 | | Jason Leffler brought home $990,162 in winnings last year in the Busch Series. Credit: Autostock |
By Ryan Smithson, NASCAR.COM
January 9, 2007
03:01 PM EST (20:01 GMT)
Jason Leffler looks like he would have been ultra-comfortable slugging it out with A.J. Foyt and Parnelli Jones at Indianapolis Motor Speedway back when Democrats ruled the White House. Standing 5 feet 5 inches tall (generously speaking), Leffler fit perfectly into the tiny USAC cockpits. Even though he was born and bred in Southern California, his heart was always close to his adopted home of Indianapolis. He even married a girl with impenetrable Indiana roots for good measure, which tends to happen when one spends all his time hanging out at Indianapolis Raceway Park. Open-wheel racing was something he thought he'd do until he retired or died, whichever came first. "When I started Midget racing, I wanted be a Midget champion," Leffler said. "I never thought of moving on and making a living. I always thought I'd be a Sprint car racer my whole life. Nowadays, that has changed." Even now -- this first week of January 2007 -- Leffler's voice rises when discussing the upcoming Chili Bowl in Tulsa, Okla. Network TV-style open-wheel racing may be on life support in the United States, but the grassroots portion of the sport is thriving, as evidenced by the Chili Bowl. Leffler can't wait to be one of the 300-some Chili Bowl entries, a four-day long celebration of open-wheel racing situated just when Nextel Cup testing begins at Daytona. So what the heck is Jason Leffler, the imagined winner of the 2010 (you can pick the futuristic year) Indianapolis 500, doing in the bowels of the NASCAR Busch, Truck and -- most importantly -- the Nextel Cup series? Frankly, it is where the money is. And where the action is. And where all his rivals reside. "Right now, it is a great time [to be in NASCAR] no matter what level, in Busch or [Craftsman] Truck," Leffler said. "You can run in Busch and make more money than I ever dreamed about making. It is all a bonus, I guess, right now. "I will tell you this, there are kids running USAC that think basically that is what they need to get in the next level." The NASCAR level. A.J. Foyt, a four-time Indy 500 winner, said the trend will continue, especially with salaries for drivers skyrocketing. "It seems like all of the open-wheel drivers are doing well in NASCAR," said Foyt, who never ran full time in NASCAR. "That's where the money is these days and drivers go where the money is. I don't blame them because the only race that Indy cars have that pays well is the Indy 500." Open-wheel stars have starred in NASCAR for years, but the migration from open wheel to stock cars accelerated with the success of Tony Stewart, who went from USAC Triple Crown winner to Cup winner in less than four years. Only two men have won USAC's all three national driving championships in one season. Stewart is one, and J.J. Yeley is the other. The list of men Yeley raced with head-to-head in the USAC ranks almost reads like a 2006 NASCAR Busch or Truck roster. Tracy Hines. A.J. Fike. Bobby East. Aaron Fike. Yeley, like Leffler, still has a lot of Indiana ties despite two full NASCAR seasons. His cell phone number still has the Indianapolis prefix. His employer, Joe Gibbs Racing, fields teams for Stewart, Yeley and Denny Hamlin. Hamlin came to Nextel Cup after dominating the south Virginia Late Model scene, a far cry from the northern open-wheel ranks.  |  | | Saturday nights were family night for J.J. Yeley growing up. Credit: Autostock |
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Yeley says Late Model drivers, due to the sheer number of them, will always be prevalent in the ranks, and Leffler agrees that the two genres will continue to hash out talented drivers from each side. "No matter how you look at it, you have a large crop that comes out of Late Models," Yeley said. "It is just a matter of having talent around you -- you are going to make it no matter what division you come through." "They will continue to be a mix of both. If the guy is a good driver, he is a good driver," Leffler said. Both Yeley and Leffler will join Stewart as NASCAR headliners in the Chili Bowl next week. Open-wheel racing has been held indoors -- on clay -- for years and winning the main feature has eluded dedicated racers like Kasey Kahne, Yeley and Leffler, although they still show up and try. Stewart, who won the Chili Bowl in 2002, was injured running the event last year. Yeley said the event is a prime place for a young open-wheeler to be spotted for NASCAR employment. "It is definitely brought a lot more attention when it comes to doing well at these big races," Yeley said. "There are so many drivers that have made it from the open-wheel ranks, you have all these powers-that-be that come to these races looking for the young talent." Nextel Cup drivers also open-wheel owners |  | | Jack Roush might look to Carl Edwards for future talent. Credit: Autostock |
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Stewart has led the way in terms of owning open-wheeled teams -- Yeley jokes that Stewart owns a team in every division -- but Stewart is hardly alone. Yeley is in the process of forming a USAC team, and Carl Edwards already owns one. So does Kasey Kahne. Owning a USAC team is about as trendy as three-bedroom motorcoaches, except the USAC team is considerably cheaper. "I am in the process of getting stuff figured out ... I would love to be in the same situation in what Tony is and give back and give a younger driver the same opportunity as I did," Yeley said. "I am just a Saturday night racer from a small family that didn't have much and what we did have was put into racing." Jack Roush, whose teams have finished either first or second in each of the last four Cup seasons, said last year that he expects to pluck future drivers from Edwards' operation. "I expect to pay close attention to Carl Edwards' Silver Crown team and watch some people that go through that and maybe even put some people through that," Roush said. The opinions expressed are solely of the writer. | 
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