Some Folks Just Aren’t Cut Out To Drive Racecars

Kevin Conway Friday NHMS Loudon

Kevin Conway seemed to have the right luck, if nothing else. A protege of Ernie Irvan, Conway had made a career out of turning average-to-decent finishes into something more, moving up the stock car racing chain relatively quickly. Eventually the luck ran out, if only briefly. He spent two years in the Busch Series, even getting a seven-race deal to drive for Joe Gibbs, but couldn’t do anything with it, leaving him on the sidelines for 2008.

But in 2009, Conway exploded back on the scene by pitching Extenze, a natural male enhancement pill that plastered his face all over TV stations everywhere. He ran for various teams looking for an extra buck that year, before Front Row Motorsports brought him on for the 2010 season.

FRM knew that the 2010 Raybestos Rookie of the Year class was going to be thin in Sprint Cup, and as their sponsorship deals with Taco Bell and Long John Silver’s are mostly tied to team owner Bob Jenkins’ many fast-food franchises with Yum! Brands, they certainly knew they could use the cash and exposure that a brand like Extenze, and by extension a driver like Conway, could generate.

The experiment was, by almost all accounts, a spectacular failure; while Conway’s 14th-place run in the Coke Zero 400 was the team’s best ever at that time, he was out of there by August, his sponsor failing to pony up the cash (Big Daddy’s BBQ Sauce, anyone?). FRM had been switching Conway and teammates David Gilliland and Travis Kvapil between cars all season, ensuring the faltering Conway would remain in the top 35 in owners’ points and thus in the race while forcing the more qualified drivers to either go or go home. The partnership ended in lawsuits, with FRM suing Extenze for those missed sponsorship payments and Conway suing FRM for his salary.

Refuge came in the shops of Robby Gordon Motorsports. Robby Gordon, one of the purest racers the sport has ever seen, had fallen on tough times, his one-car, owner-driver operation continually struggling for results and sponsorship dollars. So Conway got a seven-race gig to finish out his award-winning (cough) season, and Gordon got a cool $690K.

Except, as we all know by now, he didn’t.

The same story played out once again with RGM, although this weekend’s events at Vegas have exacerbated things. While nobody in NASCAR witnessed the incident, Conway, who was driving in the Nationwide Series for NEMCO Motorsports last weekend, apparently stormed into the Sprint Cup garage looking for Gordon and demanding the $27,000 he felt he was owed for winning Rookie of the Year in Gordon’s cars. Gordon took the logical “I’ll pay you when your sponsor pays me” approach to the verbal altercation, which ended with Conway filing a police report.

Wait up. A police report? Isn’t this the sport where Yarborough vs. Allison, Spencer vs. Busch, Gordon vs. Burton have been celebrated by the fan base, never mind handled independently by the men involved? All of those fights were divisive, leaving a fan base to make a difficult choice between the two warring viewpoints. Not so this time.

Robby Gordon may be frequently vilified by NASCAR, accruing at least one penalty every year it seems and being the only driver involved in this altercation to end up on probation, but it’s pretty clear to most of us who’s in the wrong here. This is the second team that Conway’s jobbed with the Extenze backing. It’d be one thing if this was a one-time thing, but there’s a history that’s been established here. If you remember the 360OTC debacle of 2007, it’s clear that pharmaceutical companies have a bad history with lawsuits and NASCAR teams anyway. If he wants to get paid, he should go call up the folks at Biolab Nutraceuticals, Extenze’s manufacturer, and ask them.

Not only that, Conway overstepped his boundaries by walking into a garage he had no right to be in (by lack of employment, this weekend, and by poor results, any weekend) and demanding money he has no right to until his sponsor pays the bills. It was an immature thing to do, and one that’s probably going to put off any of the few remaining folks who were willing to hire him. Worse, the fact that he felt the need to file a police report after an altercation that he initiated, if you believe what Gordon told Mike Mulhern, suggests he doesn’t have the head to handle the pressure of racing’s highest level anyway.

I’ve always wanted to like Conway. I recall seeing him while on assignment for On Pit Row at New Hampshire Motor Speedway last year, and he seemed like a nice enough guy, the kind of driver who could pitch a product, run decently, and stir up some underdog sentiment with race fans. But after this latest incident, what I would consider a repeat offense given his history with FRM, I can’t. Get the sponsor that you’ve been towing around to pay the bills first. I’m not surprised that somebody edited Conway’s Wikipedia page to add the nickname “Rat.” (Go look it up.)

It’s a stupid situation, one that brings the already-suffering Robby Gordon Motorsports another step closer to extinction, while Conway manages to keep racing with little to no repercussions. It’s not fair and it’s not right, and everybody knows it. Say what you want about Robby Gordon, but if you hired somebody who should have brought your business almost $700,000, defaulted on it, and then stormed up to you looking for any money at all, you’d have a right to be as angry as he is.

And a word of advice to Joe Nemechek: Watch your back, dude. Get those checks up front. I don’t think you’re gonna get paid.