For Ward, racing is a real gas

The last time Shawn Ward was at Hickory Motor Speedway, he was with his buddy Eric Wilson, who was racing a Dash car.

Nowadays, the Bethlehem natives are rivals of sorts. Ward is gas man for the Matt Kenseth/Roush Fenway Racing Ford team, and Wilson is pit-crew chief for the Kevin Harvick/Richard Childress Racing team. Wilson’s team is second in Sprint Cup points, five behind leader Carl Edwards, and Ward’s is third, seven back.

Naturally, Ward is excited about the points chase, with five races left.

“This year is my best shot at winning a championship,” Ward said Tuesday.

Ward says he enjoys being a pit-crew guy, even though he’s done it since 1996, when he helped Tommy Houston’s Busch team as a tire carrier.

“It's still fun, and I still get excited at going over the wall, being a part of the pit crew. I get a charge at going over the wall. It’s funny, but I still get nervous. If I was not nervous, it would just become a job, not fun.”

Sometimes it brings rewards. The RFR No. 17 team recently won the NASCAR Mechanix Wear Most Valuable Pit Crew Award as it was voted the most valuable pit crew during the third quarter of the Cup season.

Until this year, the 6-3, 250-pound Ward had always been tire carrier. And he’s had to learn a new gassing system.

 “It used to be (easier),” Ward said. “Since they changed the re-fueling system, it’s tougher. I feel there’s more pressure (gassing) than carrying tires. They changed the equipment since they switched to ethanol, and it’s a single-point deal, and the equipment is bigger.

“And you don't have a catch-can guy. There’s more finesse to it now. There’s only one fuel guy, so it’s all up to you.”

Ward wanted to get into racing before he graduated from Alexander Central in 1996 and left N.C. State with a textile engineering degree. He says he got the latter degree to please family. He wanted to go racing.

“I used to go over there (Hickory Motor Speedway) when I was growing up, watching them race,” he said. “I was interested in it.”

Ward says a couple of racing friends “helped me get my foot in the door with Tommy Houston.”

“I was there six or eight months, and (Houston) retired at the end of season. Then I wound up with Jeff Krogh; him and his brother (Mark) ran Excel Motorsports out of Junior Johnson's old shop. It was a Busch, Chevrolet team.”

Ward was there for about 30 months, but Krogh got hurt in a crash at Milwaukee in late 1999, and the team shut down.

He switched to Dale Earnhardt Inc., first with the Ron Hornaday Busch team and later with the Michael Waltrip and Dale Earnhardt Jr. Cup teams. He was with the No. 15 team when Waltrip won the Daytona 500.

“(DEI) was a great place to work, but it went into a state of decline after he (Earnhardt) died,” Ward said. “He wasn't around to oversee things.”

Later, Ward worked for the Kasey Kahne/ Richard Petty Motorsports team. When Kahne left RPM, Ward went to Roush Fenway.

He says he misses carrying tires “a little bit.”

“Before I was gassing, I looked at it (being a gas man) as my ‘retirement job,’” he said. “Now, the value of the gas guy has increased. A lot of the fuelers this year are first-year fuelers. It takes bigger, taller guys to handle it. I'm one of the few (former) tire carriers gassing. It went from not an easy job, an easier job, to a skill position now.”

Of course, Ward is more than a gas man. He works Monday through Thursday as a mechanic on the No. 17 team, and he and his teammates find time for workouts and pit practice. Most weeks, he’s off on Friday and Saturday, then flies Sunday morning to wherever the team is racing.

He says he likes Kenseth, whom he compares to Matt’s former teammate, Mark Martin. The two men are different in size and age, but they’re similar in other ways.

“Both are real quiet, and they’re hard-nosed racers,” Ward said. “They’re always there, and it seems like they come from nowhere.”

Like Martin and Kenseth, Ward is “always there,” too.