Racing Is in the Blood
Terry Labonte talks about his family's need for speed and success that could fuel a Texas racing dynasty.
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texasmonthly.com: I remember when the races [at Texas Motor Speedway] started.
TL: It's a pretty incredible place. I guess they will probably have two hundred thousand to two hundred and twenty thousand people there for the race.
texasmonthly.com: The race is coming up on April 7. How do you describe your driving style and how well is that style suited to Texas Motor Speedway?
TL: Texas Motor Speedway, for me, is a place that—there are some racetracks that you go to, you run the first time, and you think, "Man, I have got this place figured out. I kind of think I know what I need here," and then there are other racetracks that you go to that you don't ever have that feeling. Texas is one of those places that when I first went there and ran, I'm like, "Man, I like this track. This is my style here. I like this." It's fast. It's got a lot of grip. It's just my kind of track. We had been there and tested a couple of times, so that probably helped us a little bit because we probably have as many laps on it as anybody to try to get our setup as good as we can.
texasmonthly.com: I know that you and Bobby are the only set of brothers to win the Winston Cup. I read somewhere that your son is also looking to follow in your footsteps.
TL: Yeah. Actually he is racing here in Atlanta tomorrow in the ARCA race. He qualified twelfth, and he's gonna be in the battle for the top three or four spots. Their car is running pretty good. He's twenty-one. It was hard for me to tell him, "No, you can't race," because he grew up around it, watching Bobby and myself for all of these years. He's very good; he's very talented.
texasmonthly.com: Did you want him to follow in your footsteps?
TL: That was the one thing that I really didn't care about. It didn't matter to me, and the thing that I wanted to make sure that he understood was that I didn't ever want him to think that he had to do it because I did it or because Bobby did it. I could care less, but if he wants to do it, I am going to try to help him as much as I can. My biggest concern was him doing it because he felt like he would disappoint us if he didn't, and that's the farthest thing from the truth.
texasmonthly.com: Are any of Bobby's kids going to possibly go into it?
TL: Bobby's got a son, and he's got a quarter midget, so he has only raced a few times. We're not sure yet.
texasmonthly.com: He's a little young to determine that but sometimes you can tell early on.
TL: I started when I was seven, and Bobby started when he was five, racing quarter midgets, so Tyler, his son, is seven, and he's got his first quarter midget. He likes it. His biggest problem is that he can't stay up late enough for some of the races.
texasmonthly.com: Because you and Bobby are very competitive, how does that affect your relationship, competing against each other every weekend?
TL: We get along very well. There are a lot of times during the week that he'll tell me something, and I will tell him something. Hey we did this, and it helped. They did this and it helped. So we kind of look at him as another one of our team members really [chuckles]. His driving style and mine are the same as far as how we set our cars up and how we like them, so he can bounce stuff off me, or I can bounce stuff off him, and usually it is pretty much the same. We get along well although we are very competitive on the track—we've finished first and second before and started first and second before—but if I can't win, I hope he wins, and that's the way he feels about me.
texasmonthly.com: Now I have some technical questions about NASCAR. What is your opinion on the restrictor plates that are used on the super-speedways?
TL: Well, I am not a big fan of the restrictor plates, and we use them at two racetracks, Daytona and Talladega. We had one race at Daytona, and it's kind of a really bad situation because the bottom line is the tracks are too big and too fast, and the only cure for the problem is going to be for them to fix the racetracks. You know they can put restrictor plates on and keep making all of these crazy changes to our cars, and all that is doing is putting a Band-Aid on it. It's not fixing the problem. It's kind of a touchy situation to talk about because that's not what they want to hear.
texasmonthly.com: Well, it costs a lot of money.
TL: Yeah, and see the sanctioning body also owns the company that owns the racetracks. It's like, "Well we are going to keep making rule changes. We're not going to fix our track."
texasmonthly.com: What do you think of the new aero packages this year?
TL: We have new aero packages at Daytona and Talladega. I think the ones this year are definitely much better, which is back to how we had them a few years ago. You don't have quite the big pack of cars that you had although we saw a giant wreck again at Daytona.
texasmonthly.com: You got caught in that last one, didn't you?
TL: I got caught in the last one, but I missed the other two [laughs], but that it is typical of restrictor-plate racing.
texasmonthly.com: I am sure that the last question is probably one that you have had a lot. How has Dale Earnhardt's death affected the emotions on the race circuit?
TL: I think that was something that just shocked everybody. It was very hard to believe. I mean when you watch that wreck, it didn't look like that bad of a wreck. I've seen wrecks that looked a lot worse than that; it was just all of the circumstances were wrong in it. I don't ever think that anything good comes out of anything bad, but I will say that there have been so many gains made in the safety issues since that accident. Our cars are so much safer today than they were a year ago.
texasmonthly.com: Like with the H.A.N.S. device?
TL: The H.A.N.S. device, what people are doing with the seats, what people are doing with the headrests, different restraints inside the car. NASCAR has just done an unbelievable job at looking at everything. Their big focus is safety today, and they have really done an outstanding job. The cars now carry data recorders in them to record the accidents so they can look at how many G's they pull in an accident. They never had that stuff [before]. Indy cars have had it for several years; for stock cars, this is our first year to have it. Our sport, motor sports, used to be the safest one, and the Indy cars and the Formula One guys didn't have a very good record. They worked very hard for a long time to get their cars much, much safer, and they had passed us. Now NASCAR is working very hard to get back where they need to be. They have got a lot of things in the works right now that people don't know about. They are testing soft walls, different configurations on the chassis that will absorb energy better. There is still a lot [to do]. They are committed to it being an on-going thing, so that's good.
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