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| | | THE LONG LOOK
Ron Hedger
Eventually, every driver is replaced. A few retire every year but most
changes are the result of firings due to perceived non-performance.
Sometimes the driver doesn't win often enough or, conversely, the driver
thinks he's going to war with a pistol while the other guys have machine
guns. And a few, like DIRT and CVRA superstar Brett Hearn and the Madsen
family, separate by mutual agreement.
"It was time for a change" says Hearn, who won races by the handful in
the Madsen small block while running his own big block on the DIRT tour
and Jody Gable's big block at Lebanon Valley weekly. All eyes have been
on the #20 this year, as the "Jersey Jet", who is climbing steadily
through the 600's on his way to the extremely rare 700 feature win
plateau, left some big shoes to fill.
"I replaced Alan Johnson last year, so replacing Brett doesn't bother
me" says 20 year old Stewart Friesen, grandson of DIRT Hall of Famer and
long-time promoter Stan Friesen. "You can't let it bother you, you just
have to play every day as it comes. In a couple of years, I'd like to
move to USAC or the Busch series if the opportunity arises but you can't
plan too far out or you lose concentration on the races we're at right
now."
While he has yet to win at the Madsen's Friday night haunt, the
Albany-Saratoga Speedway, the young Canadian did run off four consecutive
wins to open the Utica-Rome Speedway season and also claimed the
"Showdown at Sundown" 358 DIRT tour event at Fulton Speedway.
"Is Stewart as good as he thinks he is?" we asked Hearn one night as we
shot a few bulls while waiting for the feature to be called. "I don't
know how good he thinks he is but I will say that if you don't think you
can, you probably won't" offered Hearn. "Time will tell but he appears
to be one of the best young guys to come along in a long while."
As far as standing on the gas a little more when he sees his old car
alongside or just ahead, Hearn says "I don't feel like I've got to prove
anything but it is a fun thing. That's what competition is all about.
But if I'm 10th and he's 11th, I don't feel any satisfaction. We should
both be near the front."
Brain Madsen, team manager and son of owner Guy Madsen, says that both
drivers share the rare ability to look at a dirt surface and know which
way it's going.
"Brett learned by experience, which Stewart doesn't have, but he learned
dirt by working on his family's track, Ransomville Speedway. He knows
how to look at the surface and predict how it will turn out for the
feature. I think he's equal to DIRT's other young star, Matt Sheppard,
at this point in his career."
Madsen attributes the split with Hearn to his desire to move to the big
block circuit. "He's going in one direction and us another. We'd never
be the premier big block team for Brett, so we needed to establish
someone for the future. But we'll be in his debt forever. He taught us
the fundamentals and proper preparation. 'Be prepared when you leave the
shop'. You can have a new car every week but if it's not ready, you'll
never run well.
"And Brett brought us to the next level on chassis setup. He really
knows his chassis. 93 or 94 wins in eight years isn't bad."
"It's a lot less pressure now" adds crewchief John "Apples" Albanese.
It's no easier but there's a lot less stress. Stewart is young and we
have more experience than he does. Before, we were looking at Brett to
make changes because everyone expected us to win. And they have
different styles. I don't think Brett would run the car flat out through
the holes at Utica but when Stewart's going to the front, he's going no
matter what it does to the car. He's young. He'll lead by lap 10 where
Brett would have gotten there at 25."
Still, Friesen feels he's maturing. "I've matured a lot over the last
year, not just as a driver but in overall life. We've had a couple of
bad runs but now, I know you have to move on. It used to really bother
me and I'd carry it to the next race. You have to keep going. You can't
start telling people you're the next great thing, you have to show them
you can get it done.
"There's 5000 drivers in the same place right now. I ran TQ's and I like
open cockpit cars, so I may go that way. I drove a Late Model a couple
of years ago and that wasn't a lot of fun, but a Nextel Cup ride would
show you're one of the best drivers in North America and that would be
cool. Right now, I'm happy to be racing with my heroes. Not too many
kids get to do that.
"People think I have something to prove when I race with Brett but it
doesn't bother me that he used to drive my car. It's like racing with
Danny Johnson. I love going toe to toe with the best racers. It gets
the juices flowing and you really get up on the wheel."
Ironically, Hearn's big block rides and Friesen's small block car share a
common engine builder, Kevin Enders, and he too had some big shoes to
fill as he established himself in racing. Kevin's grandfather's brother,
Ray Enders, was one of the sport's pioneers in central New York, winning
scores of races with drivers Keith Gray, Doug Howell and Larry Nye.
"The family always told me I got my mechanical ability from Ray" recalls
the Phoenix, NY based craftsman. "He had a milk route, hauling cans with
a stake rack truck, but he made more money as an owner than from his
regular job. My earliest memories of racing are watching his cars at
Fonda, Brookfield, Waterloo and all the other flathead tracks. I rode my
bike to his garage every day."
As an adult, Enders tried college and found it not directed towards his
engine building goals, so he first went to work in a NAPA machine shop,
then bought the equipment and converted the business to a racing
orientation.
"My big break came when I read a newsletter from header builder Jere
Stahl, who was originally from this area" recalls Enders. "I called him,
he came up and got me started with a dyno cell and along with Dave
Manzolini of DEPAC Dyno Systems, Jere helped point me in the right
direction."
Stahl, among the sports great "free thinkers", spent countless hours
trying his and Ender's equally inventive ideas on the dyno and soon the
business was large enough to relocate to a huge building in an industrial
park alongside the interstate north of Syracuse. Enders, whose employees
builds engines for Late Models, Super-Modifieds, big and small block DIRT
modifieds, boat racers, sports cars and vintage racers, has also taken up
a new "hobby", cam development and grinding.
"I know how Stewart feels" summed up Enders. "There was an expectation
for success that ran in our family, with everybody expecting me to build
winners just like Ray. Everybody expects Stewart to run as good in that
car as Brett did. Once he gets some more experience, he will. But it's
hard, living up to everyone else's expectations, especially when your own
goals are really high to begin with."
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