NASCAR dreams within reach for Cherry Hill man

The smell of gasoline and burned rubber hangs over the New Jersey Motorsports Park in Millville as fans head to their cars for the ride home.

Near the track, stock car driver Tom Hessert's crew shuffles cars and equipment into trailers and prepares to travel to the next race, in Springfield, Ill.

Decidedly out of place among the men in coveralls and caps emblazoned with auto-parts logos are Hessert's friends, a group of prosperous-looking young men, one a law student, another in real estate in Philadelphia, who look on as the driver signs a program for a young girl.

"It's pretty amazing someone our age, someone we went to high school with, has little kids coming up to him and asking him for autographs," says Jack Keyes, 24.

It's especially amazing considering Hessert's hometown is Cherry Hill, hardly a hotbed of stock car racing.

His father raced, but most of the guys he grew up with wouldn't know what it means to "lose the front end" when driving through a turn. Sports talk in his town runs more toward the Phillies and high school soccer.

A member of an affluent family, he was far likelier to have pursued a white-collar career. But now he may be on the verge of making the big time.

Ranked second in the ARCA racing series, one of the minor leagues of stock car racing, Hessert is drawing closer to his dream of earning a spot on the NASCAR circuit.

Hessert, a confident but reticent 24-year-old, is at a critical point in his racing career. He speaks enthusiastically of the possibility of moving up if he wins a couple of more races, then catches himself and mentions the depth of the field against which he competes.

He is cautious when speaking of the mechanical mishaps that may have cost him some wins this season - in Millville, his car ran out of gas and had to be pushed in by a driver who is a friend of Hessert's. Still, he finished fifth in a race on Aug. 15.

"My dad always says that no matter what happens, when the guy at NASCAR looks at the fact you finished 25th, there is no asterisk," Hessert said.

The son of a former race car driver who owns a car dealership chain, which is now his principal sponsor, Hessert attended his first race when he was just a few months old. By 16, he spent summers racing sprint cars and joined his father at the Rolex 24 Hours endurance race at Daytona, in which driver teams race around and through the famed course for a full day.

He received his diploma from Cherry Hill East in 2004 despite many missed classes - he even missed graduation for a race. Ever since, he has worked his way through the auto classes and racing series that are the underbelly of professional auto racing.

No Mario Andrettis or Danica Patricks here, drivers endure little pay, long hours going over mechanical variables with crew chiefs, and road trips to places such as Mansfield, Ohio, and Newton, Iowa. For those like Hessert, who don't find outside sponsorship, they and their families must often come up with a sizable portion of the roughly $40,000 it costs to outfit a car and assemble a team each weekend, in the hopes of one day getting a coveted full ride at the top level.

"Everybody's fighting for what they can get, and for most of them that means getting to NASCAR," said John Monsam, Hessert's crew chief, who has worked in NASCAR. "Some guys get here strictly on talent alone, but it's really rare. Most cases you have to have some family backing. There's a lot of guys who have the talent who don't get the opportunities."

Hessert's father, Tom Hessert Jr., never quite got that break. A car nut in high school, he and his friends would drive to Atco Speedway to race their Corvettes and Chevelles. When the track was closed, they would drag race in Camden.

After school, the elder Hessert started a race car repair business in the garage of his father's construction business. On weekends he raced, and with a loan from a local bank, he began to buy race cars.

He moved through the ranks, selling one car to buy another, until disaster struck at a race in Texas in 1978, when he crashed into another vehicle and totaled his car, putting him in debt that would take years to pay off.

The elder Hessert focused on his new car dealership, which sold Alfa Romeos and Lotuses, difficult vehicles to find in the United States in the late 1970s.

The business grew; he got married and had three children. But the bug stuck, and eight years after his fateful crash he returned to auto racing. He won a national championship in prototype racing in 1988, but by then, in his late 30s, his window for entering the sport's elite was effectively closed.

"A lot of professional athletes don't make it because of a turn here or a turn there they never could have imagined," he said from his office at Cherry Hill Classic Cars, his Jaguar-Saab dealership on Route 70. "Could I have made it as a professional race car driver? Yes, I think so."

Now it's his son's turn.

When he's not traveling the country racing, Hessert has spent more and more time in and around Charlotte, N.C.

In Mooresville, 30 miles north of the city, stock car racing is everywhere. Sportscasters discuss drivers' performances on the radio. A wind tunnel car designers use to test aerodynamics is a roadside landmark.

Hessert has shared an apartment there with another driver for about two years. He spends most of the day at the shop, and if he's not there, he's trying to meet with the businesspeople who could get him a sponsorship deal and maybe into NASCAR.

He recently discovered a video game simulator where he can run virtual laps on tracks such as Daytona and Talladega that now eats up any remaining free time.

Hessert is immersed in the stock car culture that pervades the town, with crew and drivers forming an informal fraternity, with its own rhythms, put-downs, and lingo.

"We get a little crazy sometimes, stuff I couldn't tell you about," said Grant Enfinger, Hessert's roommate. "But most weekends everybody's racing. And when they're not, they're testing somewhere. We go out a little bit, but it's not as much as you'd think probably."

Hessert, who has a longtime girlfriend, calls himself a homebody. He is unfailingly polite and has a reputation on the circuit as a conservative driver - not one to brag or imperil other drivers with unnecessary risks - a valued trait in the racing world.

Hessert's father drove the same way and said he considered thinking and caution to be assets. And while Hessert takes advice from his crew chief and driving coach, his father has his ultimate trust.

Last month, the younger Hessert was sitting in a trailer after a day of testing where he took a couple of laps, waited for mechanics to tinker with the car to shave off a tenth of a second, and then did it over and over again. His face was so red he looked on the verge of heatstroke, but he was only upbeat.

"I'm racing, and that's better than just about anything else I could be doing," he said.

When the elder Hessert came in to wish him farewell - despite running three dealerships, he attends most of his son's races and some practices - he complained he didn't get a chance to take a few laps. But he beamed at his son, who sat back in his jumpsuit.

They talked a little about the car before the elder Hessert had to leave. They would see each other that night, but they embraced warmly.

"When Tom won his first [ARCA] race, my dad was just so happy," said Jamie Hessert, Tom's 22-year-old sister. "This is something the two of them have shared since Tom was a baby."