Belnavis, Ribbs leaving their mark on landscape

Off-track and on-track issues addressed with diversity program

This is the second in a three-part series, chronicling the 1960-70s, 1980-90s and today. Part 3 will post Feb. 21. Click here for Part 1.

Blacks in the sport of NASCAR have been few and far between, at least in positions of power or prestige. That's a fact of life. However, one man has held various and sundry positions of power throughout the 1980s and 1990s and on into the new millennium.

He is Sam Belnavis, who as director of sports marketing for Miller Brewing Co. played an important role in the continuing history of NASCAR racing. Currently the director of Roush Racing's diversity program and an important cog in NASCAR's diversity efforts, Belnavis offers a unique perspective.

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Perhaps the best-known black driver in this period was Willy T. Ribbs, who was a flat-out marvel on road courses and tried his hand at both NASCAR and Indy Car racing before hanging up his helmet in the past couple of seasons.

Ribbs drove three Cup events in 1986, for the underfunded DiGard team, before switching to CART racing with the backing of legendary entertainer Bill Cosby. He returned to NASCAR in 2001, running a full Craftsman Truck Series season with Bobby Hamilton's team as part of Dodge's diversity program.

Thee Dixon, owner of Mansion Motorsports, has fielded cars for NASCAR drivers since the early 1990s and has been running part-time efforts the last few seasons. These gentlemen are the basis for today's diversity programs in NASCAR, which are more far-reaching than ever before.

Now 64 years old, Belnavis can remember what it was like to exist in the world before integration, even in New York, where he grew up. In 1959, while attending Manhattan College, he sat in a lecture hall with other students, listening to a psychology professor relate how blacks had "inferior" brains.

"He said that because of the Negro brain size and structure, it was less developed and less capable of absorbing and retaining information than a Caucasian brain,'' Belnavis recalled last year in an issue of Army Times.

It was that lecture, and more importantly that way of thinking, that led Belnavis to do everything he could to prove that professor wrong. After graduating from college with his degree in accounting and business management, he also served in the U.S. Air Force as a pilot in the 105th Tactical Fighter Wing, located at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas.

Following his discharge, Belnavis was the first black person to hold a management position with Sears, and from there he went on to direct sports marketing for Miller. In 1981, he signed Bobby Allison to a sponsorship contract, and Allison went on to win the Daytona 500 in 1988 driving a Miller-sponsored car.

From Miller, Belnavis became senior vice-president of sports and entertainment with Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide, one of the world's largest and most prestigious advertising firms. He created his own company, Belnavis & Associates, and currently works with Roush as co-owner of Biffle's car as well as with the diversity program. He also is the first black car owner in NASCAR.

It is Belnavis' goal to deliver a black driver to the Nextel Cup series, but he realizes it will not happen overnight, absent a spectacular story like Tiger Woods in professional golf. Roush, owner of five teams in the Cup series, has told Belnavis that he wants to be the first owner to run a black in the big leagues, and that's why Belnavis is a co-owner of the No. 16 team. "He talks to me about that, and that's why I'm here," Belnavis said last year. "Ultimately, we will have a driver in the Cup series."

	Willy T. Ribbs Credit: ISC Publications
	PHOTO GALLERY Black History Month

Why hasn't there been a black driver in NASCAR? Belnavis said it's a matter of time. "Time is one of the issues. NASCAR as a sport has always been open to anyone with the ability to compete. As you know, to compete in NASCAR it takes a significant amount of financial investment. Many of our Cup drivers started when they were 3 or 4 or 5 years old and they had family support. Some have even had sponsorship. In the case of diversity, the welcome mat has just been realized in recent years."

Belnavis is a man who believes in goals, and in pushing hard for them. As he told an audience at the Pentagon last year during a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling that effectively ended segregation, "You have dreams. You have goals. Remind yourself of them daily, strive to achieve them each day,'' he said. "Never, never, never give up."

Ribbs, as brash and outspoken a driver as any who have strapped into a racing car anywhere and with the talent to back it up, was born three years before Belnavis listened to a college professor tell him that his brain was inferior.

He has spent the intervening 45 years proving that blacks can race cars and there's nothing at all inferior about it. Watching his father, William "Bunny" Ribbs, race sports cars in the 1950s, Ribbs grew up with the idea of becoming like his heroes, which were Mario Andretti, A.J. Foyt, Dan Gurney and Jim Clark. "That's what I wanted, that was what I lived for," Ribbs said.

In 1977, he paid his way to England to race Formula Fords and rented a car. He finished third the first time out, and won his second race. He was second in his fourth race, beating a young English driver named Nigel Mansell (who went on to win two World Driving Championships in Formula One). He won six times in 11 races and took the series title.

The following year, Humpy Wheeler took a flyer and invited Ribbs to Charlotte to try and qualify for the World 600. It didn't work out, but it was Ribbs' first brush with NASCAR.

	Wendell Scott Credit: ISC Publications
	ALSO •   Wendell Scott's legacy lives on four decades after victory.  Click here

After tearing up the formula car classes in the Sports Car Club of America, Ribbs caught a break by meeting Red Roof Inn founder Jim Trueman in 1980. Ribbs said that Trueman "would go down in history as the man who saved my career." Driving a Red Roof-sponsored car in Formula Atlantic, Ribbs won the pole for the Atlantic event at Long Beach in 1982. He beat Michael Andretti, Al Unser Jr. and Geoff Brabham to do it.

He stepped up to SCCA's Trans-Am series the following year, winning five of 12 races and SCCA rookie of the year honors. In 1984, he was introduced to Edsel Ford, and that led to a factory Trans-Am deal with Ford. He won 17 races over the next three seasons.

That led to another brush with NASCAR. In 1986, he hooked up with DiGard Racing and competed in three Cup races. It wasn't a success, and DiGard folded soon after. That left Ribbs thinking that he didn't get a fair shot at NASCAR racing. "I was so desperate and anxious to get a ride that I tried to drive for an underfinanced team with inferior equipment," Ribbs said. "I don't consider that a fair test of what I can do. Any driver will tell you that he is only as good as his car and his team."

Five years after that, Ribbs became the first black driver to qualify for and compete in the Indianapolis 500.

In 2001, he combined with Dodge for a full season in one of Hamilton's Trucks, and ran 23 races with a best finish of 13th. He was the first black to have a full-time ride in NASCAR in the modern era (1972-present) and the first since Wendell Scott.

"I"m not focusing on [making history] at all," Ribbs said at the time. "My only responsibilities are to myself and my team. I want to go out and do my best to win races. I've never tried to use my racing to make any kind of social statement."

Regardless of whether or not he wanted to make a statement, by the simple act of competing a statement was made.