SIGNATURE PROFILES
© 1999-2003 Dwight Drum

ANDY HILLENBURG

"When you dream at night it doesn't do you any good, but if you dream in the day time you can make something happen."

DWIGHT CHATS WITH…Andy Hillenburg

Fame isn't Andy Hillenburg's quest. Recently, publicist Leo Dougherty pointed out Hillenburg's demeanor: "He has a very interesting history, but he doesn't spend a lot of time shouting about it."

Many racers seem to skip fame while they drive hard on any summer weekend. You can find droves of them racing fast on many race tracks somewhere in the US all summer. Those races may not have the glitter that TV brings to fan eyes, but every race has fans. Every race has competitors. Every race has families. Many of those racers never know the bright lights of national exposure but many of them have skills that exceed their obscurity.

Still, most racers never reach Hillenburg's level, 1995 ARCA champion, owner of Fast Track High Performance Racing (Official ARCA School) and manager of other businesses. Many people aspire to be honest too but few ever reach Hillenburg's level of spontaneous truth. I've asked many questions of racers, but asking him questions was as refreshing as a cool breeze in July. He is a skilled and focused person who chooses to race and share his skills with aspiring racers.

My probing questions to racers generally have a positive angle and often result in many wonderful responses. To me it's no mistake that Hillenburg's answers are as good as it gets. Listen in a few moments, read on with a great guy who puts his heart and his roots on four wheels then rumbles on.

DOB: 4-30-63
Birth Town: Indianapolis, Ind.
Home Town: Concord, N.C.

"One trait is difficult can I narrow that to more? (Of course he can)…Hard work and integrity."

"As far as racing goes probably winning is the most important. The fame is the least important to me. Winning races is such a great personal satisfaction. You had an evening or a day go right. Competition is right there with winning. I just like being regular old Andy who races cars who does well enough that most people respect what I do out there on a race track."

"Probably Gary Bettenhausen is one of my main heroes for his determination. He is one of the most determined persons I've ever met and I really respect him. A sprint car driver, Lee Gaines, taught me there is more to life than racing and if your family life is messed up, your racing life isn't going to be as good as it could have been. Johnny Rutherford. He is charismatic. My mom always told me, 'If you are going to be a race car driver if I could represent myself and the sport like Johnny Rutherford. Even if I never won a race…I'd be a winner.' I've always tried to represent myself as good as I can. I'd like to take a little bit from each one of those guys and be very determined and try to represent myself and the sport I love so much in a positive light. Being able to balance my family into what I do is probably the most important thing to me."

"Yes. I have it on right now. I didn't wear one up until about 10 years ago. When you have children, you want to set a good example and I started wearing it when I had kids."

"Work ethics, honesty and how they handle themselves in certain situations. A lot of people do better than others, whether it's a good situation or a bad situation. No such thing as a bad winner."

"Now I would be involved in the racing field in some capacity. After I quit driving I do want to own race cars. I want to own Indy cars, Stock Cars and Sprint cars. I want to have a trifecta race team."

"Before I got deeply involved in racing and was able to make a living, I probably would have been a carpenter like the rest of my family. They were all home builders and that's what I grew up doing and being a carpenter is how I saved up the money for my first race car.

"I recently took up bird hunting. I was never a hunter. I never cared for guns until I was sponsored in Indianapolis by a group from Quail Unlimited. Part of my sponsorship required me to go to the hunt. I had a really good time and I learned that hunters don't just shoot things. They have important facts about hunters that people don't know about them. They help the environment and basically make our planet better. After I learned those things and had a great time, I've been four times in the last two years. I really love it, but all the time I've had for it is four days."

"I have a PT Cruiser right now. I've been a test driver for Dodge engineering for the last four years and I kept showing up for tests in different types of vehicles and they kept busting my chops, so I got a PT Cruiser. I've always had a pickup truck and I tried a car for the first time in twenty years and I like it. ."

"I'm a very cautious driver on the highways because you have idiots coming the other way. On the racer track everybody is going in the same direction and if you see something different you know there's trouble. I'm very cautious on the street. I've done a couple of highway seminars and I feel like I contributed to those, giving people a different perspective other than don't drink and drive and wear your seat belt. I think I gave people a few helpful points. Things I've learned on the race track that you could apply on the highway. I'm cruising home about five miles over the speed limit right now. That's about it for me. I get my kicks on the race track."

"For my kids, I'd have to say my brain, but as far as muscles go, I'd say my forearms. I went back to drive a few sprint cars this past year and I forgot how strong you have to be in the forearms to drive sprint cars."

"In the winter time I try to run. I don't like to work my upper body very much, but in certain situations I will, but I haven't in the past eight months."

"It depends how bad the car ran. If your car isn't handling your muscles hurt. If it's a 500 mile race at Daytona or Talladega your brain hurts. If you broke a header or an exhaust system, your eyes hurt. "

"At one time I felt like I could play baseball, but not now."

