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Written by:
David Phillips
Senior writer, RACER Magazine http://www.racer.com/speedtv
Senior writer, RACER Magazine http://www.racer.com/speedtv
08/05/2008 - 01:16 PM
Pittsburgh, Pa.
Mears (center) is, as ever, apolitical, congenial, and has much to impart to racers and race fans. (LAT photo) ยป More Photos
Some of my most enjoyable moments in this year of Indy car reunification occurred in the paddock of the Rexall Edmonton Indy. There I encountered Rick Mears and Al Unser Jr. and spent five or 10 highly informative minutes chatting with them. The topic of discussion was their impression of Edmonton’s hybrid airport/road course circuit and the driving and chassis setup challenges it poses compared to the pure airport circuit at Cleveland’s Burke Lakefront Airport where, once upon a time in the days of something called the CART/PPG Indy Car World Series, they competed against some of world’s most skilled drivers in some of the fastest racecars ever built. Those interested in the particular observations of two men who share five Indy car titles and six Indy 500 wins between them are urged to check my July 25 notebook from Edmonton.
In the bigger picture, what was most refreshing about our meeting was the relaxed, politically “uncharged” atmosphere in which we conversed, one mercifully devoid of the toxic politics that have tainted the sport for so long; politics that would have inevitably been present in recent years – even as the subtext – in a casual conversation with two of the most apolitical athletes to have ever graced the grids of an Indy car race; two athletes it should be noted, who have overcome some pernicious demons of their own…
What could be more fitting, then, that in this season of reconciliation that Mears is the subject of an excellent new, soft-bound coffee table book by my colleague, friend and occasional
Kirby takes us on an alternately amusing, poignant and revealing journey with The Mears Gang from Bill’s career as a mechanic and racer in Kansas, to his marriage to Skip and their subsequent decision to move to Bakersfield, Calif., where they raised Roger and Rick in an environment of tough love, hard work and equally hard play that included running motorcycles and their home-built dune buggies in the towering sand dunes of Pismo Beach. The Joad family they weren’t, but Skip and Bill Mears worked for everything they had and tried to instill that same ethic in their sons, not always entirely successfully.
“(Rick) didn’t like work,” Bill says. “When he was a kid and hung around motorcycle shops, he’d rather go down there and work on motors for $2 an hour and not exert himself, rather than come and work for me for $4-$5 an hour, running a tractor.”
Interestingly, Roger opines that Rick’s “laid-back” approach ultimately paid huge dividends when he went racing.
“He worked very hard at not having to work hard in his car. He really worked hard at listening to that feedback from the car…and knowing how to make the car work. He didn’t want to have to work hard. He wanted the car to do the job.”
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