PRUNEDALE, California — For the third time this season, the SRL Spears Southwest Touring Series will be at Madera Speedway for the running of the third Holiday Classic Series presented by Performance Electrical for a 130 lap feature event on the third mile oval.
"I have one big superstition. I don’t want to know anything about qualifying. I don’t watch it. I don’t listen to it. I don’t want to know anything about it until the last car has qualified"— Jim Pettit II
And Jim Pettit II and his wife, Veronica, are ready to go racing again after a months layoff for the touring race cars. Jim drives the car, while Veronica books the motel rooms and feeds the crew. That’s their job description.
“I’ve made the room reservations, and I’ll be getting the food and, since I like to cook from almost scratch, I’ll be making up something in the in the next day or so for Jim and the crew to have at the track,” says the five foot two lady in the blue hat. “I met Jim some twenty-four years ago at a race track and we’ve been doing this ever since. I’ve gone to 99.9 per cent of the races he’s be to. All the crew have their own responsibilities in getting the car ready, so I guess you could say I have one job. Make sure they have rooms to sleep in, and food to eat.”
Meanwhile, Jim and the ‘get ‘er done’ crew have been working for the past month on the race car that has been loaned to him by Quentin Bammer, a fellow car owner in the SRL. Lady Luck has frowned on Pettit twice this year, resulting in two broken engines. Not knowing whether or not he would be able to continue for the rest of the season to defend his SRL Championship, Bammer made arrangements
for Pettit to drive the back-up car to his son, Todd. Pettit’s first outing in the car was a month ago and resulted in an eighth place finish, having started tenth. “I didn’t do what I had hoped to do at the last race with a different car than I’m used to. Making the switch from Ford to Chevrolet is a little different for us so we’ve been working on the motor and few other things, and after having gotten in 100 laps, plus some practice, I think things will be good to go for us this weekend.”
While Jim and the crew do their thing, Veronica will be watching from the pits. “I wear a radio headset, but they give me one that I can’t talk to Jim on. I have one big superstition. I don’t want to know anything about qualifying. I don’t watch it. I don’t listen to it. I don’t want to know anything about it until the last car has qualified.”
During his thirty some years of racing, Pettit has won fifteen championships throughout the Southwest, including two at Madera. “That’s why I like racing there.
It’s a great little track, they treat us good, and we’ve won there many times.”
His most memorial win? “I’d have to say the ‘Freedom 150” race at Pikes Peak International Raceway in 2005. My folks are cattle ranchers and being brought up in the Red, White, and Blue tradition, and that event honoring the military, and him winning it, I really enjoyed that race.” His biggest championship? “I wasn’t around for some of those, but I’d have to say that since we’ve been together, the biggest would be his winning the 2004 NASCAR Southwest Series Championship.”
The blue cowboy hat. “I bought that hat in 2004 when we were celebrating a win in Las Vegas. It was in a convention hall and they were selling all kinds of things, including hats, and that blue one, royal blue being my favorite color, was sitting there. I walked around some more, and it was still sitting there. So I called my husband to see if we had enough money. We did. So I bought it.” And now you know.
