By Bruce Ellis
Photography: Bill Taylor, Jack Kromer, Tim Aylwin &
Kevin McLoughlin
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| Feiser's
Funeral Home is located on Route 30, just a few blocks west
of the square in New Oxford, Pennsylvania. On a rainy night
in late September, it wasn't hard to find. |
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| The line of
mourners stretched for several blocks. The average wait was
four hours. But they waited. In the rain. |
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| They had
come to pay their respects to Kevin Gobrecht, a local hero,
who died at age 30 in a sprint car crash at I-80 Speedway
near Greenwood, Nebraska. |
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| They came
from near and far, some in suits and ties, some in sprint
car T-shirts. And they waited. In the rain. |
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| They could
have chosen to attend the funeral a night later. It would be
held in a different location to accommodate the anticipated
crowd. The weather was to be perfect, and the Outlaws would
be there. On this night, there were a few local racers, a
promoter or two, and some media types, but mostly just fans
who came to see the G-Man one more time. |
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| And they
continued to wait. In the rain. |
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| It was just
past midnight when the last of them paid their final
respects. They didn't give up. They did what they set out to
do. Kevin would have been proud of them. He too believed in
doing what he set out to do. |
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| When he was
6 years old, Kevin and his brother, Brian, older by a year
and a half, got on their bicycles and started out for the
neighboring village of East Berlin to go fishing. It was
about a 6-mile trip, a long way for two little kids on
bicycles. They weren't even halfway to East Berlin when one
of the pedals on Kevin's bicycle came off. Brian wanted to
go back. He was sure his little brother couldn't make it.
But Kevin wouldn't hear of it. He had intended to go fishing
that day, and that's what he did. He made it all the way to
East Berlin and back with one pedal. |
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| Twenty-one
years later, he had just run the Sharon Nationals, and his
plan was to go on to Attica in Central Ohio the next day.
All of their help had to return to Pennsylvania. It was just
Kevin and Brian again. Their truck cracked a piston, and
Brian, using good judgment, wanted to go home. Kevin
reasoned that since they had intended to go to the All Star
race at Attica, they should give it a try, cracked piston
and all. "We'll make it," he said. "Let's
go." |
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| So they
went. They had used tires, a limited inventory of spare
parts, and no help. Kevin mounted tires and changed bars
while other drivers watched their crews do the work. But at
the end of the night, he had his first All Star win. |
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| That
determination was evident throughout his racing career,
which began in go-karts at age 8. He didn't do the things
most kids do because he was either racing or working on his
kart. Even in his high school years, he would work on the
kart after school and, when it got late, take an engine into
his house and work on it while he was watching television. |
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| His heroes
included local sprint car stars Bobby Allen and Steve Smith.
He liked them because they were hard-core racers who built
their own cars and did their own work. And they would find a
way to race even when the money had seemingly run out. He
especially liked Smith, who used to sneak his own son Stevie
and his little friend Kevin into the pits at Williams Grove
and Lincoln when they were much too young to be there. As
his go-kart career progressed to paved road courses, he
gained respect for Formula 1 racers. He knew how hard it was
to get a go-kart around a road course and could only imagine
how difficult it must be to do those hairpin turns in a
powerful F-1 car. |
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| His hero was
Ayrton Senna, who, ironically, would be the victim of fatal
injuries suffered when debris went into the cockpit of his
race car during a crash. |
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| While Kevin
was racing karts, he left high school before his senior year
to attend Millersville University on an entry program. He
would graduate from Millersville with a bachelor's degree in
business and finance. |
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| During his
college years, he was racing and working in the family
business, Golf Cart Services. The business reconditions,
sells, and services golf carts in a 13-county area. Kevin
was a mechanic and later served as the parts manager. Golf
Cart Services is located across the street from the race
shop, which is next to the small yellow house that Kevin and
Brian shared. "This little corner on Route 30 is what
we do," Kevin would tell Open Wheel in 1996. "We
work for Dad, then at night, we go back and work on race
cars. We've done it for so long. This is the way racing has
always been for us." |
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| His racing
advanced from go-karts to micro-sprints when his older
brother Scott vacated the seat in his grandfather's micro. |
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| In his
second year in micros at age 21, Kevin won two features en
route to the track championship at Trailway Speedway. A year
later, he split with his grandfather and sat out for four
months while he put his own micro-sprint team together. |
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| "When
he went on his own, he took everything personally,"
recalls Brian Gobrecht, "and that's when he really
started to win." |
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| The new
owner/driver won four of the ten micro races he entered in
1991. He came back in 1992 to win 36 features spread over
nine different tracks along with championships at Trailway
and Hill Valley. He backed that up with 29 victories in
1993. |
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| By 1994, he
had become so dominant that he expected to win every night,
and when he lost, the agony of defeat far outweighed the
thrill of victory. The only driver who seemed capable of
beating him was his brother, Brian, and they often raced at
different tracks on the same nights so both of them could
win. |
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| Despite
another 30 victories for Kevin, 1994 would be his last year
in micros. It was clear that the fun was gone for him in
that form of the sport. |
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| "One
night, we ran a micro race, and I ran third and Kevin was
fourth," Brian began. "The next day, we were
moping around like we had just blown up both our
motors." |
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| Brian told
him they were done with micros. |
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| "I'll
sell what I gotta sell, and we're gonna get a sprint
car," Brian said. "If you run third and fourth and
you're unhappy, it's time to move on. Because we'd won so
many races, the winning wasn't as spectacular, but the
losing was even worse. |
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| "I told
Kevin he was gonna drive the sprint car. He was younger. He
had more intensity, and he handled pressure better. He knew
cars better than I did. He was in micros longer than I was.
