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BY
MIKE HEMBREE - ASSOCIATE EDITOR
SCENE - JUNE 4, 2007
Gillette's Young Guns teach the stars a
few tricks as pop culture meets NASCAR in
a new reality TV series
It's the sort of scene that only a few
years ago wouldn't have been imaginable
in the NASCAR world: Flyin' Ryan Newman
roaring around Lowe's Motor Speedway with
Captain Kirk in the passenger seat of a
race car.
Along pit road, former Pittsburgh Steelers
coach Bill Cowher is discussing turn approach
angles with Jimmie Johnson. Kurt Busch is
ex-plaining to Serena Williams that the
speed really isn't all that bad. Jewel,
the singer, and her boyfriend, Ty Murray,
world-famous cowboy, talk animatedly about
how she slammed her race car into the fourth-turn
wall and lived to tell about it.
Welcome to the latest intersection of
NASCAR and pop culture - the Fast Cars and
Superstars Gillette Young Guns Celebrity
Race.
Gillette, which has sponsored a "Young
Guns" advertising program in NASCAR
for several seasons, jumped into television
in a bigger way by organizing the made-for-television,
multi-episode "reality" series
scheduled to be broadcast by ABC June 7-24.
The event, taped over three days and nights
in March at Lowe's Motor Speedway, paired
the Young Guns drivers - Newman, Busch,
Johnson, Kasey Kahne, Carl Edwards and Jamie
McMurray - with 12 celebrities from the
worlds of sports, Hollywood and music.
Thus the track hosted a zany mix of speed
and VIPs, resulting in volleyball star Gabby
Reese spinning a car at 140 miles per hour,
professional wrestler John Cena talking
about body-slamming not being out of the
range of possibility in racing, nervous
tennis superstar Williams going home early
and every celebrity being decked out in
bright-blue Gillette firesuits that occasionally
were ill-fitting.
It was NASCAR turning another corner in
the never-ending rush toward the mainstream.
"Events like this help out,"
Johnson said. "Perception is everything.
There are a lot of stars that attend football
games. I think our sport is slowly gaining
speed in that respect. I'm not sure this
talks to the status of the sport, but I
think it sort of validates it. They're going
to tell their friends how much fun it was,
and it will continue to grow."
The experience did modify some thinking
about NASCAR. Taping began with the drivers
giving the celebrities at-speed tours of
the track in Jeff Gordon Driving School
race cars with passenger seats installed.
Former NBA player and sports television
commentator John Salley emerged from his
ride with Carl Edwards startled by the speed
and the rapid approach of the first-turn
wall.
"I know NASCAR is trying to do a lot
more with diversity, but I'm going to go
out and tell my people to stay away from
this," joked Salley, who is black.
He called Edwards "the devil"
after their three-lap run.
"John Salley kind of flipped out a
little bit," Edwards said. "I
don't think he was prepared, but we had
fun. We joke around about Salley, but to
see somebody get that excited, to change
the way they see racing, that is pretty
cool."
Cowher, recently departed from the Steelers
but expected to return to coaching eventually,
said he was surprised by the speed.
"The focus and concentration of these
guys is amazing," he said. "You
don't realize the speeds and G-forces they're
working with until you experience it. And
to think that they're 3 or 4 inches from
the car in front of them for four straight
hours - I have an unbelievably greater appreciation
for what they do because it is life and
death. It's not like you hit a bad shot
or you throw a bad pass. These guys make
one bad turn, and it could be tough."
After riding with the drivers, the celebrities
turned practice laps in Gordon school cars
before moving into the competition part
of the program. They were timed as they
drove several laps around the speedway as
a NASCAR driver served as a "pace"
driver to give them a speed monitor. The
session included a pit stop and tire change.
Six celebrities qualified for the final
round.
Reese spun out during her qualifying session,
and Williams, former Wimble-don champion
and current Australian Open champion, didn't
make hers. She was so shaken by her ride-along
experience with Busch that she decided to
drop out of the competition. It was a little
tougher than a confrontation at the net.
"I thought it was going to be easy,
like smooth and cool, and it was none of
the above," Williams said. "It
was stressful. It was scary. It raised by
heart rate and blood pressure. I might have
lost two days of my life.
"I feel like I just spent all night
in a bar and am just walking into my room.
That was so much speed, and we were so close
to those walls. I'm happy to be back. I've
been to NASCAR races. It's a great sport,
but I never knew how awesome it was until
I went out there. It took my breath away."
Busch said Williams had her head down and
her eyes closed throughout the run.
"She was struggling a little,"
he said. "I told her she needed her
eyes open if she wanted to drive."
Shatner, 76, whose starring appearance
as Capt. James T. Kirk in the original "Star
Trek" television series launched an
unlikely career that has spread into virtually
all elements of the entertainment world,
was sweating heavily after his first run
but said his experience as an actor could
be beneficial. "I can pretend I'm going
fast," he said. He failed to qualify,
prompting suggestions that he traveled at
warped speed, not warp speed.
Jewel, Elway and Cena were perhaps the
most serious students in the celebrity group.
"Elway was absorbing it all,"
Busch said. "You could see he was into
it. I would think an athlete would have
an easier time than an actor because they
have had to absorb a lot of changes in their
sports."
Jewel, who grew up on a backcountry farm
in Alaska and now lives on a ranch with
Murray in Stephenville, Texas, came into
the competition with a plan to do more than
simply participate.
"I'm competitive, so I want to do
it well," she said. "I haven't
driven a stick shift in a long time. That
will be hilarious, but if I'm comfortable
I'll push it. I grew up on a ranch in remote
Alaska with no electricity, no plumbing,
no central heating and no grocery stores.
We killed everything we ate, so they might
underestimate my toughness."
Indeed. She pushed it so hard in her solo
run that she slamm-ed into the fourth-turn
wall, pancaking the right side of her car.
She kept control, however, and afterward
said the incident didn't shake her.
"It wasn't scary, actually,"
she said. "I wasn't hitting the wall
head-on. I just scraped it. I was really
pushing it to go as fast as I could. The
tires just weren't warmed up, and I slid
up. I should have let off the gas, but I
just don't have enough experience."
Jewel said she and Murray signed up for
the celebrity event without a lot of investigation.
"We were at a Valentine's party,"
she said, "and we got an e-mail asking
if we wanted to do a NASCAR thing. We were
a little intoxicated, and we said yes without
thinking."
Al Merrin, vice chairman for BBDO, the
advertising agency that developed the series,
said the logistics of putting it together
were challenging.
"We could write a book about the challenges
and the obstacles," he said. "There
were a lot of moving pieces, but we got
all the approvals."
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