IRL: Driver McGehee, Car Owner Conti Energized About New Deal
30 April 1999
By Dick MittmanCONCORD, N.C. -- Even before Robby McGehee wrote a grade school essay about driving in and winning the Indianapolis 500, Dave Conti was cutting school to sneak into the famed Indianapolis Motor Speedway to watch practice and qualifications.
Today, McGehee, 25, and Conti, 40, are united as driver and car owner. Saturday night they make their Pep Boys Indy Racing League debut in the VisionAire 500 at Lowe's Motor Speedway in Charlotte, N.C., as a prelude to achieving their mutual dream by competing later this month as rookies in the Indianapolis 500.
"Now we've got a chance to do it," said Conti, who engineered McGehee's successful trip through the Rookie Orientation Program earlier this month at Indy. Passing ROP was the first step for the pair into auto racing's big time. The second came on a rainy Thursday at Lowe's Motor Speedway when they announced a major contract with a high-powered sponsor - Energizer batteries.
"We're real fortunate," Conti said. "We had Energizer along last year with us in Formula 2000 to a real small extent. But they were helping support us. With Fred Azbell's help, we've been able to really get this thing going."
Azbell is managing director for Energizer Motorsports. He said Energizer, famous for its Energizer bunny, has found a driver and team that can market the firm's product. The sponsorship will run through the 2000 Indy 500, with options to continue beyond that.
McGehee and Conti were supremely energized by the announcement, which fulfilled a prophecy that McGehee wrote about May 19, 1981 in this essay for his St. Louis area school:
"When I Grow Up"
"When I grow up I will be an Indianapolis racer. I will go two-hundred miles an hour.
"I will have a black car and I want to be number fifteen.
"I hope I won't crash. I'll go as fast as the car can go. I hope I will win the race. I will go faster than a plane.
"My favorite racers are A.J. Foyt and Johnny Rutherford."
Ten years before that, Conti was skipping school in Carmel, a suburb north of Indianapolis, to watch Foyt and Rutherford drive at the Speedway. He had another hero, super car builder/chief mechanic A.J. Watson. Today Watson owns the garage that Conti uses in Pittsboro, Ind. (best known as the Indiana hometown of NASCAR superstar Jeff Gordon).
"I see (Watson) just about everyday," Conti said. "If I only could do one-one-hundredth of what he has done in his career; he's definitely a hero of mine. I think he's indestructable, actually."
Conti joked that he didn't write an essay similar to his driver's because he wasn't good at school.
"I think that's why I got into racing," he said with a laugh. "I should have paid more attention in math class."
Conti always harbored the dream of reaching the Speedway, but thought it was unattainable.
"Ever since the IRL started, I thought there might be a way I might get in there," he said.
Still, it took a circuitous route for Conti to make it to the mecca of auto racing.
His family moved to California before he entered high school. At age 20, he started his career as an engine builder at Ralt North American in California. He built engines for Al Unser Jr. and Michael Andretti in Super Vee.
He then started his own team and running cars. On the way up he has organized teams in Super Vee, Formula Atlantic and Indy Lights. He turned to U.S. F2000 three years ago, and that's where he encountered McGehee.
"I saw him in 1997 and got to see Robby a little bit then," he said. "I really didn't think too much. I thought he was quick in some places, kind of inconsistent."
But Conti's former driver moved on, and Conti and McGehee wound up putting together a program for 1998. It was there that the car owner began to see McGehee's racing potential.
"I wasn't expecting that much," he said. "You never know the first time you get involved with a driver. He's continued to surprise me almost every time he gets into the car."
Conti noted that McGehee has shown a nice touch on the ovals. He won last year at Homestead, Fla., and Atlanta and then made the huge jump to Indy Racing cars and the rookie program at Indy. The team at first was hampered by motor systems problems and couldn't get the engine to run on eight cylinders.
The team stayed at it, the engine smoothed out, and McGehee, driving Greg Ray's car of 1998, got the speed up to 219.6 mph.
"Every time he's gone out, he's continued to impress me," Conti said.
After the two newcomers absorb their introduction to high-speed racing on a superspeedway Saturday night, they'll turn their full attention to Indy. McGehee summed up this way what their feelings will be if they make the 33-car starting field:
"The butterflies will be there. And tears will be in my eyes when I'm out there to start the race."
That's not an essay from a starry-eyed schoolboy, just the facts from an "Energized" rookie.
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