"I bite my lip and gather my thoughts because the worst thing I think you can do is to start running your mouth. I don't mind it when guys show their emotions, but when they run their mouth they usually say something stupid. I try to collect my thoughts before I give an answer…like after a crash or a blowup. I'll still show my disappointment or my anger, but you don't want to call somebody an idiot in case they had a legitimate problem or maybe they didn't see it the way you did. If you say that guy can't drive and the race is on tape delay and he wins the next five races in a row and you look like an idiot because you said he couldn't drive."

"I'd say that has actually changed a lot over the years. I used to get really worked up, now I relax. A couple hours before the event I withdraw from the small talk and concentrate on the job at hand. As soon as the race is over and after I figure out what I could have done to make things better, then I'm back to my happy-go-lucky self."

"When my wife had her first baby. They put the baby in my arms and all of a sudden you realize that you have to be responsible for another individual…no 'ifs, no 'mulligan', no 'anything'. I almost passed out when they put my little daughter in my arms. That was scary. It was fun but scary."

"Actually recognizing children's fears, but not my own fears. I really don't have them as far as racing. I'm very proud of my accomplishments, and I'm very happy with what I gotta do. I have a great family. Whatever happens, happens. You hate to see your kid's disappointed. You hate going to a baseball game and seeing your kid strikeout and seeing their disappointment. I guess my greatest fear is seeing my kid's disappointment."

"I'll let you know when. I have worked every day from Labor Day to Christmas. I have like six or seven different jobs. I drive race cars. I teach and run Fast Track Driving School. I'm a test driver for IROC and Dodge and a few Winston Cup teams, and I also write articles for racing magazines and work as a commentator. I also have a bead blast business that I manage, so I work all the time. I guess it would be a quiet evening with my kids watching movies."

"Every once in a while, but not as much as I used to. I'm one of those lucky people who have accomplished 95 percent of what they wanted to do. I'm still working on the small percentage, but I accomplished a lot I wanted to do growing up so I don't have any complaints. I dream about them in the day time. When you dream about them at night it doesn't do you any good, but if you can dream about them in the day time you can make it happen."

"With my four kids and my wife when it's just the six of us doing something simple like making dinner, macaroni and cheese or watching a movie, playing video games."

"Running my business. I have 20 full time employees and I feel responsible for their families as much as mine. I want everything to go right with the business so those people are provided for like you're my own. So I guess I worry about the business where it might affect somebody else's lives."

"The biggest things we try to teach are consistency and no mental errors. The mistakes beginning race car drivers make are not going out and missing the corner. There are the smaller things. They get hurt because they didn't buckle up right or they didn't get on or off the race t rack right or get the hand signal…and that goes along with the highway question you asked earlier."

"The painful ones that cause you to sit out, like early in my career. When you made a bone-head move in a race car and get fired and have to sit out a month. Those mistakes really hurt. You learn from crashes sometimes. The ones that hurt the most are when you spent over your budget for one race and couldn't run the next race. I built an engine and put it together wrong and blew up and didn't get a race for a while. Those kind of mistakes hurt."

"There is a key ingredient they have to have. They are a lot of talented people that can do it, but there's one key ingredient you have to have and only one out of a hundred have it…and it's called determination. You can spot that. A lot of times you can see talented people. It's that way on any sport, any job. They are talented people, but they don't apply themselves. If you spot that the determination level is off or on, you can mark that person on one side of the field or the other. Then the other things come into play."

"Two cats and a gold fish. I like the gold fish the best. I really love dogs, but I don't have one because I believe dogs need to live on a farm. If I ever get a farm, the first week I'll have a dog."

"During racing time, I'll eat a lot of chicken and rice. The night before the race I like to eat pasta, spaghetti and race morning I'll eat peanut butter and jelly and bananas."

"Every body had a nick name driving sprint cars. My old sprint car name was 'cool hand'."

"All my family were race fans. I remember being four years old going to a race track. The first time I ever saw a race car I told my uncles and dad that I was going to drive race cars. From that moment forward I have never changed my mind."

"From a competitive stand point I'd probably change the tires a lot. From a sport stand point I'd probably change how the sport is represented or looked at. Some of the best racers that I've ever seen or raced against have never set foot in the garage area of Indianapolis or Daytona. There are a lot of great race car drivers around the country that never get the opportunity to move up. It's kind of like next years Academy Awards winner could be working at McDonalds right now. So people think because they are running a certain series they are better than a lot of other drivers. And that's not necessarily so. In so many ways people don't really realize how the sport really works."

"I'm hard working, a good family man, and a clean racer. I'm not afraid of extra effort and I treat people the way I want to be treated."

"I hope that everyone gets to spend time with their family, lots of it, before the race season starts. Hopefully this year's race season is the safest and most competitive one we've ever had."

A word in economics defines value as a part of substance. The word is intrinsic. The value is always a solid entity like gold or diamonds. Andy Hillenburg displays character, a racer of substance, and his value goes beyond the race track. Here we must choose a final word that best describes Hillenburg's personality. We agreed that he has an intrinsic style and keeping with that observation we decided that Andy Hillenburg is...

WORTHY