Rick Mears Goes on Record with pressdog

If you expect four-time Indy 500 winner Rick Mears to be aloof and majestic, speaking about himself in the third person and constantly attended to by a swarm of assistants, you'll be sadly disappointed.

Instead, the 57-year-old greets people with an unpretentious smile and "I'm Rick Mears."

The introduction is hardly required for 40- and 50-something race fans. Mears was an enormous name in the decade of the 80s, winning the Indy 500 in 1979, 1984, 1988 and 1991 and the CART points championship in '79, '81 and '82.

With Gordon Kirby's biography of Mears freshly out, the man some call the greatest pure oval racer ever went on record pressdog.com at the Milwaukee Mile.

Check it out as Mears talks about "losing less," his epic pass of Michael Andretti with 12 to go at the 1991 Indy 500, the idea of "knowing when and when not to," Mears' take on the Danica Stomp at the 2008 Indy 500 and more.

pressdog: Tell me about your book.

Mears: Basically it's my life history and biography I guess. Just about how it all got started and what’s taken place over the years throughout my career. And about my family, the Mears gang, how that all came about starting with mom and dad, obviously.

It’s great. It’s just family history and lot of good, old pictures. I told (the publishers) lots of pictures. Fewer words and more pictures. That’s fine with me.

pressdog: Why did you decided to do it now?

Mears: People have been after me for years, for 15 years, to do something and I just never was into it. I was just afraid I’d leave someone out. To me you're just always going to leave somebody out. There were so many people along the way who helped me get where I am and I had the support of so many people, you know you are going to leave someone out or hurt someone’s feelings or make somebody mad or whatever and I said, ah, I just don’t need that.

Finally, here a few years ago, (Gordon) Kirby caught me at weak moment and I said what the heck? Why not? Let’s do something. Not so much for me but also for the Mears family, the Mears gang. It’s about all of us, not just me.

It’s been fun. And Gordon and the publisher did a great job putting it together. It’s very nicely done and includes a lot of good pictures, old pictures and fun stuff.

pressdog: When you were racing, what was your biggest motivation?

Mears: The fun part for me was competing. That was why I did it, was to compete. To try to win races. Try to beat the others. And the other fun part was to lay down a lap that would stand for a long time or to get through a corner on the absolute limit and try not to leave anything on the table. This business is all about improve, improve, improve. Try to improve every corner and go faster every lap.

Now, obviously, in a race you aren’t going faster every lap, but you are trying to improve every lap. So you’re improving comes is in losing less than the others. It’s figuring out how to lose less. Maybe your car's tires are going off or the track conditions are changing, then it’s a matter of adjusting my pattern and where I am placing my car so I lose less than the other guys.

That, to me, was the tricky part. That was the driver part. There are a lot of guys who know how to drive a car on a race track and go fast. So how do you separate yourself from them? You have to figure other ways of doing other things better than they are. And if they can all go as fast as you can, then the next thing you have to work on is to lose less or keep that average up.

Just driving a race car, a lot of people can do that. It’s all the other stuff. Figuring out a setup that loses less, working with the engineers and your team giving better feedback and understanding the car more yourself to make changes quicker to get from A to B.

If everybody has an hour of practice and everybody makes 10 changes, if I can help my engineer make the right choices and make 8 of the 10 changes a gain, where someone else doesn’t work with his engineer and leaves all the changes to him, maybe he makes five or six of the 10 changes a gain. Then I’m ahead of them.

All that that other stuff to me is what determines a driver and distinguishes the difference between drivers.

pressdog: Are today’s drivers different? More impatient?

Mears: A little bit, just because that’s the nature of life today. Everything is in a hurry. Everything has to be now. Immediate gratification. And there are sponsor pressures. Costs. Some of the the drivers are generating the money themselves and the sponsors saying ‘ok, I’ll help you but his is all I have’ and it’s only enough for three races.

