myself up. And I’m not going to just take his money and burn it up on a car and run around tenth place. It’s not worth it to him.

I don’t want it to get there. I’m still going to go to the racetrack. I still want to go to the racetrack. I’m still going to help him out, however I can. If he’ll let me. But I think it’s time for somebody with a younger body to get in the car and run. Not a seventeen year old – so no seventeen year olds need to be calling. That’s his deal though. He gets whoever he thinks is the best person for the job. They’ll be getting the opportunity of a lifetime. I remember when I was running the All Stars and I looked at Frankie Kerr with Stan Shoff and I thought that was just the neatest thing in the world. One guy running for that guy that long, it was almost like a family deal. I thought, “Boy, wouldn’t that be neat to have that?” Instead of being a confrontational deal like it usually is... Low and behold, I’ve run for Mike for six plus years.

KO: You’ve almost made it there to where Kerr and Shoff were.

EG: Well, I could have. I’m sure he would have let me run a couple of more shows. If you start thinking about it, and you start talking about it, it’s time to do it. It’s not going to do anybody any good to waste their time. Everybody has got regular jobs, so they’re not doing this for the glory and they’re not doing this for the pay. They’ve got jobs. They don’t get anything out of it other than the satisfaction of being part of the deal. So whoever they hire is going to get into an opportunity where they’ve got a guy who is going to pay the bills. He’s going to buy whatever he’s got to buy to put on the racecar. It’s always going to have new tires on it. He’s never told me that there’s something I can’t have, other than a Renegade hauler. (The whole place erupts in laughter.)

But other than that….oh…and the panhard bar! I went to Bob East’s one time and bought a panhard bar. Ok, because it looked cool. Yeah, that one right there. We’re not allowed to throw that one away. Instead of the regular square chrome one…and they sent him a bill, like $800 for that. And I heard about that all the time! But you know what, he never tore it off the car.

It’s a joke now. “Don’t touch that panhard bar. That’s Eric’s panhard bar!”

Whoever he hires is going to get into a situation that they could only hope for. They’re going to run for somebody who’s got people who take care of the car. They’re going to run for people who have brains about them, that have experience about them. A guy who is going to follow through with his end of the deal.

KO: With your son Jacob bugging you about a quarter midget, does he remind you of yourself?

EG: Yeah, that’s what scares me too. He’s got three posters up on his wall. One is Peyton Manning. And then he’s got one of me in the Busch car. And the picture from the Little 5 with him in it. And he sits around playing racecars all the time. That’s all he ever talks about. Yeah, that concerns me greatly.

And my wife said, “Are you sure that you want him to go through everything that you went through.” And I said, “Well, that’s his choice.” If he wants to then I’m going to do everything I can to help him avoid the bad decisions that I made. If I didn’t learn from the ones I made, then I’m not going to be of any help to him.

There’s a lot of things I can help him on.

KO: Are there things you can teach him that your dad wasn’t able to teach you?

EG: Well, he didn’t know. We were both going into this deal blind. I’m going to tell him – don’t ever drive for a chiropractor. Yeah, there’s lots of things. And because of my years from running. Mike said he was going to help on Jake’s deal. Hoosier is going to help him out. You know what I mean? There are just a lot of people who are going to help me out.

Like I said, fifty percent of the people in racing are horse’s fannies. The other fifty percent will give you the shirt off their back. You’ve just got to figure out the fifty percent who are horse’s fannies and stay away from them.

KO: Any final thoughts or people to thank?

EG: Man, I’ve got such a long list of people to thank that there’d be no way I could do it all. Every car owner, no, let me rephrase that – a lot of the car owners I’d want to thank for letting me run their cars, for letting me spend their money, to trust me to run their car. And to all the people who worked on those cars. Not only do you have all the people at Mike’s shop, but like at Hoffman’s shop, all the people he had working on those champ cars. Tony Epperson and Jay worked on ‘em for years. Sam. And it’s just a lot of people who put a lot of hours into something that benefited me. I’ve just got to thank every one of them that has worked on the cars, owned the cars, or hauled the cars. Because without them, it wouldn’t have been possible. Like I said, there’s nothing wrong with being a sprint car driver at all. Without their effort, it wouldn’t have happened.

