Welding creates bonds

Posted on October 29, 2014 by

Team Penske worker honed his craft with father

Racing, more than most other sports, is in the blood. It starts with the fathers, is passed along to sons and daughters and then becomes a way of life. Most kids growing up want to be drivers, just like baseball families breed pitchers or catchers or shortstops.

Brian Yerger is one such son from one such racing family, out of Pottstown, Pennsylvania.

"My family has been drag racing since the 1960s," Yerger said. "My grandfather started racing in the 1940s, and he’s 86 years old today. A lot of my mechanical ability has come from helping my father and grandfather in his garage since I was a little boy."

Yerger is a fabrication foreman for Team Penske — the same team that has both Joey Logano and Brad Keselowski in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup. He learned his craft early and well.

Much of that craft centers on welding, which he’s been doing since he was 14.

"My father was the first person to teach me how to do some welding," Yerger recalled. "He bought a little MIG welder which I still have and we would weld race car parts up in my grandfather’s garage."

Parts he welded went onto the family’s drag racing car, a 1965 Comet Cyclone, which he still races.

That was the start for Yerger. At St. Pius X Catholic High School, he was first in his Vo-Tech class for machine shop, and the next stop was a local chassis shop that built drag-racing cars. He wasn’t a welder there; he was in shipping and receiving.

That didn’t last long.

"I would practice welding and fabricating at lunch time and after work," he said. "I would ask some old-timers that were doing it for 30 years how to do different things. Eventually, I got good enough that the owner allowed me to make race car components that we sold. I would also help build the race cars."

Roger Penske, another native Pennsylvanian, had his racing compound in Reading, Pennsylvania. Penske always had the best stuff, and working there was a dream shared by many in Yerger’s position. His dream came true.

A fabrication spot opened at Team Penske in Reading, and Yerger learned of it. He was offered the job, and it was a heady time for the 21-year-old.

"I remember being very nervous and almost not accepting the job because I didn’t think I was qualified enough to work for a company like that. Thankfully, my family gave me the courage to accept the position and 17 years later, I still love it as much as the day I started. I moved down to the Penske Racing Mooresville (North Carolina) location in 2006. Today, we have roughly 60 people working in the Chassis, Finish Fab and Body-Hanging areas at Penske."

As a fabrication foreman for one of the most exacting team bosses in any form of motorsports, Yerger gets to use the top-of-the-line equipment every day.

"We use a variety of TIG welders, MIG welders and a plasma cutter, all from Lincoln Electric," Yerger said. "Quality welding equipment is essential in building a perfect race car. Lincoln Electric is always working very hard to stay ahead of their competition and we think they have an outstanding product. I think the performance of the machines keeps getting better year after year. We are always trying different machines from Lincoln so they can get our feedback for their customers."

Being in his position, Yerger has the opportunity to work with Lincoln Electric to make the ultimate welder for chassis work.

"Right now we are working with them on their new TIG welder which is called the Aspect 375," he said. "We have been welding with it for about three months now and we have seen a lot of differences of performance from other machines which are all positive. Another thing we have noticed is the start-up arc on AC (power) is excellent. It is very stable and doesn’t move around a lot. On DC, the machine welds like a dream. The arc current throughout your weld is so steady. The machine also has so many adjustments so that all welders can make it like they want it. The Aspect 375 is a fantastic machine and a great addition to any fabrication shop."

Not everyone can do what Yerger has done, but if someone wants to try, he has some advice.

"I would say if you want to learn the art of welding, go to school such as Lincoln Electric’s," he said. "If that is not a possibility, then try to start at a small fabrication shop to gain the experience. It will take a lot of practice like anything to weld at a high level, but over time you will see yourself getting better and better. Try to soak up as much information from welders that have been doing it for a long time; they have the most experience."

Yerger cautions, however, that it’s not going to be a job where you do your welding and go home; there’s a commitment involved.

"I think to choose a career in motorsports, you have to really have a passion for the sport," he said. "You have to give 100 percent every day and never stop thinking about what else you can do to help the team out. For me it is very satisfying to help build a race car and then see it win on race day and hopefully at the end of the season with the championship."

With two cars in the Chase, that can certainly happen this year. If it does, Yerger will have his own legacy to pass along to his sons and daughters.

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Posted on October 29, 2014 by Holly Cain

In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Holly Cain tells her story

The reality of my diagnosis as a cancer patient set in this summer during a rain delay at the Coke Zero 400 at Daytona International Speedway. While race teams and fellow reporters scrambled to change travel plans and make dinner arrangements, I took a deep breath, looked around the emptying media center and remember distinctly feeling very alone with my secret.

Just before shutting down my computer to return to the hotel, I Googled "How to tell your children you have cancer." That was the moment when it all hit me.

I am one of those people that never catches a cold. And all of a sudden, after feeling a sizable lump in my breast three weeks earlier, I was caught up in a surreal whirlwind of mammograms and ultra sounds and biopsies and jaw-dropping bad news with every test and doctor visit.

In the midst of it all — a week before the Daytona race — I had asked my doctor to delay giving me some results by one day because I was scheduled to travel to the White House to cover NASCAR champ Jimmie Johnson‘s meeting with President Obama. The doctor gave me a huge grin and conceded that was the best excuse he’d ever heard to postpone an appointment.