I always felt that if one of us had a chance to go far in
racing, it was gonna be Kevin." |
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| Brian's
little brother made his sprint car debut at Lincoln in 1995,
and it didn't take him long to get fast. |
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| Despite some
crashes, he was showing steady improvement and, had it not
been for a flat tire, would have won a feature at Lincoln in
early July. Although Kevin lost a race that night, he did
gain a mechanic. Brian had been racing a micro the night
Kevin nearly won at Lincoln. |
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| "I
thought, Something's happening here. Something good is
happening here," Brian said. "We always wanted to
be involved in sprint cars. Now we've got a sprint car. I'm
helping to pay the bills on it, and I'm not enjoying it. I
felt like I was missing something really special, and just
like that, I was done. I quit racin' micros and started
going to the races with Kevin." |
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| Three weeks
later, the G-Man got his first win at Lincoln and held off
Pennsylvania superstar Fred Rahmer in the process. He also
qualified for all six World of Outlaws races he entered in
1995 and impressed enough voters to be named the National
Sprint Car Poll's Rookie of the Year. |
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| Kevin got
off to a good start in 1996 with a victory in the
prestigious Williams Grove opener. Six weeks later, he would
win another one, and people were starting to notice. |
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| Still in the
family car, which was financed by the Gobrecht brothers and
their father Bob, Kevin was spectacular riding the wall at
Eldora the night before the Big One in August. His
performance was reminiscent of one of Ohio's favorite sons,
Jac Haudenschild. |
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| Haud wasn't
spectacular on this weekend: "The Wild Child" was
hurting, still feeling the effects of a crash at New York's
Lebanon Valley Speedway. There was no way he could race the
Big One. He would be sidelined for the next several weeks. |
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| Haudenschild
was in the Pennzoil machine at the time, and car-owner Jack
Elden needed a substitute driver to keep his sponsor's
colors on the circuit. The team's crew chief was Kirk
Dewease, whose brother, Lance, is a star on the Pennsylvania
circuit. Kirk knew about Kevin and recommended him to the
car-owner. Elden agreed to meet the young Pennsylvanian. |
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| "I was
told he was a hard charger, but after I met him, I could see
that Kevin was also a true gentleman," Elden said.
"He was a very straightforward, honest person, and I
liked that." |
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| So there was
the G-Man in his second season of sprint car racing, subbing
for one of the most exciting drivers on the WoO tour. He was
in a car carrying corporate sponsorship, and working for one
of the game's top owners. He debuted in the Big One, then
went on to the Knoxville Nationals. Kevin had come a long,
long way in a very short time. |
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| Haudenschild
was back in a few weeks, and Kevin returned to Pennsylvania,
but the G-Man left on good terms with his car-owner. |
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| "I was
very impressed with him," Elden said. "If Jac and
I had ever parted, I would have hired Kevin." |
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| Kevin closed
the '96 season with the aforementioned All Star win at
Attica but during the year had gained a close friend in Lee
Stauffer, who, along with his father, maintained the Apple
Chevrolet car on the Pennsylvania circuit. |
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| Since Kevin
and Lee were both eligible bachelors, they spent whatever
free time they could find trying to pick up girls, says
Stauffer. |
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| "We
were in the same situation when we were in school," he
began. "My dad and I worked in our shop seven days a
week. Kevin and his brothers did the same thing at their
shop. It wasn't that we didn't like girls when we were
younger. The opportunity just wasn't there. We wished it
would've been." |
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| Although he
was afraid it would affect their friendship, Stauffer
offered Kevin the seat in the Apple car for the '97 season.
