 | | Allison Duncan spent 2005 racing at Stockton 99 Speedway in California. Credit: stockton99speedway.com |
By Dave Rodman, NASCAR.COM
December 28, 2006
04:49 PM EST (21:49 GMT)
In short order, Allison Duncan has become the poster child for the mercurial highs and lows of driver diversity and development programs. And maybe even for the wonders of reaching out and touching someone, through communication. Duncan, 28, has labored for about 12 years trying to make her mark and move into NASCAR's upper echelon. That she's made an impression -- and set records -- is part of history. But the most obvious fact of her recent time spent racing a variety of Late Model cars on both coasts is that talent creates results -- but only a complete package of talent, equipment and personnel creates longevity. Over the last four seasons Duncan crisscrossed the country. For three years she was part of the NASCAR-affiliated Drive for Diversity, racing at Hickory (N.C.) Motor Speedway in 2003-04, and at Stockton (Calif.) 99 Speedway in 2005. Last season she raced at Motor Mile Speedway outside Radford, Va. Along the way she scored two rookie of the year awards, at Hickory and Stockton, became the first woman to win a Stockton Late Model feature -- one of two triumphs she scored there -- and finished second in the standings in her first year as part of Richard Childress Racing's development program. "She's aggressive and she gets it done in the racecar," said Bill McAnally, a champion West Coast car owner who fielded Duncan's Late Models at Stockton, where she recorded 14 top-five finishes and 17 top-10s in 18 races. "Just like any other great racecar driver, she had patience when she needed to and she got aggressive when she needed to. Overall, she just did a good job and her record showed it. I definitely feel like she's got a future in this sport." But after the latest kink in the road, Duncan wonders what the future holds. Her victory in June 2005 was the first by a Drive for Diversity program competitor, which is heading into its fourth year. African-American driver Chris Bristol won a Late Model Stock Car race at Hickory earlier that season, but he did not become a D4D driver until 2006.  |  | | Allison Duncan was the first driver to win under the Drive for Diversity program. Credit: allisonduncan.com |
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But Duncan is currently among those drivers looking for work in 2007, and that seems odd. At the Busch Series banquet earlier in December, team owner Childress commented on the woman who was in his program for the last two years and formerly was one of his development leaders. Childress cited the difficulty in keeping a handle on the program, in the balance of all the balls an owner has to keep in the air. "Well, [Allison] did a great job for us," Childress said. "I don't know exactly where she's going this year [2007], but she'll make someone a good race driver. "She needs someone to work with her steady [and when we did] she did a great job for us." Oddly enough, Duncan is still listed on RCR's Web site as one of its development drivers, as is Peter Hernandez, who replaced her last season in McAnally's Late Model, won three features and finished fifth in the Stockton championship. But even though Duncan said she has not been told by anyone at RCR her program is over -- it's that communication thing again -- she knows where she is. "After such a successful [2005] season the plan was to build on what we had started with McAnally, run a Late Model again in 2006 and if that went well, possibly a few Busch East races," said Duncan, who said one of her highlights was getting to test one of RCR's Busch cars at Caraway Speedway in Asheboro, N.C., at the end of 2005. "Getting to the point where we were winning races -- and being only a couple points out of winning the championship in the last race at Stockton -- was a huge high," Duncan said of the overall experience in Late Models. "I had a great experience with Bill, who was really the one who went to bat for me to get the opportunity with RCR, driving for Bill. | "Just like any other great racecar driver, she had patience when she needed to and she got aggressive when she needed to. Overall, she just did a good job and her record showed it. I definitely feel like she's got a future in this sport."
- Bill McAnally
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"It looked like 2006 was going to be even bigger and better, but unfortunately that's not how it went." The difference a year made was apparent at Motor Mile, a four-tenths-mile, high-banked speedway that's a hotbed of the Virginia-Carolina Late Model Stock Car circuit. There were 19 Late Model Stock Car races this season in Radford, which was home to Dodge Weekly Racing Series national champion Philip Morris. The track averaged 26.6 Late Models a week for its 19 races and Morris scored 10 victories -- including two spates of three in a row that prompted a short track classic -- a $1,000 bounty payable if Morris could be beaten. In that environment, Duncan's average qualifying position was 11.6. She finished ninth in the LMSC standings with five top-10 finishes and a best of fifth. At her second year at Hickory, another short track crucible, she finished fifth in the LMSC championship with six top-five and 16 top-10 finishes in 17 races. She'd had 11 top-10s in 17 starts and finished seventh in points a year before. Unlike the stability she'd experienced with McAnally, and earlier with car owner Tinsley Hughes at Hickory, Duncan had trouble meshing with her East Coast crew chief on owner Tam Topham's team. A change was made two-thirds of the way through the season, but was too little too late, Duncan said. "The 2006 season did not go as well as anyone had planned," Duncan said. "The competition at Motor Mile was very tough. We got so behind with our car and setups that it was very difficult to get caught back up so late in the year. "It was the culmination of a lot of things, and blame was tossed around quite a bit about why we didn't do so well. It was a challenging year, and I learned a lot -- about big-time stock car racing and some of the politics and what-not that goes on." |  | NASCAR DIVERSITY | The focus of NASCAR's diversity program isn't just about putting a minority driver into the seat of a racecar. It's about providing the opportunities.
