The Chub Frank Fan Van

The boys in front of the Chub Frank 'Fan Van.'

During the afternoon of the World of Outlaws Late Model Series event at Ocala (Fla.) Speedway on March 25, a distinctive white van rolled through the pit gate and came to a stop in the middle of the pit area. Its right side was decorated with Chub Frank’s No. 1* and other decals from his car, its left side sported Rick ‘Boom’ Briggs’s No. 99b and his sponsor stickers – and its interior was stuffed with six young guys from western New York and Pennsylvania who had road-tripped to the Sunshine State on Spring Break.

Frank could only laugh when he saw the gang stream out of the vehicle they had dubbed the ‘Chub Frank Fan Van.’ “What a bunch of dumb-asses,” joked Frank, who rated so highly with the boys that they took a night off from partying at the beach to see him race at Ocala.

It was quite a southern excursion for the ‘Fan Van’ clan, a group of six students from Jamestown (N.Y.) Community College that included John Volpe, an upstart dirt Late Model driver from Lakeland, N.Y.; Volpe’s crew chief Joe Triscuit; ‘Boom’ Briggs crewman Mick Peters; D.J. Johnson; Andy Lata; and Jake Hyldahl. All of them were 20 years old, and only Hyldahl had never seen a dirt-track race before visiting Ocala.

The ‘Fan Van’ was born after the guys were informed that they couldn’t use Triscuit’s parents’ van for a second consecutive Spring Break trip. Proving their resourcefulness, last November they all chipped in to come up with $800 toward the purchase a 1998 Ford Econoline van that had been sitting in a used-car lot near their school. The van’s floor was rotted out thanks to its former life as an operations vehicle for a carpet-washing business, but the boys banded together to fix it up over the winter. They added a poker table in the middle, obtained decals directly from Frank and Briggs to slap on its flanks and got the van officially registered with license plates the day before they started the long drive to Florida on March 22.

While the van was no high-performance machine, it got the guys to Daytona Beach without any major problems after a marathon 24-hour, overnight drive. They spent a couple days at the World’s Most Famous Beach before heading to Ocala Speedway and then on to a few more sun-splashed days at other shore stops.

Volpe (top) and Peters in the Fan Van's bunk beds.

This was most definitely an economy trip for the Spring Breakers. There were no hotel rooms in their budget; they simply parked the ‘Fan Van’ in a Walmart parking lot each night and slept inside it – two guys in ‘bunks’ built in the back, three side-by-side on plywood placed over the poker table and one more on plywood resting over the front seats. They got showers in truckstops or in a hotel room that they were allowed to ‘rent’ for 15 minutes in the morning, and they ate on the cheap (except for a visit to an Olive Garden one night).

“We all put $140 in cash in an envelope at the start of the trip,” said Volpe. “We’ve just been working off that all week.”

How much did they have left after paying $30 apiece to get in Ocala’s pit area for a night of racing?

“We’re not sure,” quipped Volpe. “We’re not gonna look in the envelope. Hopefully we’ll make it through the week.”

Getting His ‘March Madness’ At The Racetrack

Normally Rick Hartzell is right in the middle of March Madness – as an official working games during the frenetic NCAA men’s basketball tournament.

For the last two years, however, Hartzell has spent the tourney far away from a whistle. He’s been at World of Outlaws Late Model Series events instead, assisting his wife Jill George, the first female driver to chase the national tour.

Hartzell, George & son Jackson

A fulltime college basketball referee when he’s not fielding a dirt Late Model, Hartzell, 57, has officiated in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament 19 times over the 24 years. But last year an injury prevented him from working the tourney – and thus allowed him to attend two weeks of WoO LMS racing with George – and this year he declined an opportunity to do opening-round games in Tampa in order to be alongside his wife on March 17-19 at Columbus (Miss.) Speedway.

“With where we are in our racing deal, I felt it was important for me to be (at Columbus) with Jill,” said Hartzell, who owns the equipment that George is campaigning on the WoO LMS for the second consecutive year. “I had a good year, worked lot of games and was gone a lot since November 1, but like Jill said, ‘It’s time to go racing now.’ That’s kind of how I feel about it too. Working the tournament is fun, but I’ve done it plenty of times so I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything.”

Hartzell, who has been a NCAA Division I basketball official for 28 years, worked nearly 100 games all across the country during the 2010-2011 season. Conference USA and the Big 12 were his first commitments, but he also did games in the SEC, Big 10, Mountain West, Horizon League, Sunbelt and MAC and officiated early-round games of the National Invitation Tournament in Albuquerque, N.M., and Wichita, Kans. In addition, on March 8 he worked the Horizon League Championship that was won by Butler, the Indianapolis school that will play UConn tonight in the National Championship Game.

Surprisingly, Hartzell didn’t spend much time in his team’s hauler watching NCAA Tournament games or even checking scores on his cell phone while he attended WoO LMS events at Columbus and tracks in Florida and Georgia the weekend of March 25-27. He actually enjoyed the separation from his regular job that the racetrack provided.

Rick Hartzell

“The one thing I really like about being here is that other than Tim McCreadie (a season ticket holder for Syracuse University basketball), nobody really cares (about the tournament),” Hartzell said during the Columbus weekend that took place as the opening rounds of the tourney were being played. “The guys we’re parked beside don’t even know they’re playing because they’re not interested – and that’s fine. Everybody’s got their own deal, and for me it’s kind of nice to come here and get away (from college basketball) when you’ve lived in that world all these years, all these months and all these nights.”