Friendship notwithstanding, it was a sound business move,
from Lee's point-of-view. |
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| "It was
evident that he was gonna be a helluva race car
driver," Stauffer said. Kevin was following Fred Rahmer
and Keith Kauffman into one of the best rides in
Pennsylvania. For a local driver in his third season of
sprint car racing, all those things spelled pressure. |
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| They won two
races at the Grove and two at Lincoln, but the crashes far
outnumbered the victories. Late in the season, Lee Stauffer
was the one who had to end it. |
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| "Kevin
was frustrated. I was frustrated. My dad was
frustrated," Lee said. "I called him up and said,
'Kevin, it just didn't work out. I'm sorry.'" |
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| The firing
strained their relationship for a few weeks, but when Kevin
crashed his own car at Williams Grove, Lee was there to
offer parts and assistance, and their friendship was back on
track. |
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| Lee Stauffer
knew there would be more good rides in Kevin's future. |
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| "Because
of his passion. His will to win. Every lap he was gonna give
110 percent. That's why he wrecked so much," Stauffer
said. "You get tired of fixing cars after a while, but
you get tired of running eighth, too." He knew Kevin
would never be content running eighth. So did John Zemaitis,
who, in July 1998, offered a part-time job driving his Zemco
#1, since the car's primary driver, Billy Pauch, had
commitments to race a modified on Saturday nights. |
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| Kevin's
first victory in the Zemco car stopped Rahmer's 12-race
winning streak at Lincoln. His second win was against the
World of Outlaws at Williams Grove. He would get two more at
Lincoln before the season ended. |
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| He would
also meet a girl named Bobbi Myers, who worked at the French
Fry stand at Lincoln. After that, his nights on the town
with Lee Stauffer were numbered. The Zemco team would field
two cars for special races in 1999. Pauch would drive at
Williams Grove and Kevin at Lincoln and at any other time
that Billy couldn't be there. |
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| The G-Man
won a race at Volusia, then the next night flipped out the
ballpark in a frightening crash in which his car erupted in
flames, "I was upset with him (because of the crash) at
Volusia," said Lee, who watched his own driver, Greg
Hodnett, help Kevin climb out of the wreckage. "He was
such a calm person outside the race car. I don't know what
clicked off in his head when he strapped in. I told him he
needed to calm himself down." |
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| Kevin must
have heeded his friend's advice, because when he came back
to Pennsylvania, he was virtually unbeatable. As an example:
On March 27, he won at Lincoln in the afternoon and Port
Royal at night. The next afternoon, he won at Williams
Grove. He was driving with a confidence that made him seem
invincible. |
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| A couple of
days later, somebody said to Bob Gobrecht that he must be
very proud of his son after winning three races in less than
24 hours. |
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| "I was
even more proud of him when he showed up for work first
thing Monday morning," Bob replied. |
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| By
mid-April, the G-Man had eight victories and was the
winningest driver in sprint car racing. |
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| About that
time, he got a phone call from Dave Blaney. |
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| The former
World of Outlaws champion and current Busch Grand National
ace needed a driver for his sprint car, and he wanted the
G-Man. It was a full-time WoO deal, complete with a highly
successful crew chief in Kenny Woodruff and major
sponsorship from Amoco. Blaney had his pick of drivers. Why
Kevin Gobrecht? |
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| "He was
winning races consistently in Pennsylvania, and that's the
toughest weekly thing goin'," Blaney said. "Those
guys have an edge as far as learning how to race on a big
track. He was the obvious choice to us." |
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| Kevin flew
to Atlanta to meet with Blaney and the Amoco
representatives. Kathy Leech, motorsports manager for BP
Amoco, was at the meeting. "He impressed me as being
incredibly intelligent," she said. "Very confident
without being cocky. Very well-spoken. He just seemed that
he would represent us extremely well--and he did." |
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| The Amoco
deal seemed like a no-brainer. It was clearly one of the
best rides in the country. But, according to Brian Gobrecht,
Kevin thought long and hard before accepting. |
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| "He
knew Dale (Blaney) didn't go very well in that car. Suppose
it wasn't Dale. Suppose it was the car. Kevin thought he
might get in the deal and look like a jerk," Brian
said. |
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| There were
other reasons for his soul searching. |
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| "It
happened so fast," Brian continued. "At that time,
Kevin was still a golf-cart mechanic who raced part-time.
