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Wednesday, September 26, 2001
From C.C. speedway to NASCAR
Park ceremony today honors Labontes
By Richard Tijerina
Caller-Times

Photo Illustration by John Bruce/Caller-Times

NASCAR drivers Terry (left) and Bobby Labonte will be honored today at a ceremony renaming Nueces River Park to Labonte Park.

[Click for message board to congratulate Terry and Bobby Labonte. Or share favorite moments of the brothers' exploits.]
   It was a different time back then, Rick Rapp remembers, a time when racing wasn't just fancy corporate sponsorships, television interviews and national sports fame.
   Back then, there were just places like Corpus Christi Speedway on a Saturday night, when the fumes from the pits and garages would blend with the roaring motors racing around the quarter-mile track. Back then, you could speed fender to fender with the man next to you and settle your differences on the track - or off it.
   Rapp loved to do both. And his and Terry Labonte's races - and the wrecks, arguments and near fisticuffs that went with them - became the Saturday-night stuff of legend in the mid-1970s.
   "We shared some laps together out there, that's for sure," Rapp said. "It was a time when men raced. They were ready to back up whatever they did on the tracks in the pits."

George Tuley/Caller-Times

Terry Labonte (left) and crew chief Gary DeHart analyze Labonte’s performance during Southern 500 qualifying races on Sept. 21.

   Long before Terry and Bobby Labonte conquered NASCAR, long before their faces were plastered on cereal boxes and long before the rest of the nation knew them, they were just Bob Labonte's boys, two Corpus Christi youths who loved fast cars.
   Their racing roots remain in Corpus Christi, on the greasy asphalt of the Speedway and on half-mile dirt tracks like old Cuddihy Field.
   Those roots come full circle today. After winning three combined Winston Cup points championships on the NASCAR circuit, the Labonte brothers will be honored as Nueces River Park is renamed Labonte Park.
   A family affair
   They cut their racing teeth in go-karts, which they would drive in the parking lot of Yeager Elementary, which was just around the corner from their home on Key West.
   From there, Terry moved on to quarter-midget cars, then to the early-1970s model Camaro that he used to dominate the older competition at the Speedway.
   Their racing styles today - Terry, the patient one and Bobby, the aggressor - were formed from their introduction to the sport back then, friends and competitors said.
   Back then, the Labontes were as much a racing family as they are now. When Bob Labonte would leave work at the Corpus Christi Army Depot, he would head to the family's garage unit on Old Brownsville Road, where he would tinker with the Camaro sometimes until midnight. Terry - a student at Carroll High School - would pop in on the operation, then speed off in his white Corvette with friends. Bobby Labonte, eight years younger than Terry, would head to the shop after school at Browne Junior High, and learn the ins and outs of the operation. And on race nights, Martha Labonte would sell tickets at the track.
   The early races
   And then, of course, there were the races themselves.
   Racing was second nature to both brothers, friends remember.
   "Terry ran single-engine go-karts and won when he was nine. And that's a one-lunger, a little old lawnmower engine," said Bob Killough, who helped build those early cars along with Bob Labonte in the 1970s.
   "Racing just comes naturally to Terry," he said. "I asked him once, 'How do you miss those wrecks?' When I was racing, if there was a wreck in front of me, I became a part of it. He said, 'You won't believe me, but I see those wrecks in slow motion. I see every hole that opens up.' That kid's just super cool. Nothing flusters him."
   Terry, nicknamed "Ice Man" on the circuit for his cool demeanor, did have his moments, though.
   Track old-timers still remember the conflicts he and the family had with Rapp, who is five years older and had numerous run-ins with the future NASCAR driver at the Speedway.
   Things got hairy in 1976, the year after Labonte graduated from Carroll. Just before the start of an end-of-the-month championship race at the Speedway, Bob Labonte began examining the hood and front end of Rapp's 1964 Chevelle, then went to Terry and gave him last-second advice, Rapp said.
   As the race started and the drivers headed into the third turn, Rapp said, Terry suddenly rammed his Chevelle's front end and broke his car's steering arm.
   The two cars went spinning onto the infield grass, and in the confusion, an incensed Rapp saw Labonte crew members rushing toward the scene.
   "When I came to a stop, I pulled out a knife and I decided that the first hand that comes through that window, I was coming back with a nub," Rapp said.
   That started a period of bad blood between Rapp and the Labontes. Word got out that Rapp had a knife with him; Terry began carrying a can of Mace inside his car.
   "Terry never was one to be aggressive or hot-headed," Rapp said. "A lot of that, I was more known for. But he drove the car for a bunch of men. He was a boy. His daddy, his daddy's friends, they were war veterans, genuine men, and they weren't about to let him be bullied around."
   Moving on
   Terry Labonte already had dominated the Hobby - or beginners - class at the Speedway at an early age, Killough said, so moving up to Modifieds and racing against older competition had to be the next step.
   "After about four races, everybody started griping because he was winning again," Killough said. "Everybody had been saying that when you come up to race against the big boys, you'll find it's not so easy. Well, he found that it was easier. He was so good, and he was outrunning everybody so bad, and everybody was raising hell, so he just left Corpus Christi."
   The next year, Terry Labonte stopped racing at the Speedway and began competing at half-mile tracks in San Antonio and Houston. It was in Houston where Terry was discovered by stock car owner Billy Hagan, who eventually brought him into Winston Cup racing.
   Racing success began early for Terry. At 9, he won the National Quarter Midget Championships in Tulsa, Okla., racing his 5¤ -foot red car around the [-mile track at top speeds of 45 miles an hour.
   And while NASCAR fans can easily recognize Terry's No. 5 Chevrolet or Bobby's No. 18 Pontiac, it was No. 44 that the family wanted. At the Speedway, Terry drove No. 44 - which was Bob Labonte's jersey number when he played high school football in Maine.
   Whatever number or car they drove, however, the family developed quite a local following, fans remember.
   "At the Corpus Christi Speedway, he was a favorite. Because Terry was a winner," said friend Pat Johnson, who grew up close to the Labontes.
   Leaving Texas
   After their on-track run-ins, Rapp and the Labontes have since smoothed things over, Rapp said.
   In a way, Rapp said, if it weren't for the troubles that he caused for Labonte at the Speedway, the teen-ager might not have begun racing in Houston.
   "That's all in the past," he said. "One time I was talking to Bob and he told me sarcastically, 'Have I thanked you lately?'"
   While the move to North Carolina may have been the right one to further Terry's Winston Cup chances, it couldn't have come at a worse time for Bobby, the younger Labonte brother said.
   "That was one of the biggest disappointments, moving," Bobby Labonte said. "At about the time where I could get a VW Beetle with the fenders off and go to the beach, we moved.
   "I moved when I was fixing to turn 15," he said. "I went to Tom Browne Junior High on Friday and was in North Carolina on Saturday night. I grew up with all my friends, lived there all my life. Change is not good at that time."
   Another member of the old Corpus Christi Labonte team, Steve Wetherbee, said he likes to think that he might have played a role in the family's move to North Carolina in the late 1970s.
   Wetherbee, in the military and based in North Carolina, would return to Corpus Christi and show the family pictures and home movies of NASCAR drivers.
   "I said if you want to see real racing, you ought to go up to the Carolinas," Wetherbee said. The family moved to North Carolina soon after.
   "Their parents put their whole life into their boys' racing," said Richard "Jelly" Jellison, who gave his old Chevelle to Bob and Terry to race at Cuddihy.
   "It's one of those things where it's a family deal where their dreams all came true. That doesn't happen very often."


Contact Richard Tijerina at_886-3745 or tijerinar@caller.com

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