NASCAR's Drive for Diversity program is in its third year of providing qualified minority and female drivers and crew members the opportunity to showcase their talents.
Darryl Lomick and Dean Duckett are in their fifth season as Nextel Cup officials, and they say involvement will increase the presence of minorities.
NASCAR announced a collaboration with Historically Black Colleges and Universities and the Universal Technical Institute in an effort to further increase diversity in the sport.
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Week to week, Duncan was competitive with many of the eight different drivers who won Motor Mile features. She actually beat Keven Wood, 22, the son of Nextel Cup team owner Glen Wood, five times in the 11 times they raced head-to-head, though Duncan was 12th on the night Wood scored a feature win. After that, however, she beat Wood two of the three times they raced the rest of the season, and she was 11th to Wood's eighth on the other night. Against other talent that could be considered "developmental," the results varied. She beat D4D driver Jesus Hernandez, a Late Model winner at Hickory, in his lone appearance in Radford, and she beat Bristol the only two times he showed. Kerry Earnhardt's son Jeffrey, who was a finalist in a General Motors driver development combine at the end of the season, was her teammate at TAMCO Motorsports, and raced the full season in Motor Mile's Sportsman class. The two times they raced Late Models head-to-head, Duncan handily beat Jeffrey Earnhardt, who has limited experience in the class. On the flip side, Jerame Donley, 20, from Winston-Salem, N.C., appears to be the brightest star on the Late Model development horizon as he raced a family-owned LMSC to third in the standings with eight top-fives and 16 top-10s in 18 Motor Mile starts. As the calendar gets ready to roll into 2007, somewhere there appears to be a glitch in the system, as Duncan and McAnally each cited instances of missed communications among the players. Chuck Spicer, who administers RCR's development program, was unavailable for comment through the holidays. But McAnally said this week, despite his offer to field a Late Model program this season for Hernandez, the former D4D member had also opted to return east and "knock on doors" looking for a ride. "I would have enjoyed working with [Allison] again last year," McAnally said. "It just didn't work out that way, but I still think she has a future. "And I offered a ride to Peter, independent of the diversity program, but he made his decision to go back east." Whatever the future holds for either, it seems dealing with diversity and development programs can be tenuous, at best. "I did talk to Chuck [Spicer] about three weeks ago," Duncan said. "But he said he didn't think [RCR] was going to be involved with the Drive for Diversity program this year because of all the uncertainty -- and they wanted to get going on whatever they were going to do." So it seems, somewhere, that in 2006 Duncan's effort disconnected. McAnally said he was "really thrown off" by the fact that Duncan did not attend the Drive for Diversity program's tryout combine at South Boston Speedway in Virginia, making her ineligible for the program. Duncan said she had previous plans before she knew the combine's dates. "I had committed myself to working out in California for about a month before I found out when the combine was," Duncan said. "It wasn't that I didn't want to go -- I wasn't able, and I told the people from the diversity program that." But the California native, who got her start at age 17 in sports cars and won 40 races and three championships in her first three seasons, vows to remain in the Carolinas to maintain the firm foothold she has in the sport. "I'm not bitter, I'm just very disappointed because if this had worked out with RCR, that could have been a path straight to the top," Duncan said. "Obviously, there's not a better Busch team out there to prepare yourself for Cup -- but all the pieces just didn't fall into place." So the holder of a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo is left with an uncertain 2007. "It was the opportunity of a lifetime to be associated with a legendary organization like RCR, because not many drivers get the chance to say they've driven for [Childress]," she said while on a holiday break spent with family in California. "I have the utmost respect for Richard and I greatly appreciate the opportunity he gave me to drive for him." |
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Duncan is probably most enthused, after her latest four-year chapter, to have an extensive network of contacts. "Without a doubt, I have a tremendous amount of contacts and I am way further along than I was," Duncan said. "Chevrolet has been very supportive, and I can walk up to [NASCAR president] Mike Helton and he'll say, 'Hey Allison, how's it going?' "I don't think there are a lot of Late Model drivers in the country that can say that, and a lot of that is because I was involved in the Drive for Diversity program." But the toughest qualifying lap she's ever had to make -- as so many other racers have also discovered -- might be achieving the financial support to continue racing. "I don't have racing plans for 2007 as yet, because the money's not there -- but that doesn't mean I'm not going to race," Duncan said. "I know I probably won't be able to do a full season in anything, but what I need to do is get in bigger, heavier cars on some bigger tracks. "I'd like to move beyond the Late Model level, with something like Busch East or ARCA being ideal, but I don't have anything lined up yet. "So unfortunately, my development program has stalled temporarily, but it's not over. I'm actively seeking other opportunities to continue working towards my goal of becoming a competitive Nextel Cup driver. The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer. | 
