with NASCAR According to his mother, Betty Drennan, it all started when Andy Yacono scratched her Camaro and had to fix it. From there, he went to Alfred Tech, started painting cars and now he is the head foreman in the paint shop for defending NASCAR champion driver Matt Kenseth. "It's true. I was driving the Camaro and I scratched it with a gas can. Before I went home I stopped by the collision shop. My uncle said it would cost $20 to fix so we worked out an arrangement that I would work two Saturdays to pay it off. Next thing, I was working part-time there on weekends and things took off from there. Years later, I visited my sister in North Carolina and got a gut feel. I came home and announced that within one year I would move to North Carolina." Kenseth drove the #17 car for Rousch Racing to the Winston Cup title last season, so Yacono's work was seen numerous times throughout the country on national television. The Winston Cup, this season called the Nextel Cup, is the accumulation of points for each race during the course of the season. The driver with the most points at the end of the season in November wins. Rousch Racing is Jack Rousch, who has owned a NASCAR team since 1988 - winning 24 national titles. Kenseth has two wins and two top-five finishes this season and again leads the points race as of this writing while accumulating over $1 million in winnings since December. Yacono has four people working under him in the shop with three in bodywork and one in detail. He doesn't travel much with the racing team with a fleet of cars to repair, prep and create from scratch. "We don't have a lot of down time. In the beginning we need to have a whole fleet of cars ready to go. If they come back from a race in one piece, then it's a matter of touch-up. Otherwise it's a rebuild from the body to the paint. Today we were working on a chassis and tomorrow we touch-up the paint on one car. Plus we need to have one or two cars ready for the 2005 season. I still race remote control cars for fun. I enjoy my time home so I don't mind working from ten in the morning until eleven at night and some Saturdays, but the travel part just isn't for me." As for the 1997 Holley graduate, it seems racing is in the family blood with Betty's husband formerly owning a race team, a sister who also worked for NASCAR and an uncle who owns DB Collision in Holley. "I can remember going to the races at Limerock, Batavia and Lancaster up there. I love racing. I didn't care what part of it I got in to, but it's a part of me." |
