August 20, 2007

by Ron Felix

A few weeks ago, when the Nextel Cup cars were at Indianapolis Motor Speedway to run the Brickyard 400, Insider Racing News had the opportunity to ask a couple of questions -- directed at ESPN's Rusty Wallace and Dr. Jerry Punch. The questions were mainly to Wallace because we wanted to know what Wallace was going through with his Busch Series team, but Punch also chimed in with a story of his own -- to compliment Wallace's feelings.

Before Rusty Wallace was fully involved with ESPN as a color announcer, he spent a lot of time in the press boxes around the country with radio in hand -- guiding his son Steven through his trials and tribulations -- as a young driver in the Busch Series. Steven has had some bad luck coupled with mistakes, some of his own that have left Wallace wondering if he will ever get a lucky break.

Rusty was constantly on the radio to Steven, not acting as a spotter but as a mentor, giving him the lines to run, braking zones and giving him other valuable advice as the race would unfold.

But when ESPN hired Rusty as an announcer, he had to turn the reins over to someone else, and it's been a semi-troubling experience for Rusty -- agonizing at times because he knows he can't do anything now to help Steven, but he's says he'll learn to live with it and let others guide his son.

"I've prepared myself for that moment, we've practiced talking and I would react to things that would go wrong on the race track and stuff like that," said Wallace. "ESPN knew what they were getting into when they hired me. They knew already that I was a Busch Grand National owner. I've been grandfathered into doing all the Busch ownership stuff that I want to but I can't be involved in Cup as an owner.

"It's a little bit of a struggle but I've learned to deal with it. There has been many times I've wanted to hit the button and say, "back off of the throttle" -- or -- "go to the top side" -- or -- things like that. I've got pretty good people in line right now and I feel pretty comfortable with it. But it's a struggle."

Steven's outing at Kentucky Speedway on June 16th looked promising but disaster struck late in the race.

"We went to a break at Kentucky. It was myself, Allen Bestwick and Andy Petree, the week that Jerry (Punch) had off," Wallace continued. "Something happened on the race track when Steven was running second. He was running second all day and saw an opportunity to go for the win, shot through the center of it (three wide), got into the back of Carl Edwards. Edwards crashed and Steven crashed. We went to break and Allen turned to looked at me and said, "Man that must be hard to watch." I just said, yeah, but I'm OK.

"But I could just feel the blood rushing and roll through the top of my head, and then to the bottom of it. I could feel it rushing to my face but I can't let that come through on TV and it didn't. I had several TV executives call me up and say, "We've been waiting for that moment, we're really proud of the way reacted." I said, "Thank you very much, I just handled it natural. I said I'm a dad and that's my boy out there running."

"So yeah,I think about it. I know he's a young kid and I know he's going to make a lot of mistakes.

"One more thing before I forget, I read an article this week and it said "We're just not calling it the way it is." I disagree with that and especially in that particular race. I've never come across on television and said it was my son's fault. That was Steven's fault, it was his fault. And I called it the way I saw it, I'm going to call it the way I see it all the time.

"I'm not going to be the guy out there searching for stuff. I'm not going to be the guy that calls trash just to get more time on television, I'm going to call it true. If a driver thinks I'm calling him out, hey you had a brake pedal, you had a gas pedal, you've got to get on the throttle and save that problem. I'm not going to be on television to dig up dirt, it's not my style.

ESPN anchor Dr. Jerry Punch backed up what Rusty was explaining.

"Last week we had three Wallace's in the race at St. Louis with Steve, Mike and Kenny. It was going to be a big night for the Wallace family. Rusty was in the booth and we had three in-race reporters. Steven was one of them and early on in the race, a brake line erupted and in Steven's car and in the corners you have to be hard on the brakes. Steven smacked it off the wall and I looked over at Rusty and obviously impacting him but he was the consummate professional. His color changed a couple of times in his face but he kept right on calling the race, he said exactly what happened. And in the analysis we needed out of him, he responded to what I said, he responded to what Andy said. When we went to commercial, you could see that he needed a moment. Just a moment to compose himself.

"I will tell you this. I've had a little experience with this," Punch continued. "In our previous life here in NASCAR on ESPN, I would do the Busch races, I stood there with Ned Jarrett watching his son Dale and on the other side was Kyle Petty watching his son Adam. So I've seen two dads, two proud fathers watching their sons knowing these kids had incredible talent, doing pretty good. But for them it was tough because they were wrecking cars and I think Rusty has done a phenomenal job with that.