Scott Riggs rode NASCAR’s coaster, now he’s unemployed

Photo gallery: Scott Riggs

In an instant, it was over. When the message crackled in his ears, “Check your gauges, Scott,” Scott Riggs knew his time at Tommy Baldwin Racing — and possibly his career — had come to an end.

Riggs was just 54 laps into the first Richmond race of 2009 and there was nothing wrong with the car or its gauges. Team owner and crew chief Baldwin was telling Riggs — in not-so-subtle code — to park a perfectly healthy, albeit underpowered, race car. Referred to as a “start and park,” the practice of qualifying for a race, running for a while and then heading home with a portion of the event’s purse, is nothing new.

That day’s 42nd-place finish enabled Baldwin to pay $67,050 in mounting bills.

Though they would limp into Charlotte together a few weeks later, Riggs knew he was finished with Baldwin.

“Pulling that car off the track and behind the wall was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do,” Riggs says. “I’ve wrecked good cars, but parking at Richmond was the worst, most sickening feeling I have ever had in a race car.”

Riggs wasn’t the only one who hated what happened at Richmond.

“Scott would rather be 10 laps down fighting a piece of crud that he could hardly keep on the track than be told to quit,” says Riggs’ wife Jai. “I didn’t know what had happened at Richmond until he called me and told me he was on his way home. It was hard hearing the defeat in his voice. That marked the low point of our time in racing.”

The end came after the Coca-Cola 600 at Lowe’s Motor Speedway, with Baldwin (inset) and Riggs offering different explanations for the breakup.

“Between myself and Scott, it wasn’t that I doubted his driving,” Baldwin says. “Yes, we weren’t running good, it was just the attitude. There was no helping or anything.

You’re either in or you’re out and he was out and that was it.”

Riggs counters that all he wanted to do was compete.

“After we missed four of the first eight races,” Riggs says, “I told Tommy to suspend my pay and put the money into the car. I just wanted to make it to Charlotte giving it our best effort. That didn’t happen.”

Now, just nine years removed from a five-win season in the Truck Series that led to four wins in the Nationwide Series and a six-year run in Cup, the 38-year-old driver is still out of work.

He spends his weekends at home, playing with his two children and pondering how a career that once looked so promising has gone so wrong.

Raised in tiny Bahama, N.C., where he still lives, Riggs got his start on two wheels as a standout in the American Motorcycle Association, where he won state motocross championships in consecutive seasons. By 17, he was racing mini stocks and won 12 races in his first three years. He raced in several divisions over the next decade, until he got “the call” and made his debut in NASCAR’s Truck Series.

From 1999-2000, Riggs ran part-time in the Truck Series before breaking out in his third season — capturing the attention of NASCAR’s power brokers, including Rick Hendrick and Larry McReynolds.
 
In fact, it was McReynolds who, after watching Riggs muscle a poor-handling truck around Martinsville for his first win, called then-Busch Series owner Greg Pollex with a suggestion to check Riggs out.

Pollex began following him and brought Riggs to what is now the Nationwide Series for the 2002 season.

In his first year with Pollex, Riggs won two races and was, for a while, the flavor of the week.

“Ricky Hendrick [son of Rick Hendrick] called me and asked if I would consider moving to his Busch team, essentially becoming a Hendrick driver,” Riggs recalls. “I said,
‘Ricky, I appreciate the offer, but I feel obligated to fulfill the terms of my contract.’ I had made a two-year commitment to ppc Racing and Greg Pollex.

“That may have been the wrong turn at Albuquerque, as they say. Maybe the biggest mistake I made.

“Sure, I honored my commitment, which is always the right thing to do, but when I did get over to the Cup garage, I learned very quickly that racing at that level is an every-man-for-himself business where you need to look out for No. 1 because no one else will.”

In 2003, Riggs was voted the series’ most popular driver and finished the season sixth in points.

“That year, I got a lot of calls from Cup teams,” Riggs says. “We were so strong that it was as if we needed to show up every week with a really good speech ready for victory lane.

“It was like being the star quarterback. I was being recruited by everyone. There were five teams that came to me, contracts in hand. I had no Cup experience, so it was very flattering to have them show that much interest.”

Riggs reached out to Rick Hendrick (inset), asking for advice on handling the offers and attention. Hendrick counseled Riggs to hold off for a while and see what types of deals might emerge.