KO: So is that it?

EG: The only other thing I would say is that the fifty percent of car owners that were bad people and know that they are bad people can go suck an egg. AND the bureaucrats of racing can suck that same egg. They know who they are too. Deep down they know who they are. They’ll lay in bed at night with their eyes open, staring at the ceiling, knowing that they are the cause of the problems of the world of sprint car racing. They know who they are.

KO: So in 2008, if you win the Little 500, is that going to be it?

EG: That’s the plan. Mike’s hitting on me awfully hard though.

(Editor’s note: This interview was done in February and since that time; Eric has been pulled out of semi-retirement and has agreed to run one more full season of USAC pavement events for Mike Bowman. Time will tell us if he’s ready to call it a career at the end of 2008.)

KO: If you finish second, then?

EG: Aw man, that’s not an option. That’s not an option.

KO: So we’re going to win.

EG: We will. We have to. We have to. It’s gotten to the point now at that race, where if you do anything other than win, it’s viewed as a failure, which isn’t right. Second is phenomenal. You become greedy. And you become complacent and arrogant. You expect it. That’s it. I’m done.

KO: Manifesto from a madman. Eric Gordon.

EG: A nut. I remember one time going to Nazareth and running Mike’s car, but I had to run an extra day and run Hoffman’s champ car. And Roger went back with Shuler and left me. Roger Brandon hosed me. Make sure you underline that word. He went back with the sprint car hauler. Mike had two haulers there because he was running three cars. We were going to take the other hauler back, Bob Bowen’s hauler, with his new sprint car in it. But Roger went back and left me. I ran the hundred lap champ car race in Hoffman’s car, then hopped in the hauler and drove twelve hours straight home, took a shower, got my clothes changed, drove up to Purdue (where I was working at the time), then worked for the day, then drove home and went to bed. It’s things like that that just catch up with you. But I wanted to let it be known that Roger HOSED me. I drove all the way home, didn’t sleep for a couple of days. Just make sure you put it in there – Roger hosed me. Actually, make sure Roger sees it. I’ll be getting a phone call from him. I just talked to him this week. He’ll probably thump me. I asked him if he was going to be at the Little 5 and he said he was. A guy like Roger went to the races for a long time and there’s just a ton of people who put a ton of hours in it. He’s a piece of work too. We had a lot of fun.

KO: They are the backbone.

EG: They are. But on Mike’s deal, we do have a lot of fun. I will say that. It’s a lot more laid back. I remember going to a Japanese restaurant. That’s one of the first races I think I ran for him – in Nazareth. I think it was the only place that was open. We were in downtown Nazareth.

KO: Not Chinese huh?

EG: It wasn’t Chinese. Japanese. It was the only thing open. Oh, they locked the hotel down because there was a sniper or something. Roger had a belly full of beer and Amy, his girlfriend at the time, was sitting there and the guy who was cutting the food up on the grill, he kept looking at Amy. And Roger had had enough. He had one eye open and one eye closed, because he was half crocked. And he looked at him, and the guy’s name was Ty, that’s what it said on his little tag. And all of a sudden, we just heard bellowing out of him, “What the hell are you looking at Ty?” And that guy just started giggling and put his head down. For the rest of that meal, that dude just stared at that grill. But I find stuff like that sticks with you more than the individual race. Stuff that happened around the race sticks with you more than the race itself. Just all kinds of goofy stuff like that.

KO: All right, if you’re done, then I’m done.

EG: I’m done.

KO: Alright.

EG: Yep.

If you made it this far, you are to be congratulated! Thanks again to Eric for taking the time to share his experiences and best of luck to him and his team for the remainder of 2008. Who knows what the future has in store, but stay tuned.