Where is ... Rick Wilson?

You just can't help but like Rick Wilson.

He's a good ol' boy from a small town in the deepest part of the South, a town they call Bartow, Fla., about 40 miles outside Tampa. When Wilson's had enough of something, he's had a "bate" of it. When he refers to children, he calls them "young'uns." Wilson uses the term "Get 'er done," and variations thereof. You get the distinct impression that he was saying it long before Larry the Cable Guy made it his signature line.

Inside the Numbers

Rick Wilson's career stats

Year	Races	Start	Finish
1980	3	17.3	29.3
1981	8	17.5	28.1
1982	8	25.1	24.0
1983	1	34.0	37.0
1985	2	31.5	23.5
1986	17	15.9	21.4
1987	19	18.3	24.3
1988	28	17.4	21.9
1989	29	14.6	19.2
1990	29	23.1	23.8
1991	29	22.5	23.0
1992	1	38.0	23.0
1993	29	20.3	24.0
1997	3	33.0	20.3
TOTALS	206	19.7	22.9

Wilson runs close to a thousand head of cattle on about 2,000 acres, and has about 200 acres of citrus groves. Sure, he has hired hands to help out, but Wilson's not above getting his hands dirty.

Rick Wilson is good people.

Today, Wilson says that he just doesn't know if he could get by in today's NASCAR -- not because of any lack of ability, but because today's NASCAR is just ... different.

"It was awful tough when I tried [breaking into the sport]," says Wilson. "Back then, raw talent would get you a long way. You had to pretty much field a car and drive the wheels off of it without knocking the fence down or blowing the motor up to even get noticed.

"This day and time, I really believe money gets a lot of these kids a long way. ... You see a lot of people coming in and you've never heard of 'em, and all of sudden, they're driving a Busch car or maybe even a Cup car. Have they got that much talent or are they sitting in good equipment? Well ... you know the answer to that."

He's not angry about how money has changed the sport; he's not bitter. The sport has grown, he says, and being a businessman himself, that's what any business is supposed to do -- grow. It's just the way it is. Can't do anything about it, so why fuss and moan about it?

It's a perspective that comes from years of getting to the top, and even more struggling once he got there. It's also a perspective that he's tried to share with his son, Travis, who is 23 and an up-and-coming ASA driver.

Like his father, Travis was rip-roarin' ready to be a race car driver. The old man, though, put the brakes on. He wanted his son -- he and wife Teresa also have a daughter, Lori Ann -- to be a normal kid in high school.

"I knew a lot of fathers who started their kids out when they were 7, 8 years old," Wilson says of his son, who has moved back to Florida after working for teams fielded by Travis Carter and Chip Ganassi. "Sometimes, the kids didn't really like it that much. It was more their fathers wanting to do it.

"I wanted him to play football, go to school, have girlfriends, go to the prom and not have to worry about getting home every afternoon to work and race cars and be gone every weekend. ... He's got eat up with it now. Racing is his deal. I just kinda wanted him to have a normal deal." (Continued)