I might have mentioned in a column earlier this year, my $US90 ride in a NASCAR round Milwaukee’s famous ‘Mile courtesy the Richard Petty Ride Experience.
So – in this little aside from the usual column business of the domestic racing, karting, drifting and general motor racing jiggery-pokery – I am going to explain why the news that one of our latest and greatest driving ‘exports,’ Earl Anderson Bamber, late of Whanganui by way of Sepang in Malaysia, is about to dip a toe into the veritable ocean of talent, money and good old US-style ‘razzmatazz that is the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (or NASCAR for short). And why I think it is such a good thing!
The news came out late last week – initially on former-driver-turned-big-time-team-owner/operator Richard Childress’s Richard Childress Racing website – then spread quickly thanks to US journo Nick DeGroot re-posting it on the world’s biggest and best motorsports news website (which used to be run, BTW, by my old/young racing mate Regan Morgan, though that is a story for another day!), Motorsport.com.
DeGroot – naturally – was a little more circumspect about the news that one of the ‘top teams in NASCAR’ had signed Bamber, 30, to join a KC Motor Group-backed attack on the NASCAR Xfinity (feeder) Series at the next bi ‘road course’ round at Daytona on Saturday, August 15.
To his – DeGroot’s – credit he did concede that Bamber was ‘an accomplished sports car racer with experience on the Daytona road course, having scored four podiums in the Rolex 24 there,’ but that – and a brief mention of the Kiwi’s two wins (for the Porsche factory team no less!) in the Le Mans 24 Hour race – was it!
Reading between the lines I got the feeling that – perhaps – DeGroot had seen other ‘newcomers’ front up keen to secure a piece of lucrative NASCAR fame and fortune (and here I’m thinking of everyone from Indianapolis 500 and multi-time F1 Grand Prix race winner, Juan Pablo Montoya, to top female driver Danica Patrick) yet never quite make the grade.
And I get the distinct feeling that even if – shock, horror – Earl enjoys a dream debut behind the wheel of the #21 KCMG Chevrolet at Daytona in 10 days’ time, either qualifying on pole or even winning the race outright, there will be those who will remain in doubt as to his true ability (in their jaundiced eyes anyway) until he fronts up and repeats the exercise at a subsequent oval round of this year’s COVID-19 split Xfinity series later in the month.
Obviously, it’s a big move from the factory and factory-backed now mid-engined Porsche 911 RSRs he has been racing for the past three years in the WeatherTech US Sportscar championship series in the US and Europe, to a tubular steel space-framed, carburetted 5.8 litre pushrod V8-powered ‘Chevrolet Camaro SS’ with bugger-all electronics aids.
But if anyone can make the transition quickly, cleanly and with the minimum of fuss and maximum effort, it will be Earl Anderson Bamber.
Earl’s the kid, after-all, who at just 15 years of age walked away from what started as a fairly conventional karts-to-Formula Ford campaign to fly – by himself – to and from Asia in 2006 to compete in, and win in his rookie year, the 2006 Formula BMW Asia title.
He then returned home for the first of four seasons in the Toyota Racing Series (where he twice finished runner-up) while he and his Dad Paul tried to navigate their way through what were then fairly shark-infested waters if you were trying to wean yourself off the local scene and make your way up the racing ladder a little further afield.
Initially the Formula V6 Asia series appeared to offer promise. And second place in the points rankings in 2008 proved that Earl could handle the extra power and aero grip. But bar helping him audition for a role with A1 Team New Zealand in the ultimately ill-fated ‘Ferrari’ season that would prove to be the A1GP series swansong, it again turned into the career-equivalent of a cul-de-sac rather than the super-highway its original backers suggested it could become.
One last throw of the dice saw Earl pick up a drive in the Football team-based Superleague Formula but after finishing seventh in the 2011 series points standing the series folded and Earl found himself back at home on the family farm high in the hills above the Whanganui River wondering what to do next.
For many a young man that would have been it as far as international motorsport was concerned. For Earl and his father Paul, though, it was merely a sabbatical.
Having established some excellent contacts in Malaysia as a teenager Earl flew back there to work as an advanced driving instructor at the Sepang Circuit.
I’m fairly sure there was a bet involving who could lap the circuit fastest in a Porsche Carrera Cup car with the winner effectively earning a sponsored drive in the 2013 Porsche Carrera Cup Championship series.
As it turned out that was just the break Bamber needed, his win in Asia that year guaranteeing him both a ‘proper’ sponsored drive in the series in 2014 as well as drives in non-clashing rounds of the Carrera Cup Deutschland series (in which he finished 7th) and the ‘Daddy of them all,’ the F1GP-supporting Porsche Supercup, which Earl also won (and remains the only driver in the 27-year history of the storied series to have done so in his or her rookie year).
Since then Earl has gone on to forge a career the likes of which only – say – Bruce McLaren and Chris Amon (who memorably won the Le Mans 24 Hour race for Ford in 1966), and Denny Hulme, who won the F1 World Drivers championship in 1967, and with McLaren dominated the Can-Am sports car series between 1967and 1970 – have bettered.
It’s not as if he is joining a mid-ranked team to gain experience this year for a full-on assault next year ether.
Richard Childress Racing is the defending Xfinity Series title holder, 2018 winner Tyler Riddick having successfully defended that title in 2019 after moving to Childress’ eponymously named team in the off-season.
The team is also one of the most successful in the now 60-something year history of NASCAR racing, Childress, a driver-turned team owner’s drivers having earned more than 200 NASCAR victories, 67 of those won by its most famous driver, Dale Earnhardt.
Why a Kiwi has never consciously targeted a career racing on the NASCAR bill I honestly do not know. What I do know from growing up down in Gore (where a local car guy would base himself outside the US season) is that we have had several typically clever Kiwi mechanics working for teams in the greater Charlotte, North Carolina NASCAR ‘belt.’
No drivers though, at least until the news of Earl’s signing.
You know, it’s funny too. Earl might not be the most demonstrative ‘look-at-me’ kind of driver our wonderful little county has produced. But he obviously left a decent sort of impression on a keen recreational trophy hunter when that hunter (name of R. Childress Esq) flew into Wanganui Airport back in – it must have been 2006 or 2007 – in a (his?) private jet for a little bit of trophy-gathering with Wanganui Safaris, the company run from the family farm by Earl’s Dad Paul.
I remember asking Paul about the significance of a Childress Vineyards decal on the side of (from memory) the Formula Renault V6 Earl was racing at the time and to his eternal credit, rather than fob me off, Paul explained that he often hosted ‘high net worth individuals’ like Childress at his farm and, in fact, regularly put NZ-wide trophy-hunting tours together for such visitors..
As part of that he thought it was good for his boys (Earl & William) to meet and mingle with these guests to see (if you like) that there is a much wider world out there waiting to be discovered…or conquered as the case may be.
You don’t get to build up an enduring racing empire like Richard Childress Racing without knowing a thing or two about drivers and driving…and how to motivate them to succeed either.
As the man himself was quoted as saying in the press release announcing the signing……
“I’ve been watching Earl for a number of years and I’m pleased to have him join RCR’s strong NASCAR Xfinity Series program.”
To which all I can say is… hallelujah that someone has and is and…. let’s see, I know how to say it but writing ‘Boogiedaboogieda boys watch this space’ might be a little harder.
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