Ricky Craven can sit on the wall along pit road at Daytona International Speedway and hardly anyone notices. His car owner, Cal Wells, can walk through the garage area and people notice, all right, but few go out of their way to speak to him.
Craven, in the minds of many, is a has-been at age 34. A driver who was considered a rising star, he fell by the wayside after suffering head injuries in a crash at Texas in 1997.
And Wells is considered a "carpetbagger," an owner whose moves when making the transition from open wheel to stock car racing were considered ruthless by several drivers and owners.
But for each other, Craven and Wells may just be the saving grace.
In 1997, Craven went to work for one of the best race teams in Winston Cup racing, Rick Hendrick's. His teammates were Jeff Gordon and Terry Labonte. And Craven says now he felt like he was playing for the Chicago Bulls when Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen were at their best.
He was 30 and stretching toward the top of his own game. Just two years before, driving for Larry Hedrick, he had been Winston Cup rookie of the year. With Hendrick, he had earned four top 5 finishes, including a third in the Daytona 500. But then came the trip to Texas Motor Speedway, where he hit the Turn 4 wall.
Another hard crash at Phoenix later in the season only exacerbated problems left over from Texas. Finally, six races into 1998, he voluntarily took himself out of the car.
"I do think about that wreck in Texas. I was this close," and here Craven holds his thumb and index finger no more than a smidgen apart. "But I don't think it was just the wreck at Texas.
"The very darkest moment of my life was when three doctors said, `You're not racing,' " said Craven, who recalled the moment from early in the 1998 season. "They said I had an inner-ear problem, and they were going to fix it. They didn't know if it would take three weeks or three months ... but they were in control, not me."
He got through it and came back for two races, but by then, team management was already in the process of making other plans. Wally Dallenbach was the new Hendrick driver of choice, and Craven was on the way out.
"My first race back, I won the pole, and that was my biggest, my best moment," said Craven, a redhead with an easy smile that disappears as he recalls that just a few weeks after that high moment, he was released.
"I had never been fired from anything," he said. "In my whole life, I'd always overachieved. And it was an awful feeling."
Getting away
There is a tendency in motor sports to doubt the future racing ability of almost anyone who suffers a head injury.
At the time, it was announced that Craven resigned. Only later did it emerge that speculation had been right, that he had been let go.
Craven went home to Greenville, Maine, to a cabin he had had built there on Moosehead Lake. He took his wife and his two children and, though he was mended physically, said he wasn't coming back until he toughened up mentally.
"I chopped 10 cord of wood and I spent a lot of quality time with my children," he said. "I hear so many people say it's their greatest regret, that they didn't get to spend time with their children when they were growing up. I got to spend the time, and I got the time to prepare myself to come back to this sport."
Over the past three years, he drove some races here and there, including 16 last season, to keep his hand in. But nothing was permanent. He found the doors to the best teams closed.
"I know, if you're not careful, you can almost drown in your own self-pity," Craven said.
And then the phone rang.
Jumping to sign
The man who would rescue Craven was Wells, who, at 45, had been in racing all his life. He'd started in off-road events, worked his way in with Toyota and moved up to Champion Auto Racing Teams. As NASCAR grew and his own foothold with Toyota began to slip, he looked toward stock car racing.
"If you're going to be in this business, the Winston Cup Series is where to be," he said.
And so he took steps. It was the way those steps were perceived that got him off to a bad start.
Wells offered crewmen and crew chiefs top dollar, and other owners complained he was driving up the cost of doing business.
And then, depending on who is doing the talking, he either stole Tide and McDonald's from their longtime drivers, Ricky Rudd and Bill Elliott, respectively, or he simply snatched up opportunities.
Both Rudd and Elliott complained bitterly during the 1999 season, but last season, driving for Robert Yates, Rudd went from 33rd in the points race to fifth and admitted having to sell his own team was the best thing that has ever happened. And Elliott, who will start on the pole Sunday in the new Ray Evernham-owned Dodge Intrepid R/T, said he couldn't wait to get out from under the pressure of being both an owner and driver.
Wells has paired the McDonald's sponsorship with former Craftsman Truck driver Andy Houston for a run at rookie of the year.
