Buddy Baker's heart was pounding as he watched Ryan Newman, his prize pupil, ricocheting off walls, with cars erupting in flames near the start of the Winston Cup race at Talladega Superspeedway.
Newman, who ignited a 27-car wreck when a cut tire sent his Penske Racing South Dodge into the wall, walked away Sunday without injury. That was a relief to Baker, a former Winston Cup standout who has helped bring last year's top rookie to the brink of superstardom.
"If I had a third son, he'd be it," said Baker, the son of two-time NASCAR champion Buck Baker and whose own boys, Bryan and Brandon, briefly tried their hand at racing.
"They had talent, but it never was what they wanted to do more than anything else," Baker said. "With me, I never thought about doing anything else. Ryan Newman never did, either. From the time he was 5 years old until now, he's never wanted to be anything else."
Baker, who retired as a competitive driver in 1992, is an instructor at his father's driving school at North Carolina Speedway in Rockingham.
He was contacted late in 1999 by team co-owners Roger Penske, Don Miller and Rusty Wallace to see if Baker, winner of 19 Cup races, would be willing to work with the then 22-year-old Newman.
Baker, whose teaching had consisted almost entirely of three-day courses at his father's school, hesitated, insisting on first meeting Newman and his family.
"There's a lot of people who could have 10 driving coaches and they'd never make it," Baker said. "But there's just some people made out of the right cloth. I'm very selective in people I work with.
"When I started talking to Ryan, I could feel the energy that he had, and the passion he had for the sport.
Former NASCAR driver Buddy Baker, right, talks with driver Ryan Newman in Newman's vehicle hauler. The two visited in the Grand National Garage of the Talladega Superspeedway Saturday in Talladega, Ala.
"Then, I met his dad, and right there I knew, OK, he's got a good background. His father's been with him in go-carts, midgets. He turned the wrenches for his son. It was an automatic fit for me."
The program laid out by the Penske team leaders included lots of testing and some experience in ARCA and Busch races before moving up to Winston Cup.
"When we started out, we were not pressured to hurry him along," Baker said. "We went to all the racetracks and tested. We would go out in a passenger car and I'd show him the points on the racetrack that work, the points that don't work, things to do, things not to do."
Baker, the first stock car driver to run a 200-mph lap and the 1980 Daytona 500 champion, told Newman to listen to what he had to say and then adapt it to his own style.
It's worked better than Baker could have hoped.
"If I told him that the seat needed to be on the roof, he'd listen. That's the kind of kid he is," Baker said. "He's never once questioned anything that I've told him, and therein lies our success.
"It's been a great relationship. When I tell him something, he takes it in, he refines and puts the Newman touch to it."
Newman, already one of the sport's top qualifiers, won his second Cup race two weeks ago in Texas.
"Buddy has helped me out a lot," he said. "Buddy told me he made mistakes when he was growing up driving or just as a person.
"He said, 'I don't want you to make those same mistakes. If you can avoid making those mistakes, you're going to make other ones, but I'll eliminate the variables for you.' He's helped me so much, in and out of the car."
It didn't start out so well, though.
Baker said the first test was at Gateway International Raceway near St. Louis, and Newman wasn't getting much out of the car. They went to Kentucky Speedway next, and again, Newman's performance was lacking.
"I was stumped," Baker said. "I said, 'Ryan, you giving me everything you've got?' He said, 'No, I'm taking it easy.' I said, 'You don't want to take it easy. You want to learn.'
"The next lap he came by, I ran to the other side of the truck and said to the crew, 'If he makes it, we've got a driver.' He was on the track record the next lap and he's been giving it everything he's got ever since."
Newman, who has a degree in mechanical engineering from Purdue, drove midgets and sprint cars on the U.S. Auto Club's short tracks before moving to stock cars. He won in every series and took the 1999 Silver Bullet Series championship.
He was an immediate hit in stock cars, too, winning in only his second ARCA event.
"For some reason, the champions in open-wheel cars, when they come in here, they have a leg up," Baker said. "Look at Tony Stewart, Jeff Gordon, Ryan Newman. They understand their equipment.
"We started out with the ABCs. We started in ARCA, then we went to Busch, then to Cup. The guys who work on that crew, all of them are young like Ryan. They're all computer whizzes and most of them are engineers, like Ryan. They get the resources they need. It's a great situation."
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