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Racing back to Texas: Ovalo's Braun brings sweetie for visit
By Greg Jaklewicz
jaklewiczg@reporternews.com
Saturday, February 28, 2009

Reporter-News Photo by Ronald W. Erdrich Colin Braun, 20, laughs during a press conference Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2009 at Texas Motor Speedway. Braun is a NASCAR Truck Series driver from Ovalo.

The greatest sports figure in town history was back in Ovalo this weekend.

Don't laugh too hard. Ovalo's not big, but NASCAR truck series driver Colin Braun is big going on bigger.

At Wednesday's media day at Texas Motor Speedway, track owner Eddie Gossage touted Braun as this state's next big name in racing. With Corpus Christi's Labonte boys, Bobby (in the No. 96 car this season) and semiretired Terry, more in the background than the Sprint Cup foreground, Texas needs a new leader of the pack.

"There are more California drivers. There is something very wrong with that picture," Gossage said, probably only half joking.

Colin will be back at TMS in June for the WinStar World Casino 400 and in November for the Lone Star 350k. In two races at the speedway in 2008, his best finish was ninth in the Chevy Silverado 350k. He was 22nd in the summer Sam's Town 400.

With the Camping World Truck Series off this weekend, Colin took the opportunity to get back home. When he was finished smoozing the media on the ninth floor of The Speedway Club, which overlooks turns 1 and 2, he departed for West Texas with his girlfriend, Melissa Fields.

While he was being quoted and photographed by the media, Melissa talked about her Beau Braun.

They met on a blind date, she said. No way Colin knew Melissa, a North Carolinian, hated auto racing. He took her to the Melting Pot, a Charlotte eatery, where they talked for four hours and, apparently, hit it off.

Reporter-News Photo by Ronald W. Erdrich Colin Braun, a NASCAR truck series driver from Ovalo, right, stands still as a television reporter clips a microphone to the 20-year-old's shirt during media day at Texas Motor Speedway on Wednesday. In the cubicle next door, NASCAR Sprint Cup driver Ryan Newman gives his own television interview.

Enough for her to attend 10-12 races in 2008, she said. She watches from the pit box and listening to race chatter on the radio.

"I get nervous. I chew a lot of gum," she said.

She said she has noticed Colin's raised level of confidence this racing season.

"I feel like I've watched him grow up" as a driver, she said.

Give us a one-word description of this guy you like so much, Melissa.

"Goofy," she said, laughing. "We laugh and have fun."

How's his driving? Do you race to the store or to the movies?

"He drives slow. Always the speed limit," she said.

And what's the thing he likes to do just about as much as racing?

"Mow the grass. He has competitions with the neighbors," she said.

Don't let his youthful appearance fool you. At age 20, Colin already has done more that most people five times that age. He started racing at age 5 and has been in the driver's seat of just about everything on wheels -- go-carts, midgets, sports cars, trucks and stock cars. Lance Armstrong probably is glad bicycles don't have steering wheels.

Before he was 16, Colin was winning races and driving 180 mph on world-famous tracks and courses in Europe and the U.S., "but I couldn't drive to the quick store down the road," he said, grinning.

He quickly worked his way up, sweeping through Formula (winning at age 14, the youngest driver in U.S. history to do that), Grand Am and ARCA before getting his first NASCAR starts in 2007 for Roush Fenway. He finished second in the 2007 24 Hours of LeMans, which he still considers his career highlight.

"To drive in such a faraway place I'd heard about growing up, that was special," he said.

After driving in one truck race in 2007, Colin had a successful if not eye-popping full first year in 2008, finishing 13th overall while earning the top rookie award in the No. 6 Con-way Freight Ford F-150. His best finish was third in Kansas, and he had eight top-10s.

The veterans roughed him up a bit but he rode out his rookie year. He's even drawn a rough racing penalty.

"They certainly enjoyed teaching me," he said, with good humor. "It was a rough year for me but I was turning it around at the end."

After just two races this season, a top-10 finish at Daytona, where he earned the pole, and a 20th at Fontana, he said he has been given more respect on the track.

"This year, the guys are racing cleaner. I'm more accepted into the group," he said.

Those who loosely follow auto racing wonder why the Sprint Cup boys, such as Fontana truck race winner Kyle Busch, compete in Camping World and Nationwide races.

"I enjoy it. It challenges me," Colin said.

Colin is getting a bit big-time himself. At TMS, he was accompanied by Roush Fenway spokesperson Lori Halbeisen. Is it her job to make sure Colin wears a shirt with his sponsor's name (Con-way) and to mention his sponsor (Con-way) every other sentence? Con-way, right?

Colin said drivers are coached to say the right things (Con-way) but it's not difficult to appreciate your sponsor. No sponsor, no ride.

Halbeisen said Colin handles the media, sponsors and fans like he does the No. 6 truck in traffic -- smoothly.

"He came like that," she said. "His parents raised him right."

Colin said he has been racing so long already that being personable in public is not hard. He also credited his parents (Jeff and Diane Braun), who homeschooled him.

"I talked with adults more than I did kids my age," he said.

As for Melissa, she's now speaking the language of lug nuts. She can drop "loose," "tight" and "down force" into a sentence without hesitation. She knows RMP isn't that rock band that sang "Losing My Religion," and that a short track is way different from a short stack.

Although she knows Colin's parents well, this was to be her first trip to West Texas. She was looking forward to some down-home cooking, skeet shooting and racing in four-wheelers.

Maybe a trip to the Mall of Abilene, if things got too quiet in Ovalo.

"Whoo-hoo," she said.

Gossage and Colin Braun debated just how large -- better yet, how small -- Ovalo is. Colin doubts there are 100 people (it's not listed in the Rand McNally's index for Texas). Not doubt the Mesquiteplex of Ovalo, Bradshaw and Lawn pales in population to Winston-Salem, Greensboro and High Point in North Carolina. But it's still home, a 100-acre spread Colin hadn't visited since November 2007.

Uh-oh. Did we just mention "Lawn."

Keep the mowers locked up, folks.

Question for Colin

Some sports fans don't consider competition drivers athletes. True?

"It can get 120 degrees in cars and trucks," he said. "When you get behind the steering wheel, you have all those G-forces and you have to focus on what you're doing. It takes endurance to do that for 200-300 laps."