Wayne Anderson
by Norm Froscher
Wayne Anderson, former All Pro Champion, winner of virtually every prestigious Late Model race in Florida, some multiple times and currently a force in the ARCA Series as well as events in Florida. He just recently won his third Powell Memorial at Ocala Speedway, only multiple winner of the prestigious Late Model event.  How did Anderson get here? Nineteen and ninety-nine was a career Year for Anderson, but let’s go back to 1988 and before to examine his roots.
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What in the world?
Here’s a Peterbilt tractor, towing a huge double-deck trailer with a cargo of four recreation vehicles and in tow behind that a second truck, with a driver at the wheel, and trailer, on which sits a race car. 

How in the world did this surreal scene come about?

It’s simply Wayne Anderson going to a Florida short-track race back in 1988, only his second year of driving Late Models.

We’ll explain this I-75 freight train in a minute, but first, you know Anderson. Winner of five NASCAR/Slim Jim All-Pro races in 1999, including his second All-American 400 at Nashville and the almost unheard of feat of completing every lap of 3,350 en route to the championship.

The multi-colored 4-by-8 foot banner that hung his 5,000 square foot Wildwood, Fla. shop salutes his All-Pro title, but that was only part of a sensational year for the second-generation competitor.

Every Florida short tracker has a career year and 1999 was probably Anderson’s first. With more to come.

In addition to picking up his second guitar in Nashville that year, Anderson won the prestigious Powell Memorial at Ocala Speedway (first of eventual three), took the Lakeland All-Pro event and capped a Florida trifecta by winning the storied Governor’s Cup at New Smyrna, an event won twice by his dad, Dick Anderson.

“That year just turned out to be one everybody dreams about,” Anderson says. “In addition to those Florida races, I also won a big race at Citrus County Speedway. The All-American 400, Powell Memorial, Governor’s Cup. You don’t top that,” he reflects. “You just try and do the same thing next year.”

We’ll look at his road to that incredible season, how it started, the ups and downs, people who helped, such as car builder and owner Frankie Grill and reflections from a fellow competitor as well as his dad, “King of the Florida
Short Tracks”.

But first, let’s go back to that attached “convoy” on I-75 in 1988.

There’s a theme here that we’ll see carries through Anderson’s young racing career: Adversity, met by his dogged perseverance and then Success.

Both dad Dick and Wayne were to run a United Stockcar Alliance Late Model race at Lake City’s half-mile oval which was known then as Gateway National Raceway Park.

Dick motored the some 100 miles north from Wildwood and shortly after Wayne followed in his truck -- affectionally dubbed “Sherman” -- and trailered race car.

Sherman, however, coughed and expired 30 miles from the track, and young Anderson’s party was left standing on the side of I-75. Adversity.

Fortunately, then along came our tractor/trailer driver, a guy with the unlikely name of Gene Goon. Seeing the race car on the side of the road, it struck an extra note of sympathy in Goon, who had himself done some racing early
on. This day, however, he’s delivering those four recreation vans to Wisconsin, but he stopped to see if he could help. Sherman wouldn’t start.

Goon had a logging chain in his equipment, so that was hooked to Anderson’s idle truck and away the convoy went...straight to the race track pit/infield gate.

Along the way, one parked Florida Highway patrolman did a double-take, but didn’t bother to interfere.

“I had told Mr. Goon to just get me to the Interstate exit, I’d fire up the car and take it from there, but he decided he’d go right into the track and see the race,” Anderson laughingly recalls. “I guess that was like a rest stop.”

Oh yeah. Anderson finished second in the 100-lap race, to dad, Dick, the first time for a 1-2 with father and son in a big event. In short, Success.  There was another driver in that race whose name you’ll recognize: Joe Nemechek, the eventual series winner, who dropped out with engine problems.

Young Anderson’s earliest recollections are of racing, first watching his dad from the Hialeah and south Florida grandstands (no toddlers allowed in the infield) and then helping with the race car after the move to Wildwood when
he was 12.

“When I got a little older, about 16, I started building a Street Stock,” he recalls. “But about the time I had nearly finished, a chance came to sell it and buy a Late Model, without a motor.

“The reason I went to the Late Model was that’s what I’d really worked on, dad’s car, and I didn’t know a thing about Street Stocks.”

It was not without some juggling, however. Wayne’s grandmother had given him a truck to drive back and forth to school. In order to buy an engine for his Late Model, he sold the truck and rode the school bus his last two years at
Wildwood High.

1987, then, was his rookie year, which started very inauspiciously at Bronson Motor Speedway.

“The very first night I started last in the heat race and crashed before I got one lap complete. My Late Model racing career wasn’t very long at that point,” he now laughs. Adversity.

But that adversity was quickly overcome as Anderson divided his time between races at Bronson and Lakeland USA Speedway. And did well. So well, in fact, that he gained 1987 Rookie of the Year honors at both tracks, a Florida first in one season. Success.

“My Mom and Dad had definitely wanted me to go to college and stuck money back for that. Instead, I spent the money buying and maintaining the race car. I just didn’t want to be in classrooms, I wanted to be working on race
cars,” Anderson says.

Young Anderson gained seat time around Florida’s bull rings, then after the 1988 season felt like he should race in North Carolina, where he might be able to attract more notice.

“I went up there, raced at New Asheville Speedway with the help of Russ Leicht. I won several races and finished third in the points,” he recalls.

