RGeeProductions
09-23-2007, 08:27 AM
Former Busch Series star enjoys time at home with family
Mike McLaughlin is content.
Hear McLaughlin talk about his life today, and he really and truly seems to be in a good place.
He's happy with the way things turned out in his racing career, despite a bump or two along the way. He's satisfied being a husband to wife Katie and a dad to eight-year-old son Max, as well as to Katie's twins, Hannah and Manny, from a previous marriage.
His and Katie's children are, McLaughlin says, his "main priority."
"Watching the kids grow up probably is something I enjoy more than anything," McLaughlin said.
McLaughlin stays busy juggling daily responsibilities with Katie, who is helping market a nearby indoor karting facility. He also tests for Joe Gibbs Racing and serves as something of a driver coach for young stars Joey Logano and Marc Davis. Heck, when the team has gotten in a bind, McLaughlin has even helped hang sheet metal.
The work with Gibbs has allowed McLaughlin a comfort zone in which he can take a somewhat more leisurely pace at the shop that he and longtime buddy Greg Zipadelli have built together. There, McLaughlin is tinkering with a 1932 Ford Roadster. Years ago, he found the first race car he ever drove, a dirt Modified, and he plans to restore it. Another cool project he's working on is taking one of Logano's former ASA cars and making it street legal.
"They're keeping it as much race ready as possible," McLaughlin said. "So I'm just doing the necessary stuff to reroute an exhaust, gutting the interior to accommodate a second seat and the normal stuff we need to do to get it through inspection -- lights and horns, that type of thing. That's been an interesting project."
Logano, at all of 17, is an amazing talent. In a total of 13 Busch East and West races this season, he has six wins. If the fictional Roy Hobbs was The Natural in baseball, Logano most certainly is in racing.
Davis, meanwhile, gained attention last year with six Late Model wins at the famed Hickory Motor Speedway at the ripe old age of 15. As their coach, McLaughlin doesn't much talk about how he used to do things on this track or that. He just tries to point Logano and Davis in the right direction.
"(Logano) is just a talented, very mature kid," McLaughlin said. "I always had to work at (racing). I think some people are gifted, to where they don't have to work quite as hard. It just comes naturally. He's one of them. Marc Davis has got a lot of raw talent. He just doesn't have the experience level in comparison to Joey.
"I try to give them a little bit of insight going into a track. But I've found that I'm better off just comparing them to who I feel is the best that day."
McLaughlin was the 1988 NASCAR Modified champion. He would go on to capture six Busch Series victories in a career that spanned 20 years, from the days of Sam Ard to Denny Hamlin. The likeable upstate New Yorker made his home in the division, staying put once he made it there for good in 1994.
Yet bad things have an unfortunate way of happening to good people, and McLaughlin was no exception. McLaughlin was bumped from his Gibbs ride at the end of the 2002 season, but he landed with a team being formed that was new to NASCAR.
In a manner of speaking.
On paper, Angela's Motorsports would have been a Busch Series dream team. Harold Holly was on board as crew chief, and longtime series veteran Clyde McLeod was there as well. With McLaughlin behind the wheel, it was a combination ripe for success. Or not.
Left with at least $500,000 in unpaid bills from engine supplier Robert Yates Racing and various vendors, the team shut down just before it was to have left for the 2003 Busch Series season opener at Daytona. Owners Angela Harkness, a former stripper, and Gary Jones, who'd served as a bank vice president for Wells Fargo, were convicted of bank fraud in August 2004.
Together, they were found to have embezzled more than $1.3 million to fund the team. Jones was sentenced to three years and 10 months in prison, but Harkness fled the country before her sentencing. Harkness was arrested in April of this year after returning to the U.S. from the United Arab Emirates.
McLaughlin would run just a handful of races in 2003, and then he filled in the following season at Team Rensi Motorsports after Bobby Hamilton Jr.'s departure. He has not made a start since the last race of the 2004 campaign. Asked how much the Angela's Motorsports debacle set him back, McLaughlin sighs.
"Yeah ... that was not good," McLaughlin began. "That did set me back. It was something I hadn't experienced in all my years of racing, anything of that nature. It was definitely a negative. I'm sure it had something to do with my decision (to quit racing)."
McLaughlin had already set a two-year timetable for himself to comfortably retire from driving, but this was certainly not the way he wanted it all to end. He wound up leaving the sport at about the same time as he'd planned. It just wasn't on the terms he might've wanted.
He was given the chance to stay with the team owned by former McDonald's USA president Ed Rensi, but declined the offer.
"I made the decision on my own that I wasn't going to race any more," McLaughlin said. "I always loved what I was doing and never had a second thought about what I was doing. It was just a point in my life where I was having second thoughts of how long I wanted to do this. The enjoyment wasn't quite there any more. If you're doing that, you'd better find something else to do."
McLaughlin did find something else to do, and he's happy about it.