So now I have to make it happen in three races rather than a year or a season. That puts pressure on them to have to perform NOW, so they make mistakes more easily and more of them. That’s just the nature of life today. But I think, really, once a younger driver gets established and creates his place and earns his stripes so to speak, they can get set up with a team that’s long term then they more or less settle in, back to more like we did. They can say “Now I just have to do what works best." The basics of racing, I don’t think, have changed.

pressdog: Roger Penske said of you, “there were none better on ovals.” What made you so great on ovals particularly?

Mears: When I was racing, I never felt that I was doing anything different than anyone else. Looking back on it now, I think all the stuff I was just talking about. The big difference on a high-speed oval versus a road course is there’s no room for error. You can’t make mistakes, so to run on the limit without making a mistake takes consistency and takes smoothness. The smooth part I came by naturally.

Driving on a speedway actually suited my natural style of driving more than driving on a road or street course. Those I had to work at a little bit more and learn it a little bit more. Street courses are more of stab and steer and hustle kind of thing. I was more of a natural smooth precise driver and that works well on ovals.

Obviously being with the right team helped a lot as well. But I think the small stuff like learning to work with engineers. Desert racing caught me patience years ago. It taught me to find the pace that’s fast enough to win but slow enough to finish. That’s the hard part. It’s easy to go faster but you may not get to the end. Having that mentality of "I know I’ve got to reach the checkered flag or I can’t do anything else" is important.

One of the big things that helped me is knowing when and when not to. And that’s what I try to teach these kids today. There’s time to do things and times not to do them. Why do you want to roll the dice or press the issue in turn 2 of lap 1? That doesn’t make any sense.

Whoever you are rolling the dice with may not even be there 10 laps from the end. He may have had a problem. May not even have to do battle with them. Why risk the whole race on a high-risk move for no reason when it's not necessary? I’ve always understood that from day one and I think that’s one of the key things that really helped me.

pressdog: Is that a tough lesson for young drivers today?

Mears: A little bit. For some of them. But it was tough for some of them to learn even back when I raced. Drivers are all different. The pressures I was talking about earlier tend to work against (being patient) a little bit more today then when I drove but still, as far as drivers figuring it out and understanding when to and when not to, some drivers didn’t get it back then either.

These kids today, some of them go very fast on these tracks and you sit them down and say ‘Do you want to set fast laps?” And they’ll say, “Well, yeah, yeah.” So you say it’s not brain surgery, you gotta finish if you want to win the race. And they’ll say, “Well, yeah, yeah.” And then they say “I just wanna win so bad. I‘ll do anything to win, anything to win.” If that’s the case, then you’re lying to me. If you’ll do anything to win, you’ll slow down. Well, anything but that, I guess.

Some struggle more than others. Some get it right away. This is a business about going fast. That’s what we feel we’re supposed to do. It’s a question of figuring out when to go fast, where to go fast, and when not to.

pressdog: When you go back to the Indy 500 what do you miss most?

Mears: The competition. The good cool crisp morning when the conditions are right and you know you just want to put it on the right rear and lay a lap down. That’s the kind of stuff I miss the most. Of the four (Indy 500) wins, the fourth one (1991) was the best because Michael (Andretti) and I had a shootout at the end.

You always gear for that but of those four wins, it only boiled down for a shootout one time. That makes it a little more gratifying because you feel like you’ve earned it a little more. It came down to a good, hard, head-to-head battle. And that was a perfect example of when to and when not to. I use that example with kids every day.

When I passed Michael on the outside with 12 laps to go, that was the fastest I’d been into that corner all day. So it was unknown territory. Had the same scenario presented itself 12, 15, 20 laps into the race, I wouldn’t have thought twice about doing it. The person you were battling in that instance may not be around later in the race. He may have had problems.

You’re rolling the dice all day just to get to the end of the race, why raise your odds against not making it at that point? Keep the odds down as much as you can. Now 12 laps from the end, then we gotta go. Its show time. We’re here to win the race.

View the pass below courtesy of YouTube:

pressdog: Do you remember that pass?

Mears: Oh absolutely. I can tell you every inch of it.

pressdog: Did you consciously decide "here we go?"

