By Jared Turner – SceneDaily Staff Writer  -

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Billy Ballew is the quintessential NCWTS Owner 

Billy Ballew’s Billy Ballew Motorsports NASCAR Camping World Truck Series team has 17 victories in its history.

In a series featuring burly pickup trucks and hard-nosed drivers unafraid to push the limits, you might say that Billy Ballew is the quintessential NASCAR Camping World Truck Series team owner.
 
Low on sponsorship dollars but high on passion for the sport and his teams, Ballew has been forced to dig deep into his pockets on more than one occasion over the years to keep his Billy Ballew Motorsports organization afloat.
 
In that way, he isn’t different from many of his fellow team owners in NASCAR’s No. 3 division. That which sets Ballew apart is how much his teams have managed to accomplish with relatively little since entering the Truck ranks on a part-time basis in 1996.
 
In contrast to the roughly 75-employee Kevin Harvick Inc. organization of defending series champion Ron Hornaday, for example, Billy Ballew Motorsports employs fewer than 20 people. And those people do many jobs.
 
Take Richie Wauters, crew chief on BMM’s No. 51 truck. Wauters is also the organization’s general manager and competition director.
 
It’s not surprising then that the 50-year-old Ballew very casually says, “We don’t really go a lot by titles.”
 
“It’s everybody, they give 120 percent, not 100, not 110,” Ballew says. “Everybody on this race team works and does whatever it takes to be successful, and we’re also very prideful and love running up front. And if you look at our trucks, the way that they’re prepared, … our stuff is just as nice as any Cup car that you’re going to go look at in the shop. We spend our money not on the lavish things [but] on the race vehicles that we have to spend.”
 
Ballew spends most of his time during the season away from the team’s Mooresville, N.C., shop and at home in Blairsville, Ga., with his 12-year-old son.
 
“The guys are so good at what they do, I don’t have to be there,” he says. “I have one deal, and that’s trying for us to keep the money for us to race with. That’s my job. I don’t have to worry about the race car. I don’t have to worry about it being prepared. I don’t have to worry about them showing up because they all show up.”
 
A Georgia native who made his living owning and operating a handful of car dealerships in his home state for some 25 years, Ballew made his first foray into racing by sponsoring a dirt-track car at Georgia’s Dixie Speedway.
 
In 1994, he bought two Cup series cars that were retooled as entries for the Automobile Racing Club of America Series and finished third at Atlanta Motor Speedway in his first start with driver Mark Gibson.
 
“I was line, hook and sinker then,” Ballew says. “I thought that was really, really cool.”
 
Billy Ballew Motorsports made its Truck debut at Bristol Motor Speedway in 1996 with Gibson as the driver, but it wasn’t until 2004, with driver Shane Hmiel, that the organization secured the funding to run a full season. Even then, not all of the races were covered.
 
Hmiel gave the organization its first win at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Sept. 25, 2004, and finished 13th in the standings on the heels of 10 top-10s.
 
“We got through that whole year basically without any solid foundation,” Ballew says. “I don’t really know how we made it, to be honest, but we did make it and we run better than we’d ever run.”
 
The next year, a 20-year-old Kyle Busch become the primary driver of the organization’s lone entry after being invited by Wauters to take part in a test at Lowe’s Motor Speedway.
 
Busch won in his first two appearances in the truck and snared another victory late in the year to make it three wins in 11 starts.
 
“The rest of it has just kind of evolved,” Ballew says.
 
Sixteen of Ballew’s 17 wins as an owner have come with Busch as the two have teamed up for a part-time schedule in each of the last five seasons. Other drivers to make multiple starts for Ballew over that stretch include Denny Hamlin, Kenny Wallace and Aric Almirola.
 
Now, however, Busch, who didn’t accept payment from Ballew for his services, is leaving to compete for his own Kyle Busch Motorsports team that he’s bringing to the series in 2010.
 
“I love Billy do death, and he has done a great deal for the Camping World Truck Series, and we’ve been trying to keep him alive and in business because he’s done a lot to just let me drive his truck,” Busch says. “I didn’t take any money for it or anything like that, and we looked at it, and I earned him some pretty good keep, and I’m proud of that. To say that I’ve actually not taken a dime from the whole program was cool to me.”
 
Miccosukee Resorts and Gaming, which has sponsored Busch the last two seasons, is following the 24-year-old to his new KBM entry.
 
So Ballew needs sponsorship to continue fielding two teams, but it’s not as if this predicament is anything new to him.
 
Ballew says there have been plenty of times he has borrowed money or taken his own money to keep his team on the track.
 
“If it was for financial gains I would have stayed in the car business and would have been a lot more financially [well] off, but you only live once,” he says. “ … And I’ve only got my 12-year-old son that’s the most important thing in the world to me. So it’s not like that I’m tied down from a marriage standpoint or anything like that. He’s number one, and racing’s second. And what little bit of personal life you have after that point, it’s sad, but it comes third. It takes third place, so I’m not getting any younger.

“I’m not really worried about retirement. I’m not worried about getting old; I’m already old.”
 
Ballew believes that bright days are still ahead for his organization, which plans to field at least one truck in 2010 with Almirola. Ballew fell 73 points shy of an owners title in 2009 with his No. 51 truck that was shared by Busch, Almirola and others.

He’s used to getting more out of less as an owner.
 
“As long as it’s fun and my guys are getting taken care of and we’re having fun doing it, I’d do it till the day that I drop,” he says.