And he got along so well with that whole Zemco crew. He knew
how much fun he was having with them." |
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| Still, the
offer was too tempting to resist for a man two weeks shy of
his 30th birthday and only four years removed from
micro-sprints. "He made the decision because he was a
part-time driver who had a chance to be an Outlaw,"
Brian said. |
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| "This
was his shot, and if he wouldn't have taken it he would've
always looked back and said, 'What if...'" |
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| He joined
the Amoco team in Tulsa and ran fourth to match the car's
best finish at that point in the season. |
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| A few days
later, the G-Man experienced what corporate sponsorship is
all about. He found himself in a convention center in New
Orleans greeting 3,000 of Amoco's best customers. |
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| "For
three days, he sat and signed autographs and charmed
everyone," Kathy Leech remembered. "He found a way
to connect with every person he met." |
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| Things would
not be going quite as well on the racetrack, however. The
team struggled for two months. A DNQ at Lernerville was the
final indignity. Kevin came home to New Oxford in late July
to await the weekend WoO races at the Grove and
Hagerstown--and to contemplate his future. He knew the Zemco
car was his if he wanted it. |
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| Although he
knew J&J chassis were winning races all over the
country, Kevin felt more comfortable in Maxims. Just a
personal preference. So he called Blaney, who told him to
contact Woodruff. He got Woodruff's voice mail, left a
message, then went fishing with his brothers and some
friends. |
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| While he was
on the fishing boat, his cell phone rang. It was Woodruff.
If Kevin didn't mind missing a weekend, the veteran crew
chief would go home and put three new Maxims together.
Woodruff was willing to do whatever it took to keep his
driver happy. |
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| "Kev
and Kenny got along fine," Brian said. "They got
along like a driver and crew chief should get along. They
didn't always agree, but anybody who felt that those two
hated each other was just reading between the lines and
didn't know what was going on." |
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| That
afternoon, Kevin told Brian he felt more relaxed on that old
fishing boat than he'd been in two months. |
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| The G-Man
was comfortable again, and his confidence was back. In his
first weekend in the new car, he won the Big One at Eldora.
A week later, he ran third in the Knoxville Nationals. The
six-week Western swing was next, and Kevin recorded 9 top-10
finishes in 14 starts. |
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| "We had
some good nights and some rough nights," he said of the
Western tour. |
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| He was
leading at Gray's Harbor near Elma, Washington, when he made
contact with a lapped car. He was running away with a
qualifying night feature at Calistoga when a flat tire took
him out. He felt driver error cost him the Gold Cup at
Chico. |
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| "Racing
in California is not like racing anywhere else," he
said. "California was nice, but I'm glad to be going
back to some places that I've at least seen before. It'll be
nice racing on those big tracks, where we can really get
going." |
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| Within 10
days of the final Western stop at Rock Springs, Wyoming, he
expected to be home. Back with his family in New Oxford.
Back racing at the Grove in the National Open. |
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| "I'm
looking forward to getting back to Pennsylvania," he
said. "There is going to be a lot of pressure on me to
do well there, but I've got pressure to do well every night
out here." |
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| So, after
two months on the road, Kevin was coming home. There was
just one stop between Rock Springs, Wyoming, and
Pennsylvania. Just one weekend stop. At I-80 Speedway near
Greenwood, Nebraska. |
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| And that's
where it ended. |
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| "He was
living a dream," Brian said. "One week he was
jet-skiing in California, the next he was riding the sand
dunes with ATVs. He was doing all the stuff he never got to
do before. |
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| "The
more we think about it, the more this whole deal seems like
fate. This year was going so good for him on every level. He
was very much in love with Bobbi. The way he started the
year in Pennsylvania was just about perfect. Then he got the
Outlaw ride. Things didn't go real well with the Outlaws at
first, but maybe it was fate that he didn't qualify at
Lernerville. That made them take a few days off to put cars
together. It gave the family one last chance to bond with
him. It gave us our last chance to get together as a family
and do things. We didn't know it at the time, but he was
never coming home again. |
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| "Winning
the Big One. Running third at the Knoxville Nationals. It
was almost like the Lord was saying, 'Boy, you're leaving
this world soon, but we're gonna let you fulfill all your
dreams before you go.'" Rest in peace, G-Man. |
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| Used with permission from Doug Auld of
Openwheel Thank you for allowing me to publish this article. |
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