Hartzell, who has also worked as an athletic director at his hometown’s University of Northern Iowa (1999-2008), Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pa. (1988-1999) and the University of Maryland-Baltimore County (1985-1988), would like to officiate college basketball games for about five more years. The 32-year-old George, meanwhile, is just beginning to make her mark as a women’s basketball official when she’s not racing and tending to her chiropractic practice; she worked 12 Division I games in the Mountain West and Ohio Valley conferences (in addition to Division III and Junior College games) during the 2010-2011 season.

Spring Break

They spent two days at Georgia tracks last weekend without racing due to thunderstorms that kept rolling across the Peach State. They had this weekend’s $20,000-to-win Illini 100 at LaSalle (Ill.) Speedway wiped out three days early due to an ugly spring forecast.

But at least most of the World of Outlaws Late Model Series stars had a chance to enjoy some spectacular weather while hanging out down south last week.

During the days between the ‘Cash Cow 100’ on March 19 at Columbus (Miss.) Speedway and the March 25 tour event at Ocala (Fla.) Speedway, 11 of the 16 teams currently planning to follow the WoO LMS stayed on the road. The only Outlaws who steered their haulers back home after Columbus were Shane Clanton, Clint Smith and rookie Brian Reese – not surprising, of course, since they all live outside Atlanta, which is roughly a five-hour drive from Ocala – Kentucky’s Darrell Lanigan and Pennsylvania’s Ron Davies (the Rookie of the Year contender had to make the long trek back north to fix his Mars car after a practice crash at Columbus).

For those who remained out, the week was like their Spring Break. While they spent plenty of hours working on their cars, they also partook in some R&R.

Several teams took the ‘Spring Break’ theme literally, most notably those headed by young stars Josh Richards and Austin Hubbard. After the Richards and Hubbard groups spent a day testing at Florida’s Volusia Speedway Park on March 21 and worked on their cars for much of the following afternoon, they headed to nearby Daytona Beach and parked their rigs downtown – right in the middle of the annual Spring Break mayhem that overtakes the city.

The non-stop action that accompanies the invasion of thousands of partying college kids was a perfect scene for 20-somethings like Richards, his chief mechanic Matt Barnes and Hubbard crewman Nick Hover as well as the 19-year-old Hubbard. It wasn’t quite as nice a fit, however, for 50-somethings like Richards’s father Mark and Hubbard’s car owner Dale Beitler and 40-somethings such as Hubbard’s crew chief Robby Allen and Richards’s crewman Jimmy Frey.

“Us older guys definitely didn’t fit in with that 18- to 22-year-old crowd,” cracked Mark Richards. “Those younger guys – Josh, Austin, Matt, Nick – they were out having fun at night. The rest of us were just worrying about where we were gonna eat next.”

With their rigs parked in the Aqua Lounge lot, the team elders did have a front-row seat for plenty of late-night craziness.

“We sat in the hauler and just people-watched,” said the laid-back Frey, the tire specialist for Richards’s operation. “We saw a few fights and lots of drunk people, and we watched Josh and Austin try to lay down their raps on girls.”

The only other Outlaw followers to visit Daytona Beach were 2008 Rookie of the Year Vic Coffey and his crewman Matt McCrimmon, but they got there in an unorthodox way. When they crossed paths with the Richards and Hubbard teams, Coffey was asked where their Sweeteners Plus hauler was parked. Coffey responded by saying, “Ocala,” which is about, oh, 80 miles west of Daytona. While other members of the Sweeteners Plus outfit, including Coffey’s teammate Tim McCreadie, set up shop in Ocala and went out in that city’s downtown area, Coffey and McCrimmon took a taxi to Daytona on Wednesday night – a one-way trip that cost Coffey a cool $320, including tip.

Of course, Coffey and McCrimmon had a sound reason to make the trip to Daytona: Coffey’s mother, Ann Myers, was in town staying in one of the two condos owned by her husband, Sweeteners Plus team owner Carl Myers. Coffey spent a couple days visiting his mother before heading back to Ocala for Friday night’s WoO LMS action.

Florida’s Gulf Coast, meanwhile, attracted several WoO LMS travelers, including Rick Eckert (Panama City Beach), Brent Robinson (Pensacola) and rookie John Lobb (St. Petersburg). With temperatures topping 80 degrees daily, hanging out by the surf was a refreshing diversion.

“We had a great time,” said Eckert, whose wife, Kristal, accompanied him on the southern excursion. “I wish we could’ve just stayed there for another week.”

WoO LMS rookie Pat Doar was a bit more low-key during the break, spending most of it parked in his hauler at a truckstop where he “watched diesel (fuel) prices go up every day.” Also avoiding sandy beaches was Chub Frank, Tim Fuller and Jill George’s husband Rick Hartzell; they stayed at Clint Smith’s shop in Senoia, Ga., and worked on their cars. (George had to fly home to Iowa to see patients at her chiropractic office while her husband and their five-year-old son, Jackson, stayed behind in the team’s hauler.)

Frank, Fuller, Hartzell and their crew members did have one especially big night while at Cat Daddy’s compound. They were among nearly three-dozen who people who went out to a Japanese restaurant for a birthday party saluting Smith, who turned 46 on March 20.