Marc Davis hopes to use lessons from late father to get back to race track
Marc Davis says lessons he learned from his father, Harry, continue to influence him as he strives to further his racing career. // Sam Cranston, NASCAR Illustrated
The Las Vegas entry list for the Nationwide Series this week has Marc Davis as one of the entries. But he is not going to Vegas. He’s not ready.
He’s probably ready from a mental standpoint despite the death of his mentor – his father, Harry Davis – last month. He’s just not ready with cars that he feels are capable of a strong showing. Among the things his father had stressed for this year was to run well at the races he can afford to run and not stretch his wallet or his equipment too thin.
“I love going to the race track,” the 19-year-old Davis said in a phone interview Tuesday. “I want to go to the race track and run well. … In my second year of running part-time Nationwide, we need to run well and pick up sponsors along the way. I’ve got a whole lot of people willing to help me out, but I’m not going to hire 15 guys to work full time if I can’t afford to pay them.
“I learned that from my dad: If you can’t pay for it, don’t go out and do it.”
Harry Davis, 62, died Jan. 21 when a blood clot that followed a hip replacement resulted in a heart attack. His funeral – held in Washington, D.C., where he worked as an cameraman for the NBC affiliate – was delayed until Feb. 13, after Marc had gone on a previously planned trip to South Africa to race Jan. 31, and after a snowstorm had postponed the first scheduled funeral. There will be a memorial service for the racing community at 6 p.m. this Tuesday at Joe Gibbs Racing.
JGR was where most people learned of Marc, who drove for the team for a few years in various developmental series. But the organization couldn’t find sponsorship for him in 2009 and Marc was on his own. During his last year at JGR, Harry and Marc started Marc Davis Motorsports, not only to field cars for Marc but also Late Models for aspiring drivers.
That’s one of the reasons Davis left the United States just a few days after his father’s death for South Africa. Marc and Tiffany Daniels, an engineer at Earnhardt Ganassi Racing, were driving Nationwide-type cars in the ASA Transcontinental Series race under the Marc Davis Motorsports banner. Marc led a bunch of laps, fell two laps down after a flat and rallied to finish third while Daniels finished seventh.
“It was the most emotional race I’ve ever run in my life,” Marc said. “I couldn’t even put into words how I felt after I got out of that car, just knowing we had a car that could win the race.”
Marc never considered not going to the event.
“I was lucky that everything was all put together before he passed away so there wasn’t much I had to do,” Marc said. “He put his heart and soul into that race, not just for the race but getting to experience the culture and everything.
“I looked at things in his desk and I see his old passports. He was well traveled. He was trying to get me to experience that as well. In the grand scheme of things, there was a whole lot in his mind that I’ll never know.”
That race gave the team confidence that it has high-caliber cars. Marc Davis is still waiting for the cars to get back from South Africa, but they might not be back for another four to six weeks, and Marc is busy trying to get other cars ready to race. Realistically, he said, he likely won’t be back at a NASCAR event until May or June.
His driving coach and spotter, Mike Herman, has helped Marc run the day-to-day operations of the team, which just has a few employees. Jeff Spraker has been helping with race preparations. Marc still would jump at a solid full-time ride with an established team, but if not, he plans to plug along doing what it can.
“It’s definitely been a very interesting and hard month or so,” Davis said. “We’re definitely digging over here very hard to keep everything moving and keep it going.”
As he keeps working, his father will continue to have an influence in what he does.
“I took a lot for granted, what he did,” Marc Davis said. “There are things kicking in now [what he did] and there are things that won’t kick in for another 15 years – little small details.
“He told me to always be respectful and always be early. … He always had a backup plan for something. It might not have been as good, but it was something that would get me to the race track. That is something that will stick with me.”