Mears: Yeah. Oh yeah. It was now or never. It was one those you run in and there was the opportunity and the timing was right and the draft and everything was right. He stayed in the middle, so the only chance I had was to the outside. So I stayed with him, dead center, until the last possible second so as to not let him know which way I was going any earlier than I had to and then jumped outside.

To his credit, he could have moved up a little more but he didn’t. I also knew he had a little understeer in his car so he had to go to the apron to get it to turn. So I knew when I got out there I’d be able to follow him down, which is what happened, to help hold the front end of my car.

It was one of those where you say OK, we’re rolling the dice, going into unknown territory. Suck it up and be ready.

You didn’t know if it was going to hold or not. You gotta get down in there, and you know you’re not going to lift. Follow him down there and stay as tight to him as you can and follow him down as much as you can to  leave yourself with enough room on the exit as you can and hope it stays with you long enough, around the corner so you’ll come off with enough car to make the pass.

You don’t know until you go through each one of those stages if it’s going to be all right. If you’re going to come out the other side. When you get past that final point it’s like Yeah, you know it’s going to clear.

pressdog: Did you have a reaction in the car when you made that pass? Did you yell or anything?

Mears: It was one of those YEAH deals. But kind of subconsciously because that’s not the time to lose focus, when you have 12 laps to go. I think it was YES because I give one of those YES-es whenever I pass anyone because that’s the fun part. That’s what it’s all about.

But the very next split second thought was the job at hand. What was I going to do to distance him in two so he can’t pick up my draft going into three?

I was a little upset when Michael passed me on the restart. I knew he was going by and I got blocked a little in traffic and lost momentum. We weren’t even up to speed yet. We’re going only about 180 mph and at that speed the corner is very wide and you can go about anywhere.

So I just went to the bottom and said take the high side and let him go around me. When he went around me he chopped me across the short shoot into two. Which made me mad but I also liked it because I knew he was screwing himself because when he entered turn two that low he wasn’t going to get off two as fast. Which could help me reach him sooner.

First it pissed me off and then I said, 'Good, you screwed yourself' by for some reason wanting to cut me off. And he didn’t need to do it. That just allowed me to catch up sooner.

When I got back by him when I saw I was going to make it was YES. The next thought was I remember you cut me off and I wanted to give it back to him. I wanted to let him know I didn’t like it but I didn’t want to screw myself. So when we got to the short chute I went like that (jerks the steering wheel hard to the left for a second and then back to center) just to let him know didn’t like what he had done and then I jumped right back out. I wanted to get into two without lifting.

pressdog: What role did emotion play in your driving?

Mears: I was not very emotional behind the wheel. It was the job at hand and it was what I love doing. It was fun and to me the focus was all about how can we get the best possible finish out of it. What’s the next best thing we can do?  So if we had a fifth place car, how can I work on fourth? I tried not to let emotions get into it because I felt it was wasted effort. I felt if I let the emotions get in there it would detract from what I needed to be doing.

I hear guys when someone cuts them off they'll be yelling on the radio about it for three laps. I think how can you be getting the most out of your car if you are yelling on the radio? I can’t talk and drive at the same time. If I’m yelling on the radio, I know I’m losing time. If they cut me off in one, I wanted to be over it by two. I wanted to be focused on the next corner and be focused on getting the most out of my car.

pressdog: Drivers have told me the focus required to run on ovals is so much greater than running on road courses. Do you agree?

Mears: It’s a different mindset. For me, road courses are more physically demanding. You are physically exhausted at the end of the race. Whereas speedways are mentally demanding and you are mentally exhausted at the end of the day. You may not be physically exhausted but you are mentally just wiped out.

There’s no room for error (on big ovals) unless you slow down. You can slow down and relax a little but you aren’t going to win a thing. There’s no room for error so if you make a mistake it’s going to be a big one. And you know that. So if you’ve got to be on top of it mentally from start to finish. It's much more mentally demanding

pressdog: Is there a young driver that reminds you of you?

