Donlavey takes on Mast as Stricklin exits
By Dave Rodman, Turner Sports Interactive
October 23, 2001
6:21 PM EDT (2221 GMT)
RICHMOND, Va. -- Two longtime Virginia stock car racers, NASCAR Winston Cup team owner Junie Donlavey and driver Rick Mast, have formed a pact to compete at this weekend’s Winston Cup event at Phoenix International Raceway.
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Hills Bros. has announced they will not be with Donlavey in 2002.
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Donlavey, 77, who has owned race teams for virtually all of NASCAR’s 53-year history, said taking this step was the only way he saw he had any chance of keeping his team, based in Richmond, viable past the end of this season.
“With the future of this team going down the drain, I decided I needed to make this move,” Donlavey said of his decision to take driver Hut Stricklin out of the car and replace him with Mast, 44, of Rockbridge Baths, Va.
“Our sponsor, Hills Bros is leaving at the end of the year with Hut, and that was fine -- we appreciated what they’d done. But if we stayed together until the end of the season and they left, how could I get anyone to come and sponsor this team when the first thing they would ask is, ‘Who’s gonna drive?’”
Hills Bros Coffee, a division of the Sara Lee Company, has allied itself with Stricklin and former crew chief Philippe Lopez, the company’s director of racing who worked with Donlavey and Stricklin only on the weekends.
Donlavey said Lopez probably would not be with the team at Phoenix for the Checker Auto Parts 500 presented by Pennzoil, the 32nd of 36 Winston Cup races this season.
Mast and Donlavey’s crew chief Bobby King have not worked together but were familiar with each other from competing in the NASCAR Busch Series, where King was crew chief for two-time Busch Series champion Tommy Ellis of Richmond and Mast won nine times between 1987 and 1990.
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Hut Stricklin
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Donlavey said he was definitely in scramble mode and hoped that he wouldn’t have to shut his team down at the end of the year. He said he had a handshake deal with Mast to go race-by-race and hoped to do well enough in the stretch to make something happen.
“I think you see the position I’m in,” Donlavey said. “I know that if I went until the season is over like we were I got no shot. If Rick and I can work good together at least I can say we got something to potential sponsors.”
“Even if Hut won every race from now until the end of the year it still wouldn’t do me any good -- he’s gone,” Donlavey said of Hills, Stricklin and Lopez. “They took Hills Bros and they are still looking for a car to put it on. I don’t have nothing and I needed to make a break to see what I could do.”
Donlavey had a second car at Talladega Superspeedway last week for Mast, with Richmond company C.F. Sauer aboard as sponsor. He said the company, which previously backed the defunct Eel River Racing team this season, was not sure what its plans were and that he had not yet had discussions with them since he did not know his plans, either.
“I used to have different drivers every race,” Donlavey said of his history, which included no less than 67 drivers and six former Winston Cup champions in his cars. “I need to do it for the future of this team. If it goes like the 27 that’s the way I would have to go.”
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Having clocked time in the 50, 27, 29 and 91 cars already this year, Rick Mast will climb into the 90 at Phoenix.
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Eel River closed the doors on its No. 27 Pontiac team after a stretch of races in which they only qualified for six of 15 races, with a best finish of 27th.
“They’re not ready to do anything right at the moment,” Donlavey said of Sauer’s. “Why would you get on someone’s car that’s not doing so well? Maybe that would mean I need to end it.”
As he has been for years, Donlavey was as concerned for his team members as himself.
“But if I don’t try I didn’t give it a fighting chance,” the feisty team owner said. “Things are different up here -- there are no other cars or teams these boys can go to (so) I would feel pretty bad having to turn ‘em out with nowhere to go. At 77 it wouldn’t be near as bad for me as for them.”
Donlavey hopes Mast is the key to the future.
“Rick is the type of guy most anyone can get along with,” he said. “We don’t have a contract, but maybe it will help us come up with a sponsor and keep on going -- that was the only reason I did it.”
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