NASCAR 2004: Dick Cobb had the speed, not the timing

Thursday, March 4, 2004 | 10:42 a.m.

While Las Vegas Motor Speedway has given rise to budding homegrown NASCAR stars such as Kurt and Kyle Busch and Brendan Gaughan, it came along about 10 years too late for Dick Cobb.

Anybody who grew up around the Las Vegas short tracks will tell you that Cobb was every bit as good as those local young lions, two of whom were his proteges. The only difference is that he never got the opportunity to show it.

"I'm not real sure it was because of the big track," Cobb said, "because those kids still had to prove themselves on the short tracks.

"But about the only chance I might have had (to make the big time) was to move to North Carolina. Most of us couldn't afford to do that."

In Cobb's heyday, stock car drivers didn't reach their prime until well into their 30s, and by then, Cobb was a plumber with a family to support. He simply couldn't pick up and leave.

Also, NASCAR's burgeoning popularity has resulted in the formation of new professional feeder circuits, such as the Craftsman Truck Series, that have opened Nextel Cup to drivers on the West Coast and elsewhere.

"I would have loved to have gotten into the trucks," Cobb said. "But regardless of what people think, I never had any money. Although I did pretty good all over the West Coast and just about any place I'd ever run, I was never able to attract a sponsor."

For Cobb, 56, it was just a matter of being born too soon, or being in the wrong place at the wrong time. In the 1980s, that would have been Las Vegas. When Craig Road Speedway closed, some of the best driving Cobb did was just getting to the track.

"I had raced at Craig Speedway for 14 years and when it closed, I had to drive across the desert every week, to run at Mesa Marin (Speedway, in Bakersfield, Calif.)

"It was really costly, and I did that 35 weeks in a row in 1983." ut at least he got a trophy to show for it, as Cobb beat many of the West Coast's top regional racers to win the Mesa Marin track championship, one of nine such titles he has won.

He raced against some of NASCAR's best and often beat them, including Bobby and the late Davey Allison, Bill Elliott and Ernie Irvan. And don't make the mistake of suggesting that Cobb and Ron Hornaday Jr. were equals before Hornaday moved onto the truck series and eventually to Nextel Cup.

"He never beat me," said Cobb, normally not one to blow his own horn.

These days, Cobb remains actively involved in racing as a Late Model car builder. He built the late Chris Trickle's first sportsman car and also has maintained cars for Gaughan and Kyle Busch.

Tony Renna, a budding Indy Racing League star who was killed in a testing crash at Indianapolis Motor Speedway during the off-season, was another one of Cobb's students. Renna was working as an instructor at the Derek Daly school at LVMS when he thought he might jump start his career in stock cars and thus made his way to Cobb's door.

"Huge," Cobb said about whether he remains a fan of today's NASCAR. "Especially when one of the Buschs or Brendan are running."

Gaughan, in his rookie Nextel Cup season driving for legendary Roger Penske, might be holding court at the Irish pub at the Orleans Hotel-Casino that bears his name were it not for Cobb.

"He used to follow me around the track," Cobb said of showing Gaughan the preferred line around the LVMS Bullring. "One day his dad (Las Vegas resort owner Michael Gaughan) came out and said, 'Does my kid have any talent or am I wasting my time?'

"I told him, 'Oh yeah, he's got talent.' So his dad said, 'I'll buy him a car and I want you to maintain it.' "

So Cobb takes special pride when one of his former understudies blows off somebody's doors on national TV, even if he never got the opportunity.

"I do believe I could have beaten Dale Earnhardt," Cobb says when put on the difficult spot of assessing his own talent.

"I'm not saying I could have beaten him all the time. But I do believe there were some races where I could have beaten him."