On Wednesday, July 2, the day before I left to cover the Daytona race, I received the full diagnosis. I had advanced stage breast cancer and faced an aggressive — honestly, frightening — treatment plan. But the scope, gravity and magnitude didn’t immediately set in.

I didn’t even cry. I didn’t know what had hit me.

The understanding flooded in during that computer search in the Daytona media center, on what seemed an appropriately rainy summer afternoon. As everyone else was packing up their computers, their minds grappled with where they would eat dinner or if they could change a flight to accommodate the race postponement. Mine was on my family.

For me, the very thought of sharing my news with my precious 11-year-old daughter and 13-year-old son in the coming days was so gut-wrenching it made me physically ill. I felt so utterly guilty — and still do — of my diagnosis robbing them of their innocence and of the carefree days of childhood they deserved — a time when they shouldn’t have to worry about their mom being sick. Or worse.

I was supposed to worry about them, not the other way around.

Before her diagnosis, Holly Cain ran in the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure with her daughter, Sydney, in honor of former Atlanta Motor Speedway Marketing & Promotion Director Marcy Scott. Sydney finished third overall in the 5K, then scored three goals in a soccer game later that afternoon.

As online resources and my doctors advised, I very calmly explained in simple, but appropriate and truthful terms, that doctors had found a tumor and that I would need a couple of operations. I explained that I would need special intense treatment called chemotherapy and that it would make me tired, extremely sick to my stomach and after a few weeks I would lose all my hair.

But, I promised and reassured — enough to convince myself — that, even as I wasn’t feeling well physically in the next few months, I would still be their "mom" and that my spirit would stay strong. I swore I would get better. The apprehension and anxiety showed on the kids’ faces, but they asked good, thoughtful questions. I could tell their minds were racing trying to make sense of it all.

And somehow, instead of this moment completely breaking my heart, my children reinforced my heart.

My son, always practical, wanted to know if I would lose my eyelashes and eyebrows because, he said, they served as a natural protection against raindrops. My daughter wanted to know if I would still be able to run in our local Susan G. Komen 5K. She and I had run the race together for years in honor and memory of dear friends suffering from breast cancer.

As it turns out, my friend and colleague at NASCAR.com, Kate Davis, organized "Holly’s Hotties," a team of co-workers and friends (including some dear people I’ve yet to even meet) to run the Komen Race for the Cure earlier this month in Charlotte, North Carolina. Kate raised more than $3,000 for the cause thanks to the heartfelt generosity of so many at NASCAR.com and friends in the NASCAR community.

I still have two more rounds of chemotherapy remaining and I’m glad to report that my eyebrows and eyelashes are still mostly intact. And while they do keep the raindrops from falling in, they don’t work as well keeping the tears from dropping out.

But the tears now aren’t just due to fear and pain. They flow because every single day I am reminded how blessed I am. I genuinely feel that way.

Whenever doubt and anxiety creep up, I try to instead think of what I have to be grateful for and glancing at my "thank you" to-do list is overwhelming. I simply cannot keep up with the notes owed to so many.

Amazingly, I have yet to meet someone not affected by breast cancer on some level — a friend, a relative, a co-worker. It sounds cliché, but I find myself stopping to take in the beauty in each day. I don’t sweat the small stuff. And as fellow cancer patient and fellow journalist Steve Byrnes of FOX Sports has reminded us all, you have to live in the present.

Byrnes — one of the first to call me and offer support — along with fellow cancer patients, such as former driver Shawna Robinson and Sherry Pollex (longtime girlfriend of Martin Truex Jr.), surely know what it is like to be surrounded by a NASCAR community that doesn’t just care deeply, but gives generously and is committed to making a difference.

Clint Bowyer’s sponsor 5-hour Energy, which allowed him to put my name on his No. 15 Toyota this month at Kansas, is donating at least $200,000 to Living Beyond Breast Cancer. Danica Patrick‘s sponsor, GoDaddy, also placed names (including mine) on her car last week at Martinsville, Virginia, and handed the National Breast Cancer Foundation a check for $50,000.

So many others have participated in the month-long push for breast cancer awareness. Elliott Sadler, Greg Biffle, Kyle Busch, Regan Smith and Trevor Bayne are among those who have driven pink cars. Dale Earnhardt Jr. has used pink driving gloves. Kasey Kahne and Joey Logano have helped paint track walls and curbs pink.

And as Breast Cancer Awareness month wraps up this week, I wanted to share my own very personal story of diagnosis, treatment, hope and, most of all, gratitude.

Gratitude for a network of friends that have been bringing my family dinners, sending me cards and flowers, lovingly crafting chemotherapy "care baskets," handling soccer practice carpools.

And gratitude for an extended NASCAR family that has rallied around me in huge and humbling ways, from text messages, Twitter well-wishes and long phone calls of support. I am forever indebted for the smiles on my children’s faces as I officially became the "coolest mom in the world" with my name on race cars representing the thousands others fighting to survive this pervasive disease.

Fortunately, there is another condition even more widespread — the spirit of kindness and generosity. Pass it on.

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