Officials say involvement will increase minorities

Listen closely, and you might be able to hear Darryl Lomick and Dean Duckett exhale. The Daytona 500 -- undoubtedly NASCAR's biggest day of the year -- is over now.

But for the two Nextel Cup Series officials, it was more than a mere 500-mile race.

Darryl Lomick is in his fifth season as a Nextel Cup official. Credit: Autostock

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"We dropped the green flag three times before Daytona," said Lomick, who is in his fifth year as an official and worked the Budweiser Shootout as well as both Gatorade Duels before a single lap was run in the 500. "We do a lot more things than just the race on Sunday."

"We've had some long days of hard work," added Duckett, also beginning his fifth season as an official in the Cup Series. "Every day has been a 12- or 15-hour day."

If you have an idea of how long pre- and post-race inspection takes for a NASCAR race, you understand. Prior to last week's Shootout, TNT cameras followed Jeff Gordon's car as it went through the shakedown. The grueling inspection marathon took more than four hours before the car was cleared to enter the two-hour exhibition sprint.

And if you know what stakes are on the line, you know how important their jobs are.

The man who holds the template to make sure all cars are equal to their competitors -- that's Lomick. His job profile ballooned last week after NASCAR ejected crew chief Chad Knaus for using an illegal device to push out the car's rear window during qualifying.

"These crew chiefs are genius engineers and are always looking for an advantage," he said. "As an official, we take it as a compliment to catch these guys, because they're smart enough to do what they do."

Duckett's job is to open and close qualifying, but he also checks out the fuel cells to make sure each car gets the same gas mileage. His time under the microscope came last year, when Kevin Harvick's crew chief Todd Berrier was suspended for tampering a fuel cell on the No. 29 car at Las Vegas.

Same line of work for both men, but both men took different paths that landed them in the NASCAR garage.

Duckett, 41, was an official in a professional go-kart series that took him across Europe and Canada. Racing wasn't what kept him interested at first.

"But the more I've been involved with it, the more I enjoy what I do," he said. "Now I really feel like motorsports is the best sport there is."

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Lomick, 40, is a North Carolina State graduate with a communications degree who used to "teach people how to read instruments and gauges" as a training instructor. His brother got him interested in racing.

"On Sundays, when we were over at Mom's house eating dinner, he would sneak and turn the TV," Lomick said. "And no matter what the sport is, you begin to appreciate it when the action gets good. I guess you could say my love or enjoyment for the sport has grown more and more with my involvement."

Both men, however, agree that it is involvement that will put more African-Americans in the sport.

Lomick and Duckett are two of six black officials in NASCAR's three main series, four of which work in the Nextel Cup Series.

Seeing the sport from the inside, they stare at a 43-car field of white drivers each week and the predominantly white fan base of a sport that sprouted from Southern heritage. But they also see a growing trend among the minority presence felt both inside and outside the track's walls.

"This is my fifth season working in NASCAR, and every year the minority following has grown tremendously," Duckett said. "NASCAR is doing everything it possibly can as far as offering opportunities for minorities."

He does, however, point out that sponsors -- the multimillion-dollar companies that slap decals and dollars onto each successful nugget of the sport -- could redirect their support from making money to making a difference, not only in the driver's seat but in job opportunities overall.

"Sponsors and companies," he said, "need to be in the schools and showing these young people what kind of career opportunities there are if they really want minorities to get involved."

Lomick said having an identifiable face inside the tightly knit circle will be the only way folks on the outside will begin to take notice. And he's living proof.

"Time is the only thing that will work to increase diversity," he said. "We don't get a lot of free time to go around the track, but we're starting to see a lot of people inside the track who are minorities. When you start having more people inside, that's when the word starts to spread outside."