Rick Houston/NASCAR Media
Mike McLaughlin is content.
Hear McLaughlin talk about his life today, and he really and truly seems to be in a good place.
He's happy with the way things turned out in his racing career, despite a bump or two along the way. He's satisfied being a husband to wife Katie and a dad to eight-year-old son Max, as well as to Katie's twins, Hannah and Manny, from a previous marriage.
His and Katie's children are, McLaughlin says, his "main priority."
"Watching the kids grow up probably is something I enjoy more than anything," McLaughlin said.
McLaughlin stays busy juggling daily responsibilities with Katie, who is helping market a nearby indoor karting facility. He also tests for Joe Gibbs Racing and serves as something of a driver coach for young stars Joey Logano and Marc Davis. Heck, when the team has gotten in a bind, McLaughlin has even helped hang sheet metal.
The work with Gibbs has allowed McLaughlin a comfort zone in which he can take a somewhat more leisurely pace at the shop that he and longtime buddy Greg Zipadelli have built together. There, McLaughlin is tinkering with a 1932 Ford Roadster. Years ago, he found the first race car he ever drove, a dirt Modified, and he plans to restore it. Another cool project he's working on is taking one of Logano's former ASA cars and making it street legal.
"They're keeping it as much race ready as possible," McLaughlin said. "So I'm just doing the necessary stuff to reroute an exhaust, gutting the interior to accommodate a second seat and the normal stuff we need to do to get it through inspection -- lights and horns, that type of thing. That's been an interesting project."
Logano, at all of 17, is an amazing talent. In a total of 13 Busch East and West races this season, he has six wins. If the fictional Roy Hobbs was The Natural in baseball, Logano most certainly is in racing.
Davis, meanwhile, gained attention last year with six Late Model wins at the famed Hickory Motor Speedway at the ripe old age of 15. As their coach, McLaughlin doesn't much talk about how he used to do things on this track or that. He just tries to point Logano and Davis in the right direction.
"(Logano) is just a talented, very mature kid," McLaughlin said. "I always had to work at (racing). I think some people are gifted, to where they don't have to work quite as hard. It just comes naturally. He's one of them. Marc Davis has got a lot of raw talent. He just doesn't have the experience level in comparison to Joey.
"I try to give them a little bit of insight going into a track. But I've found that I'm better off just comparing them to who I feel is the best that day."
McLaughlin was the 1988 NASCAR Modified champion. He would go on to capture six Busch Series victories in a career that spanned 20 years, from the days of Sam Ard to Denny Hamlin. The likeable upstate New Yorker made his home in the division, staying put once he made it there for good in 1994.
Yet bad things have an unfortunate way of happening to good people, and McLaughlin was no exception. McLaughlin was bumped from his Gibbs ride at the end of the 2002 season, but he landed with a team being formed that was new to NASCAR.
In a manner of speaking.
On paper, Angela's Motorsports would have been a Busch Series dream team. Harold Holly was on board as crew chief, and longtime series veteran Clyde McLeod was there as well. With McLaughlin behind the wheel, it was a combination ripe for success. Or not.
Left with at least $500,000 in unpaid bills from engine supplier Robert Yates Racing and various vendors, the team shut down just before it was to have left for the 2003 Busch Series season opener at Daytona. Owners Angela Harkness, a former stripper, and Gary Jones, who'd served as a bank vice president for Wells Fargo, were convicted of bank fraud in August 2004.
Together, they were found to have embezzled more than $1.3 million to fund the team. Jones was sentenced to three years and 10 months in prison, but Harkness fled the country before her sentencing. Harkness was arrested in April of this year after returning to the U.S. from the United Arab Emirates.
McLaughlin would run just a handful of races in 2003, and then he filled in the following season at Team Rensi Motorsports after Bobby Hamilton Jr.'s departure. He has not made a start since the last race of the 2004 campaign. Asked how much the Angela's Motorsports debacle set him back, McLaughlin sighs.
"Yeah ... that was not good," McLaughlin began. "That did set me back. It was something I hadn't experienced in all my years of racing, anything of that nature. It was definitely a negative. I'm sure it had something to do with my decision (to quit racing)."
McLaughlin had already set a two-year timetable for himself to comfortably retire from driving, but this was certainly not the way he wanted it all to end. He wound up leaving the sport at about the same time as he'd planned. It just wasn't on the terms he might've wanted.
He was given the chance to stay with the team owned by former McDonald's USA president Ed Rensi, but declined the offer.
"I made the decision on my own that I wasn't going to race any more," McLaughlin said. "I always loved what I was doing and never had a second thought about what I was doing. It was just a point in my life where I was having second thoughts of how long I wanted to do this. The enjoyment wasn't quite there any more. If you're doing that, you'd better find something else to do."
McLaughlin did find something else to do, and he's happy about it.
Rick Houston/NASCAR Media