Micks, business with pleasure
Husband-wife team nears end of the road after successful ride
NASCAR Pinty’s Series driver Kerry Micks was sitting in his trailer Friday morning, speaking with the media about marriage to his wife Susan for 34 years.
“It’s 35 years, honey,” she chided, smiling.
While it was a classic moment between husband and wife, it’s actually her job to help correct the driver in her role as chief spotter. For Saturday’s race on Honda Indy Toronto weekend at Exhibition Place, Susan Micks will stake out a strategic spot along the course and relay key information to her husband via radio. “There has to be a huge amount of trust between a driver and his spotter,” she said of a working relationship that has endured since 1991. “I’m the only voice in his radio, outside of the crew chief. It’s good for me, because if I was in the pits I’d just be pacing the whole race. It’s good, too, because I’ve known him for a long time and I know what he’s going to do.”
Kerry Micks, who got his start by racing everything from snowmobiles to motorbikes, saw a perfect match for the spotter’s role in his high school sweetheart from Huron Heights Secondary School in Newmarket. A trip to a NASCAR race in the United States confirmed it. Susan, who had spotted for other drivers, absorbed the nuances of the job from those in the top rungs of the sport and never looked back.
“Kerry likes very little talking — just information,” she said. “Other drivers want you to be on the radio all the time. He’s a pussycat away from the car, but in the car his voice is up high and he’s focusing on driving. He has a reputation as being an aggressive driver, but he just wants to win.”
Things worked out extremely well early on, with three race wins in 1992 (when the series was known as CASCAR) and a championship in 1993, but success can be fleeting in motorsports. After every race, there’s a struggle to retain sponsorships and team members.
Kerry wanted to run a two-car team, and did so last year, but after a season of 16-hour days it’s back to a one-car operation.
“Never again,” said the 57year-old driver, CASCAR’s alltime leader in starts (165) and wins (24).
The couple also runs a fleet of Micks Catering trucks, which requires considerable attention and helps pay the racing bills.
“You have to do a good job. You have to win. That’s the only way you can keep sponsors,” the driver said. “It’s a grind.”
It takes a special bond to endure when just about every cent of your personal finances is invested in racing. “We were married and we were going to buy furniture,” said Susan, recalling when they lived in an apartment across the street from their old high school for the first eight years of their marriage. “We had picked it out beforehand, and then it arrives at our home. And then I see Kerry at the front door and he says, ‘What if we put off the furniture and buy a new (race) car.’ After that, every time we’d break something or bump the car, the crew would laugh and say, ‘There goes Susan’s new couch.’ ”
Today — with a trailer that’s part rolling garage, office and lounge — they’re old pros who can look back and laugh at some of the obstacles they’ve overcome. They’re also looking forward.
“This is our last year,” Kerry said.
“We’ve been talking about this for the last five years,” Susan continued. “We’ve never had a summer off. We sold our house (in Newmarket) and we bought some property in Collingwood. We can kind of see retirement coming.”
But, she added, “There’s a little toy (late-model race car) in the top section of this trailer, and I know Kerry will never be completely out of racing … it’s in his blood.”