Those victories included the “Road to Charlotte” All Pro Parts event.

“It was a tremendous year, but I didn’t see it taking me any place, especially since they race only about six months out of the year.”

Back in Florida, Anderson set fast times at several tracks, and drove a Dodge for his then full-time employer, Buddy Foster’s Citrus Chrysler, in the USA series. Dick, meanwhile, drove a companion car in the rival Florida Pro
circuit, with crew chief Frankie Grill (Grand American Race cars out of Alabama). Remember that name.

Little did he know it at the time, but what Anderson sees as a turning point in his career was right around the corner.

That came with the entrance of Wayne Pritt, who was starting a race team under the name Binweal Racing. The unusual acronym was formed by taking the letters of seven long and loyal friends, beginning with his wife Barbara, Pritt explained.

They had a driver, but Grill insisted they take a look at Wayne. The upshoot was he signed on as crew chief, with the promise that if things didn’t work out with the first driver, he’d move into the seat.

That happened after just one race. Then it was Wayne’s turn.

He jumped into the car for the first time at the All-American 400 in five-eighths mile Nashville Speedway.

“Not only was that my first time in the car, it was my first time at the track and the first time I’d ever raced over 200 laps,” Anderson says.

Never mind. He overhauled eventual winner Jeff Purvis with forty laps to go, then was sidelined by a cut tire, finishing fifth.

Anderson says that Binweal experience was the turning point in his career. Here’s one reason why:

“In 1996 we had Porter-Cable come on board as a sponsor for TV races. Porter-Cable on board as a sponsor and they had 200 employees coming to the All-American 400 in Nashville. We went there, qualified third and won the race.  That was the first time a rookie had ever won the won the All-America 400 and that secured our sponsor for 1997, basically.”

There were clouds on the horizon -- adversity -- however, when Port-Cable decided they needed more exposure and put Anderson in the Craftsman Truck Series for 1998.

“Basically, the truck deal didn’t turn out to be what it was supposed to be. We went there and I thought I was going into what Kenny Irvin had left.  Actually, there were two crew chiefs, you know, and you have some engineers.   There were a lot of people. They had fired the crew chief and Doug Richert went to the No. 91 Cup car.

“So I lost both my crew chiefs and when they leave, a couple of people go with this one, a couple of with that one and next thing you know there’s nothing there that was in place when Kenny Irvin was winning in 1997.

“It just didn’t work out. I’d say five races from the end of the season I was released. It was kind of a shock, to be honest, because they never told me one way or the other that I was even thought of being in a spot to be released. I didn’t know until the day I was getting ready to fly out to the next race that I was released.”

Anderson says in ‘98 it was the most money he’d made in his racing career, but it also was the worst season he’d experienced, in general.

“After that happened, it left me going back to Saturday night racing. I had my Late Model and went to Lake City at the end of the year, sat on the pole, was leading the race when the rear end tore up.

October to February. A period of frustration for which there wasn’t the even the slightest placebo. Adversity.

“You start questioning your ability. I started thinking, maybe that truck deal, maybe it was me. Maybe I’m not as good a race car driver as I thought.

“I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I went to New Smyrna with my own car and had a great Speed Weeks, wound up being dominant. I won a night or two and ran second a lot of nights”

Enter old friend Grill, upon whom that success wasn’t lost. He wanted to field an All-Pro car with his son Augie as crew chief. He came up to Anderson in one winner’s circle and you know the rest. Success.

“This year turned out to be one that everybody dreams about,” Anderson said of that season.

And the highest high may actually have been not in Nashville, but back home, at October’s New Smyrna Governor’s Cup, where he sat on the pole and dominated the race from flag-to-flag.

“I don’t want to take anything away from the All-American 400, because it’s a major event, but as I see it, the Governor’s Cup was the topper of my year.

“The one thing that hurts is the Governor’s Cup was much bigger than it is now. They don’t advertise it as much, but look at some of the names who’ve won it -- Dick Trickle, Ed Howe, my dad, Gary Balough.

“Trust me. I know racing goes in cycles. It always has. One year everything seems to be clicking. And the next year I might feel I’m doing everything right, but then everything can go wrong, so you take it while it’s there.

While mentioning his dad, Pritt and Grill, Anderson also singles out an early backer, the late Max Harper of Gainesville’s Cement Precast.

“When I started racing, Mr. Harper thought I had a lot of ability and believed in me and helped me. Basically, Wayne Pritt is just like Mr. Harper.”

As to Dickie Anderson, Wayne says that some may think “The King of the Florida Short Tracks” handed everything to his son.

“Some people may think that, but it’s absolutely not true,” Wayne says. “Don’t misunderstand. My dad doesn’t put any money into my racing operation and never has. Everything I’ve gotten, I’ve earned. But at the same time, if
knowledge is money, he’s helped me a lot. If I’m in trouble, I go to him for any answer.”

Senior Anderson agrees: “People may tend to look at him and say I’ve handed everything to him, but that is definitely not true. Everything he’s done, he’s accomplished on his own. All I’ve done is offer a little advice at
times. The maddest I ever was at him was for making mental errors.”

Wayne Anderson probably possesses that rare trait described by Winston Cup owner Joe Gibbs as athletic arrogance. That is, not arrogance, per se, but merely the trait that the individual knows this is his calling.

So, guess who finished second to Wayne at the Powell in Ocala that third time?
You got it.