Mears: The closest -- and I had people tell me this before we worked together -- and that was Sam Hornish. And then once he came to the team and I got to work with him, I stared seeing we were a lot alike in a lot of ways. Not just on the track but off the track as well. He’s kind of quiet like I’ve always been. A little bit of an introvert rather than an extrovert, we have the same sort of competitiveness in whatever it is we do it. I’d say he’s about the closest I’ve worked with.

pressdog: What did you think of Danica’s walking down pit lane toward Ryan Briscoe in the Indy 500? Did things like that go on in your day?

Mears: Not really, no. That’s media stuff. I don’t know if it’s trying to build your brand or what but it doesn’t accomplish a thing and I don’t agree with it. It looked silly.

Also back then (in Mears' day) it drew more boos than cheers. Today it seems to draw more cheers than boos. Back then I think it was the opposite. I agree with the reaction back then rather than the reaction today. 

Besides that -- I shouldn't say this -- but she’s a woman. She can’t be going getting into a man’s face it puts a man in a situation that he shouldn’t be put in. I don’t agree with it. She needs to let her racing do the talking for her. And she does a good job of that on the race track, in my opinion.

pressdog: Was there a specific competitor you most enjoyed battling? A rival?

Mears: It was so different all the time. Over the years and different race tracks different guys were strong a different times. The main one I wanted to compete with was whoever was strongest that day because that’s the one I knew I had to be better than to win the race.

If I had to chose the toughest on average over the length of my career, it would be Mario (Andretti) because he was there the longest. He was there running strong when I started still running strong when I retired. If he was running on a given day you never wanted to count him out.

Al Unser Sr. was the same way. If he was running and on the same lap as you in the end, you probably would have to battle with him. There were several guys like that. I always enjoyed running with people like Bobby Rahal who was very good and very smooth and very clean and you could run real close to him. Guys like that you could count on them and some guys you didn’t want to be within a car-width of. That’s part of being a driver. Knowing the players.

Comments

[Mike Rice]

Great, great stuff, Bill. Rick was one of my heroes when I was working in the series. He was always so cool, so relaxed with anyone. There was never any pretense with him. I had the opportunity to work with his brother Roger in a Super Vee, and Rick was at a test with us. Years later, at a test at Firebird with our (CART) Indy car, he was testing at the same time. Afterwards, he came over and sat and talked with us about anything, everything...just one of the guys...for close to an hour, as I recall. So many get very "caught-up" in themselves when they reach that level of success, but it never touched him that way, so far as I could see. I remember the first year in Australia for the CART race. We (mechanics) went to go watch or try bungee jumping. I was a "watcher"...thought it was nuts...then looked to my left and there was Rick, watching. I asked him if he'd do it. "Nope". "Me neither", I replied. I asked him if Roger had a clause in the contract forbidding something like that. "No, I'm just not going to do something that crazy." It was a moment in time that still stands out in my memory.

Thanks for reacquainting me with just what a quality guy Rick Mears is.

[pressdog]

He's huge. It was surreal interviewing him. He was super gracious and even insisted on fetching me a bottle of water. I almost said "yeah, but, you're RICK MEARS."

[demondsanders]

Great job, man. You interviewed Rick freaking Mears. It doesn't get any bigger than that.

But seriously, I tried to go buy the new Mears book on Father's Day and no one has it in yet.

[pressdog]

Mears did a book signing at Milwaukee so I thought it was out long ago. But I popped into my local Barnes and Noble yesterday and they said it came out 6/15-ish and there may be some issue with the publisher because it's out of stock at the moment. BN woman thought maybe a week or so it would be in stores. You can order it at bn.com or amazon.com and they'll ship when it comes in.

[Shellhead]

Mears again proves he's one of the greats! Thanks for the interview Dog!!

[Chuck]

My first exposure to Rick Mears was many years ago at an off-road track near Sacramento. I was amazed with his speed and smoothness on the track and so I wondered over to the Mear's Gang pit when the race was over. I was even more surprised to witness how humble and friendly he was with anyone who approached him and how willing he was to share his time or even information on his race setup. He is a genuine class act and in my opinion the best ever in the business.