A week after competing in Loudon NASCAR drivers are in Pennsylvania this weekend for the series' next race. For most of them, their families are also back on the road after a few days at home.
NHPR's Rachel Estabrook spoke with two family members of racers who've seen the country one racetrack at a time.
A large mowed lawn, rows of matching houses lining a narrow street.
It might be any neighborhood, but the homes here are RV’s and the grass is the infield of the New Hampshire International Speedway.
(Racetrack sounds)
Cars whizzing at over 100 miles per hour run circles around this mobile community.
But for 17-year-old Sarah Burton, daughter of NASCAR racer Ward Burton, there is the feel of home about the place.
TAPE: When I was really teenie tiny I used to fall asleep at the race tracks. But yeah, ever since I remember we’ve been doing the same thing.
As in any town, there is a social geography.
The infield is reserved for Nextel Cup racers, select members of the media, medical personnel, and a few others.
A space outside the track is set aside for the BUSCH series drivers.
That’s where Kim Wallace stays.
She’s been married to driver Kenny Wallace for 20 years.
TAPE: we have three teenage daughters, they go to some of the closer races. They love to come up here but we’ve been on the road for five weeks, we’ve been following Kenny’s racing circuit.
TAPE: Kim: it becomes your life really, it’s what you get accustomed to. So we don’t know anything else really.
Neither Sarah nor Kim travel to every race, but they do journey to most.
The motor home-away-from-home is a second residence to these families.
Instead of a retreat on Lake Winnipesauke, it’s a weekly vacation spot inside the track.
TAPE: this is our motor home; this is the living room-kitchen combination. Both these couches fold out so if our daughters come there’s room for them…the TV’s in the front; we have a computer that has internet. This is just the kitchen, the normal things stove microwave.
NASCAR fans come to the Speedway looking for action and excitement, but that all seems pretty far away inside the motor home.
Kim says her husband laughs at just how comfortable she gets.
TAPE: Kim: he’ll tell you I sit in this motor home and watch lifetime, and I do. But it’s my only time. At home it’s so chaotic. When I come here there’s nobody at the door, there’s no phone ringing. I don’t go into the garage until right before the race starts because there’s really nothing for me to do in there.
NASCAR families just starting out on the circuit still drive themselves from track to track, city to city, but not the Burtons and the Wallaces.
TAPE: someone else drives our motor home to all the races and we fly and fly back. Really if you didn’t you wouldn’t have time, you’d never be home.
With NASCAR races running February through November, all this traveling has been trying for Kim over the years, especially when her three daughters were young.
TAPE: we used to pack them all up, I mean I had them all, one coming out of diapers and one going into diapers and one already in diapers when they were little and we’d pack them all up. There’s a lot of times I drove over 13 hours from St. Louis back to Charlotte by myself because Kenny was racing.
Kim spent her first years after high school working, but she’s given that up now, and she doesn’t seem to miss it.
She has seen her life shaped by what her husband is doing.
TAPE: what I do now is just keep up with his schedule, keep up with the schedule of all three of the girls. But I am the president of his fan club too so I stay very active.
Just as the racers determine the family’s weekly schedule, they also mold the community’s social scene.
With neighbors always rooting for opposing drivers, they don’t often get together for block parties.
TAPE: kim: there are some out here that are friends, but sometimes that competition doesn’t stay on the race track and sometimes it comes in here. And everybody’s on separate teams here, it’s not like we’re on the same team. I don’t really go out and do things with any of them, and I don’t think many of them do.
But that doesn’t take away from the pleasure Kim finds in the overall experience.
In fact, she looks forward to traveling more with Kenny as her daughters get older.
The opposite is true for Sarah, who goes off to college this year.
But she says she’ll always make time to come home to the racetrack.
TAPE: as long as he does it, I want to be here, because I think it’s a really special thing. And I think it’s really important for our family to be here and see that, because I want to be able to tell my children and their children what their grandfather did.
For NHPR News, I’m RE.
