Hernandez gaining experience in Late Models

Jesus Hernandez is a shade over 23 years old, but he's already got a lifetime worth of confidence. The newest member of Belnavis Racing and the driver of the team's No. 17 Waste Management late model stock car, Hernandez is living a dream that started on the tough little third-mile oval at Madera Speedway near Fresno, Calif.

Jesus Hernandez

Hernandez, whose parents moved from Mexico to Fresno in the late 1970s, earned the opportunity in October at the Drive for Diversity combine at Motor Mile Speedway in Radford, Va., and it's an opportunity he intends to see through to the finish.

A couple of years ago, after racing a Grand American Modified at Madera and not being able to crack Victory Lane, Hernandez faced a crossroads.

"At that point in time, my thinking was: 'I'm married, got two kids, I have to start thinking about turning this into a hobby or do it 100 percent,'" he said.

"One of my friends said to me, 'You know, you're a diamond in the rough. You have a lot going for you.' So I started marketing myself as one driver, twice the potential. You pay one price and you get a driver that can communicate with the English market as well as the Spanish-speaking market. That got me a lot of attention, and Joe Gibbs invited me as one of the five drivers to test for his diversity program. That got my feet wet. I could have done a little bit better, but I was still satisfied with my performance."

Hernandez missed that opportunity, as Gibbs selected Chris Bristol and Aric Almirola as his drivers. But he got wind of the NASCAR program, Drive for Diversity, and that was his ticket.

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"By the time I got back to California, it was already taking place, so I kind of got left out of that deal," Hernandez remembered. "I worked the whole next year to make sure they knew who I was...squeaky wheel gets the oil, right? I got the invitation in October. I went to Motor Mile, where they had the combine, and I felt really confident. I went out and did the two-day practice, on-track, off-track evaluations. They were looking for the total package. I got interest from Childress as well as Belnavis, and at that point it was a matter of finding out which decision was the right one. Either way I went was good; I just wanted to make the right choice. I did a little research on Sam, what he wanted to do and especially about Waste Management, and how genuine they were about the diversity program. I did a lot of praying, and decided to go with Waste Management and Belnavis."

Waste Management is a company that was wholly bought into the idea of diversity, as the majority of its workforce is African-American and Hispanic. For a driver hoping to advance not only his own career, but those of other Hispanic drivers, it was the perfect chance.

"The Drive for Diversity program allows me now to be able to race head-to-head with some of these guys who are two and three generations deep in resources and allows me to have the level playing field to show them what we can do," Hernandez said.

Hernandez points to the recent Busch Series event in Mexico City as an example of how powerful the Hispanic market is to NASCAR.

"NASCAR is discovering that the market has a lot of potential to expand," he said. "Getting names out there and making sure that the Hispanic community has someone to support, that they can connect with. If you watched Mexico City, you saw that not everyone who was out there was pulling for Rusty Wallace or Robby Gordon. They were pulling for the Hispanic drivers. It's got a lot of potential.

"When I started telling everyone that I'm one driver, twice the potential, I pointed out that Hispanics are the largest minority right now and they're growing," Hernandez continued. "It's an untapped market that NASCAR hasn't gone into. They've been very successful in the markets they've been in, and maybe they haven't overlooked this market, they just haven't explored it."

Asked how long he felt it would take for an Hispanic or African-American driver to make it into Nextel Cup racing, Hernandez didn't waste time. "In terms of bringing a diverse driver into Cup, I don't think it will be long now," he said.

Hernandez wants to be that driver. "Absolutely," he said with a grin.

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His beginnings in racing were fairly usual for the times. His family had been involved in entry-level road racing in Mexico, but after moving to Fresno, it took a while before the family got sorted out enough to look at the sport, U.S. style.

"It wasn't until I was right about 15 that they established a shop and we were helping some of the guys who were running, by sponsoring them," Hernandez recalled.

"One of my uncles used to go out there and help them. We decided it was time for us to get involved, and there were five of us. Of course, all five of us wanted to drive. We built this makeshift go-kart and took a 5-horsepower Honda generator engine to power it. We decided that the fastest two would move on and be the drivers. It was one of my uncles, Guillermo, and me. We were at a spot where, it was out of pocket, and we were kind of strapped on what we could do to become competitive. We looked around and couldn't find anything that was in our budget."

As often happens, necessity became the mother of invention, and Uncle Guillermo contributed his everyday automobile to the dream.

"It happened that one of Guillermo's vehicles was one of those that could compete in an entry-level class at Madera," Hernandez said, obviously relishing the telling of a family tale.

"Another uncle and I grabbed that car, took it to the back shop and tore into it for a couple of hours before Guillermo realized what was going on. He walked in that back shop, just kind of looks at us, doesn't say anything, nods his head and just starts helping us work on it. That was our first car. That was his daily driver. It was about a 1975 Toyota Corolla sedan."

The sedan finished 11th in the points at Madera that season, one point away from rookie honors in the class, with 16-year-old Jesus behind the wheel. A ride in a Junior Grand American Modified at the end of the season set the stage for the next level for young Jesus.

"At the end of the first season, I got hooked up with a guy in the next division up, the Junior Grand American modifieds," Hernandez said. "He let me race his car at the end of the year, and my last race, I did double duty. I finished fourth in my car and I started in the back and finished sixth in his car. That really got our attention for the next step. We all got our money together and sold the Toyota, and we were able to buy that car from him."

A track championship followed in 1998, along with rookie honors. Lacking the funds to move up and mindful that the team's driver was still just 17, the team stayed and won another track title in 1999. That success led directly to the first crossroads for Jesus.

"Once I took everything there was in that division, we had to move up to continue," he said. "The resources that I had were not sufficient to compete with racers who had generations of experience. We went up to Grand American modifieds, and we were running in the top five, but we never could win against those guys and the bankrolls that they had."

It was then that Gibbs, in conjunction with the legendary Reggie White, began his diversity program, and Hernandez was selected as one of the five drivers for the run-off at Hickory Motor Speedway in North Carolina.

Now that he is about to embark upon his first full season of late model racing, Hernandez set his goals high.

"I want to win every race," he said. "You always want to keep in mind that this is a development program, so whatever I start with in this first race, I want to end up 10 times better. Even then it's probably going to end up short of success in my mind. We want to progress not only the program and move my career forward -- I'm looking for vertical movement -- and I'm looking for good track exposure and experience. At this point, it's just Motor Mile, but we'll leave that up in the air for now."

The late models have a little less horsepower than the Grand American Modifieds he drove last year, but a lot more tire, so the tradeoff will be about even, he said. He'll run 20 races at the Virginia speedway, beginning April 2.

While he's still young, Hernandez has some advice for aspiring drivers: make sure you're going to be committed to what it takes.

"Work is the price of success, and you have to realize that to run up front, it's going to take a lot of work and a lot of money."