tool name
closeHumpy Wheeler knew how to put on a show
THATSRACIN.COM OPINION
SCOTT FOWLER
The Charlotte Observer
Thursday, May. 22, 2008
Humpy Wheeler was a dealer.
The drug he sold was legal. He first told me about it eight years ago, when he provided the best description of a sports promoter I've ever heard. "What are people really buying when they go to a sports event?" Wheeler said. "They're buying a drug. It's called Adrenalin. If you can't create Adrenalin rushes, people are just in an ordinary setting."
In a sport where cars circle the same racetracks hundreds of time, turning left with mind-numbing regularity, Wheeler was able to create the rush at Lowe's Motor Speedway. Not every time, but more times than not.
He always liked to "blow things up," as he said Wednesday at his farewell news conference at the speedway after more than three decades running and promoting the place. And while he was talking about pyrotechnics, you could extend that quote to his life. Wheeler, 69, was the sort of guy who blew things up with regularity. He didn't care much about doing things the way they had always been done just for continuity's sake. He was a legendary innovator, widely regarded as one of the smartest men in the sport.
Wheeler's business acumen made him a millionaire, but he remained in touch with the race fans who populated his track. He cared a lot about the bathrooms and the plumbers who took care of them because if the bathrooms were nasty, people were less likely to come back.
Speedway traffic has always been a bear, of course, with the track now seating a staggering 167,000. "But last year we broke the record for getting people out of here by about 30 minutes," Wheeler said. "I was proud of that."
Wheeler doesn't care much for the breed of corporate driver you find in so many NASCAR haulers these days. He wonders if the next Dale Earnhardt is stuck somewhere at a short track in Iowa or Alabama because the sport has gotten too expensive. He wonders if a young Earnhardt Sr. would even be hired by any of the image- conscious NASCAR owners today.
"Stringy hair, dirty blue jeans, didn't talk right - just could drive the heck out of a race car," Wheeler said of the driver whose career he carefully nurtured.
Wheeler provided prerace shows at the speedway that were grand in scope. Car-eating robotic dinosaurs. A re-enactment of the invasion of Grenada. Flames. Fireworks. Dynamite. I liked the way he sometimes went too far and had to be reeled back in by his wife or his staff. Wheeler had this idea for a stunt called "Man vs. Shark: One Must Die" that thankfully never got off the ground.
Wheeler apparently got a slight push from Bruton Smith on his way toward the retirement sunset, and I'm sorry that those two auto-racing titans couldn't have developed a better exit strategy for Wheeler.
But there's no chance we've seen the end of Wheeler around here. He'll write at least one book, host a TV show, likely consult for NASCAR and also do the regular things retired people do. He deserves a rich retirement.
The worst day Wheeler ever had on the job? He said it was when three race fans got killed at his track in 1999 at an Indy Racing League event after a tire from a wrecked race car flew into the stands. Wheeler has seen death a number of times at the track - watched drivers burn after crashes and pulled them dead from their cars - but he was never shaken more.
"The toughest day was the night of the spectator deaths at the IRL," Wheeler said. "You should never, ever have a spectator death."
So there were dark days. And wonderful days. Wednesday no doubt fell somewhere in between for Wheeler.
And on Sunday, to honor Wheeler at his last big race at Lowe's, the speedway should blow up something really big.
