Where Is ... Gary Bechtel?

It should be noted here and forevermore that the No. 29 Chevrolet fielded by Diamond Ridge Motorsports team owner Gary Bechtel in 1996 featured the coolest paint scheme in the history of motorsports.

With Cartoon Network as its primary sponsor, the bright yellow car was trimmed in bright orange and featured Fred Flintstone on the hood. Barney was there, and so was another character, Muttley, on the TV panel, throwing tacks onto the track. And, to be sure, there was a time when it seemed Diamond Ridge's success would become every bit as showy as the design of its car.

Steve Grissom

It didn't happen, at least not at the Cup level.

Steve Grissom, Greg Sacks, Jeff Green and Elliott Sadler all won Busch Series events in Bechtel-owned machines, but that level of competition never transferred over to the Cup side of the fence. Bechtel attempted full-time Cup runs with Grissom, Green and Robert Pressley through 1997, and then made just a handful of Cup starts the following season.

After selling his operation to Joe Gibbs, Bechtel left Homestead for Charlotte, and then left there for California on the following Tuesday. His bags were already packed, and he hasn't been back since. Bechtel, who now lives about 70 miles outside San Francisco on a family ranch near Morgan Hill, Calif., calls the experience "disappointing."

"I literally have not been back to a race since I left, not because I don't like it," Bechtel said. "It was an eye-opening experience. I really came into NASCAR with my head down, really thinking sorta like [the movie] Field of Dreams, 'If you build it, they will come.' Bill France coached me, 'You ought to hook up with some of the old timers and they can show you how to do this thing instead of out of your pocket.' I didn't do that. At the end, it got to be a real drain."

Leaving the sport behind, Bechtel is now heavily involved with his dad, Steve, in conservation work. He buys land in California and converts it back into wetlands and uplands habitat. All together, the California Conservation Fund has somewhere in the neighborhood of 5,000 acres, of which about 80 percent has been saved so far.

Most was "marginal" farmland, and it's now designed for ducks, their nesting and other assorted forms of wildlife. Water is obviously a challenge, but Bechtel's organization makes sure there's a sustainable supply. If the creatures know there's water, they'll come back.

Of the conservation group's 5,000 or so acres, some 3,500 are near Bakersfield in Southern California. For the time being at least, the lands are safe from the wildfires that are ravaging the San Diego area at the moment. And while his land is OK, it's still a situation that concerns Bechtel.

"To get into one of these areas, there's generally a two-lane road," Bechtel said. "To get the fire-fighting equipment in as people are trying to get out is a challenge. Then, you have people ... their love in life is their home, so they want to stay 'til the last minute. That can get very perilous. Plus, we're seeing a new thing here where people are reluctant to evacuate their animals early enough, so everybody's trapped."

Also, for the last couple of years, Bechtel has been an officer in the California Retriever Training Association. The season for retrievers is much like that of NASCAR, with trials beginning as early as February and a National Open scheduled for Nov. 12 on the Bechtel ranch outside San Francisco.

Events simulate hunting conditions in which the dogs retrieve bird decoys, as opposed to pointing game out to their masters. At the moment, some 80 dogs are qualified for the event next month on Bechtel's property.

"It's just sorta like racing," said Bechtel, who owns four or five dogs. "There's a clear relationship between practice and performance. Practice with an animal, that's a four-day-a-week kind of deal. Then, you go out and you run a trial for three days."

Bechtel came by his love for the outdoors having hunted with his father since he was a youngster.

"I grew up with it," Bechtel said. "I've been hunting or going out with dad since I was 12 years old. I think the first bird I shot, I was 16. I love hunting and fishing and outdoors, and specifically, out here, we have an added challenge of trying to protect open space."

In 1997, Green scored the first win of his Busch Series career for Bechtel in the inaugural NASCAR event at Las Vegas. Sadler sat on the pole at Daytona and then won his first race at Nazareth. He would add victories at Myrtle Beach and Gateway.

"We had some really good leadership in the crew chief area [in the Busch Series], and they assembled some really good guys, plus, obviously, both those drivers [Green and Sadler] were awesome," Bechtel said. "Our operating plan was to come in and focus aggressively and get the best equipment that we could, and then jump up to Cup. But I allowed myself to get overly motivated too early because of the Busch success. That's where I fell on my nose."

It was a confusing time. Asked if there are things that he might've done differently in his racing career, Bechtel responds almost eagerly, "Oh, golly, yes." According to Bechtel, Diamond Ridge Motorsports was one of the first teams to provide a pension plan for its employees. Instead, he says he found that a good many of his employees wanted their money on the spot. Their focus was on the here and now, he adds, and not "10 years down the road."

He was also "rubbed raw" the time a driver had an agent call Bechtel to negotiate terms for the upcoming season. Indeed, the sport has changed dramatically in the nearly 10 years since Bechtel left. That said, Bechtel does miss the sport in general, and more specifically, the friends he made along the way.

"Yeah, I miss the people," Bechtel concluded. "You know the business. There's good and bad, but there were some really, really passionate people in racing that would really do everything they could to try to help you."