Outlaws driver could be auto racing’s next big thing
It was a chilly Wednesday night at Las Vegas Motor Speedway’s dirt track, around 8:30. The World of Outlaws heat races had just finished and Joey Saldana, aka the Brownsburg Bullet, was wearing a stocking cap and working on his yellow No. 71 sprint car with a crescent wrench. You don’t see that in NASCAR or on the IndyCar circuit anymore.
So Saldana didn’t have a lot of time. He was strapping on his helmet for the trophy dash when I asked about Rico Abreu, driver of the blue No. 24 WoO sprint car parked next to Saldana’s hauler.
This is another cool thing about the Outlaws. You can go right up to them, most of them anyway, as they are climbing into their racecars and ask questions, even if you’re not holding a microphone that says ESPN or Fox.
“Pretty badass,” Saldana said.
This is probably where I should point out that Rico Abreu stands 4 feet, 4 inches tall and weighs 95 pounds and spends about 100 nights a year wrestling with a 1,400-pound beast of a racecar that produces around 850 horsepower.
He’s a little person in a grown man’s sport.
In January, Rico Abreu won the prestigious Chili Bowl Nationals in Oklahoma by beating many of the top open wheel racers in America while driving a racecar known as a midget.
It’s the only time you’ll see that word used in conjunction with Abreu, although it has nothing to do with political correctness. It has everything to do with him having the potential to be the next big thing in auto racing, despite his lack of physical stature.
“Obviously, he doesn’t let things slow him down,” Joey Saldana said, speaking literally and figuratively.
Last season the driver from California’s wine country — Abreu’s father David manages a prestigious vineyard in St. Helena, Calif., where Rico was born — won the USAC midget series championship, a title previously won by Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart and Kasey Kahne before they became NASCAR stalwarts. Abreu also won an Outlaws main event at Tulare, Calif., and then he won the Chili Bowl a couple of weeks before his 23rd birthday.
Then came the Tweets from famous racing people.
“There’s a name you’ll be hearing more of. Stay tuned.”
That was what Chip Ganassi, the car owner whose drivers have won multiple Indy 500s, wrote on his Twitter account. This was high praise indeed, because Chip Ganassi is not one to Twitter.
A couple of days later it was announced Ganassi had signed Abreu — Rico’s best pal Kyle Larson won 2014 NASCAR Rookie of the Year honors driving for Ganassi in the Sprint Cup series — to a developmental contract to drive stock cars.
Abreu finished 17th in his NASCAR K&N Pro Series East debut at New Smyrna, Fla., on Feb. 15.
“It’s definitely been a treat,” he said of how his career has progressed so far, so quickly. “I’ve been given so many great opportunities. With the success I had last year, winning so many races, and then winning the Chili Bowl, and now driving in some K&N races. It’s all been so much fun and I’ve enjoyed every moment of it.”
The coolest thing about winning races and driving up front, or near it, when the track allows — Abreu finished 14th in Wednesday’s A Main as the Outlaw drivers found it hard to pass on a one-groove racetrack — is that while you can’t help but notice his height, or lack of it, people don’t ask Rico Abreu about it as much as they used to.
Remember Jim Abbott, the baseball pitcher who was born without a right hand? Well, there was one season where Abbott won 18 games with an earned-run average of 2.89, and then a couple of years later he threw a no-hitter against the Yankees. And then the baseball writers stopped asking about being born without a right hand, and asked mostly about his stuff and his location and how he pitched to Don Mattingly.
It’s not quite to that point with Abreu, who was born with achondroplasia, a bone growth disorder and a common cause of dwarfism. (His brother and sister are of normal stature). But it’s not as big a deal as it was, at least not among his competitors.
When he first started out in the sprint cars — they raised the pedals for him, but that was about it as far as modifications — he joked about not being tall enough to ride roller coasters. Now he mostly gets asked about how he’s going to pass guys like Joey Saldana on a one-groove racetrack.
That’s the thing about auto racing. When engines start and green flags drop, it matters not how tall a driver is, only how heavy his right foot is.
“It’s definitely an equal playing field when you get out on the racetrack,” Abreu says, and then its up to driver, car and crew (and maybe a well-heeled sponsor). And when driver and crew are in sync, and the car and track are right — and if the Brownsburg Bullet or one of the Kinsers doesn’t pull a slide job on you in Turn 4 — sometimes you win.
Then, if you’re Rico Abreu, you get to kiss the trophy girl, even if she has to stoop a little.
To use Joey Saldana’s expression, that’s pretty badass.
Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.