“In the middle of the season, I was offered the No. 9 car before Kasey Kahne. Bill Elliott was retiring and they wanted me in the car for 2004. I sat down with Ray [Evernham] and the people from Dodge at Bristol and they said, ‘We need an answer now.’ I was thinking, ‘Where’s the fire?’ I wanted a little time to think and feel this out. I had literally never even walked through the Cup garage. I had no idea what it was like on that side of the fence. Two weeks later, they called and told me they had Kasey.”

Eventually, and again because of Hendrick, Riggs signed to drive the No. 10 for MB2/MBV Motorsports for 2004.

“Mr. Hendrick recommended them to me and me to them as a good fit,” Riggs says. “He assured me that they were using Hendrick technology and motors, and that he would keep an eye on me.”

In his two years with MB2/MBV, Riggs and his team showed more promise than performance, finishing 29th in ’04 and 34th in ’05. 

When rumors persisted that Valvoline was leaving MB2/MBV to join Evernham and that sponsorship for 2006 was anything but secure, Riggs finally seemed to land with a top-shelf team when he made the move with Valvoline.

Again, the guiding and omnipresent hand of Hendrick played a role in Riggs’ career.

“Rick called when I was looking at different drivers and recommended that I take a hard look at Scott,” Evernham says. “Rick doesn’t extend recommendations lightly, so an endorsement from him means a lot.”

Riggs couldn’t believe his good fortune.

“Emotionally, that was a real high point in my career,” Riggs says. “Sure, the first call to Cup was great, but when I went to Evernham, I understood the business and better appreciated what was being offered.”

Riggs ended 2006 20th in the point standings and collected eight top-10s, one top-five and two poles. But the team could have won a handful of races if not for a few mishaps, missteps and mistakes.

“Coming so close to that first Cup win on so many occasions, was such a shame for Scott,” Evernham says. “You look at it and think, ‘That poor bastard was just one pit stop or speeding penalty away from winning his first Cup race.’ Having that one win — a Cup win — on his resume would make a huge difference. A proven winner, he might
not be stuck where he is today.”

The 2007 season was an unmitigated disaster for all three of Evernham’s cars. A merger/buyout with Montreal mogul George Gillett loomed while Evernham’s marital woes stole headlines and attention. Riggs ran 27 of 36 races and ended the year 36th in the point standings.

When the deal with Gillett was finalized and preparations for 2008 were well underway, Riggs was one of the first casualties.

“They wanted a Canadian driver, hoping they could attract a Canadian sponsor,” Riggs says. “So, they bring in Patrick Carpentier and I’m out.”
Evernham (inset) insists it was his intention to keep Riggs, but that new ownership forced the issue.

“We weren’t going to let him go, period,” Evernham says.

Despite being only one season removed from having run better than a third of the field, Riggs’ best offer came from the perpetually struggling Haas/CNC Racing team in the No. 66 for 2008.

There, he was teamed with crew chief Bootie Barker and managed to run consistently in the top 25 until the May race in Charlotte, when they were hit with the largest penalties NASCAR had levied since the introduction of the new car. The loss of 150 points and the six-race suspension of Barker derailed their season.

“We were in the mix and then got the car taken away from us and got penalized all those points,” Barker says. “It moved us from 25th to outside the top 35. That had nothing to do with Scott, but he had to suffer the consequences. He lost me as his crew chief and had to race his way in every week.”

The team struggled and when the announcement was made that Tony Stewart would be taking over 50 percent ownership of the organization for 2009, they were still outside the top 35.

“Tony came to us and said, ‘Get that car back in the top 35 and I’ll pay you a [significant] bonus,’ ” Riggs says. Stewart wanted to ensure that the car, which would eventually become Ryan Newman’s, was able to go to Daytona for the start of 2009 locked in the field. “He dangled a great carrot in front of us to get it done, and we did.

“So, the season ends and I did my job, but I’m out of work, again.”

During the offseason, Riggs’ phone rang, mostly with offers to join organizations less established than the one he had just left. So he waited.

“There were days, even early on during that offseason, that it occurred to me that I might not have a ride for 2009,” he says. “In fact, I spent so much time and energy last winter looking for work that I did not have an offseason. Setting up meetings and working the phones, calling every contact I’d ever made, was harder than anything I’d ever done in racing.”

When a seat with start-up Tommy Baldwin Racing came available, it may have been Riggs’ last chance.

“I had turned down other jobs, hoping something better would emerge. Nothing better ever did, so a job with Tommy was my best shot,” Riggs says.

“I knew we were taking a switchblade to a gunfight. I really wanted to prove that we could do more with less, like [independent owner/driver, Alan] Kulwicki did back in the day. With no testing and everyone scaling back, this was the year to make a run at doing more with less.”

What they did was work their way to a start and park at Richmond and unemployment for Riggs.

