Remembering a great day for Kevin Grubb
Kevin Grubb is dead at age 31 of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.
That’s not how that young man’s life was supposed to turn out.
After reading the story of Grubb’s sad demise, my thoughts drifted back to a sunny day in the summer of 2002. Grubb had finished 13th and 14th in what is now the Nationwide Series the previous two years, and at age 24 was climbing the NASCAR ladder.
Grubb’s PR man at the time came to me in a track media center and said he had big news: Grubb and Team Bristol Motorsports planned to run the full NASCAR Cup schedule in 2003, with Grubb competing for the title of rookie of the year.
So the PR man set up a one-on-one interview with Grubb. I’d talked with him several times before, but now I saw him in a new light – as a Cup driver. He seemed impossibly young. He was, as always, exceedingly polite.
He seemed very earnest and impressed me as the kind of guy a father would trust without reservation to take his daughter to the prom.
He was obviously excited as he talked about his future. He was living a dream, a racer whose team had just announced plans to move him to the NASCAR Cup series.
Yet in the end, there would be no Cup victory celebrations, no successful career. That full-time Cup effort never panned out, and Grubb never made a single Cup start.
Of course, I didn’t know all that at the time. Today, I can’t help thinking that day was probably one of the greatest of Grubb’s life.
All I can remember thinking then was, “This guy has such a bright future.”
It wasn’t supposed to end in a motel room, seven years later.