Though he certainly endured more than his share of bad breaks, there is no single explanation for Riggs’ star-crossed career.

“He’s had some of the worst luck,” Hendrick says. “He’s fallen victim to just about every kind of bad circumstance that can happen in racing: mechanical failures, penalties, pit stop errors. You name it, and Scott Riggs has suffered for it.”

His bad fortune, however, can’t be solely attributed to the Fates.

“As with a lot of athletes, Scott Riggs’ only downfall might be a lack of confidence in himself,” Evernham says. “Professional sports are loaded with rosters filled out by great, hardworking guys who never reach the top.”

Pollex is quick to point out that Riggs is a driver of incredible talent.

“I call it a ‘great butt.’ He’s got an amazing feel for the car,” Pollex says. “Sure, he’s had some tough breaks and close calls, but what’s held him back is not talent.

“Today, we just want our drivers to be plug-and-play, get in the car and go like hell. We want guys who ooze confidence 24/7 — even if it’s false. Some drivers are like that. Scott is not one of them.”

Two of Riggs’ former crew chiefs agree. “He’s way too hard on himself,” says Rodney Childers, who served with Riggs at MB2/MBV and at Evernham. “I don’t feel like he’s done anything wrong except beat himself up and lose confidence.”

“More often than not, his team let him down. Those are the things that bother Scott, but they weren’t his fault,” Evernham says. “He’s the first guy to put his hand up and accept responsibility for something he’s done wrong. But once you do that, you’ve got to let it go. What’s done is done. You can’t carry guilt and beat yourself up to where you’re just so down that you never get back up.”

“For Scott, confidence is a big factor in how well he runs,” says Doug Randolph, who started with Riggs in the Busch Series and went with him to MB2/MBV. “There are some guys who walk into the room confident, tell you they’re going to win and then do. I can always tell when Scott’s feeling good, feeling strong. I know him well enough to read his body language. It’s the same when things go wrong. He can’t hide it. It means too much to him. He is way too hard on himself. When he’s confident, he bubbles. He actually glows.”

For Evernham, the owner with whom Riggs came so close to breaking out in 2006, the lack of a single Cup win lingers. “You know he has the ability to win races, but it’s not there in the record book,” he says. “There’s no trophy on the shelf to point to. It’s a shame.”

“He is the most talented driver I know that is sitting out without a ride,” Hendrick says. “In the right situation, he would do well in Cup.”

But Everhnam cautions that Riggs will never be Jimmie Johnson.

“It doesn’t matter if you put him in the 48 today,” he says. “It’s not fair or realistic to think he’d be a three-time champ. However, Scott is a top-20 guy.”

Quick to acknowledge that there isn’t anything missing in Riggs, Barker (inset) is also reluctant to compare him to the top divers in NASCAR.

“I don’t like to make statements like, ‘Put him in the 18 or 48 and …,’ Barker says. “Remember, the 18 didn’t do too well with J.J. Yeley. That team became exceptional when they got an exceptional driver. Scott can get it done, but to wonder what would happen if you put him in the 18, or put him in the 48 is not a fair comparison.”

So, what’s next? No one knows. Riggs says he has faith in God’s plan, but the uncertainty is taking its toll.

“These years have been a struggle,” he says. “I struggle with it internally. I’m not really sure how I do it. My family doesn’t know how I do it. I’m high-strung.

“Ironically, I’m more confident now than ever before on the track, in the shop, understanding these cars, everything. I’m at my best and yet I’m not racing.”

“For me, it’s hard to watch him struggle,” Jai says. “It’s been hard to see him endure so many disappointments, but we’ve been blessed to have a lot of really good times.

“The hope is always that if you ride out the bad, some more good is right around the corner. Unfortunately, lately, there has been more bad than good.”

“What’s hard is getting so close to your dream that you can smell it and the dew is dripping off the fruit onto your lips, it’s so close, and you don’t get there,” Riggs says.

His wife knows better than anyone how badly Riggs wants another shot at that elusive Cup win.

“I think that will be the hardest thing for him to deal with if it’s over,” she says. “He’s still got something to prove.”

“I dream about victory lane all the time,” Scott says.

Asked what will happen if he never gets back in a race car, even for another ride on NASCAR’s bubble, Riggs searches for the right words.

“I don’t know. I’d love to say I’ll be fine,” he says. “That’s the mature answer. But without racing I will feel lost and know that I will have to live the rest of my days with a burning flame in my soul that cannot be extinguished.”

This story originally appeared in the October 2009 issue of NASCAR Illustrated.