Scotts EZ Seed Showdown at Bristol Motor Speedway Q&A With Dave Marcis

Dave Marcis will be competing in the Scotts EZ Seed Showdown at BMS March 19. The 68-year-old Marcis, a five-time Cup Series winner, made 54 starts at the “World’s Fastest Half-Mile” during his career.

Dave Marcis – “It is a pleasure to be here. I’m looking forward to the race. I’m sure we will have a lot of fun doing it. All of our lives, we were independent operators.  We worked on our cars, traveled with our crews up and down the roads. The guys today, when they reach our age they aren’t going to have anything to talk about. They fly to the races, they fly out. When we used to go up and down the roads, we were in a caravan. We would eat at the same restaurants.  The fans would meet us there to get autographs. That is how it was. We helped each other, borrowed parts and worked together. It is completely different today.”

Will you have wingtips when you race? “Oh, yes I am wearing the wingtips.”

Have you raced lately?” I was pretty active with IROC. October ’06 was our last race. Until that point I was very active. But it is like riding a bicycle, you never forget how to do it. It is all about being comfortable in the car and getting equal cars. They are going to work to get equal cars and I think it is going to be a good show. I’m looking forward to it. I think we will have a great time. It is going to be 35-laps, but I think we all probably will wish it was more laps.”

You were very dedicated to racing…  “My whole life I did what I wanted to do, that was race. I made a living doing it. I worked very hard at it. I think for what I did with the money I had to do it, I think I did well.”

Talk a little about being an independent. “Sometimes it was difficult and you wish you had more money, but sometimes you think you may waste it if you had it. I got a lot of good used parts from good teams. I got stuff from Junior Johnson , from the Pettys. I got stuff that was race proven. I didn’t have to spend a lot of money on new things or test things that didn’t work. I was pretty successful doing it that way.

“One year, I got a lot of point money at the end of the year, and I bought 5 sets of cylinder heads. They weren’t the best, but I got a chance to get them from a group making some good products. I said to myself, ‘I spent the money in the right place to get some good cylinder heads.’ The next season, before we got to the World 600, all of those sets of heads had already busted. They were $5,000 a set, and I had thrown that money away. Stuff like that, when you are a little guy, it was very costly.”

How true is it that back in the day you would work all day and all night? “I can recall getting up at 5 in the morning in Dover. Ran the whole race, drove the tow truck home. We would get home around 7:30 or 9. The next morning we would unload the race car and work all day until 9 before we went to go home to eat. That is how we used to do it. I wasn’t the only one to do that. Most teams had to do that. There were no airplanes. Everyone rode in the vans. We had a good time, we had a lot of fun. Stopping at restaurants together and pulling tricks on each other. We enjoyed what we did. “

You said you think today’s drivers miss out on that fun. What do you mean by that? “I do think that. I think when they all get older and sit down to talk about what they did outside the race tracks, they wouldn’t have much to talk about. Even at the race tracks they don’t hang out much. What are they going to talk about when they get older? Us older guys can sit around and talk for weeks. We used to go fish together. After practice in Rockingham, Buddy baker and a bunch of us would go over to the pine trees, get a crow call and go shoot crow. We would go fishing in the ponds in Darlington. Tom Higgins and some of those sportscasters would go with us. Those days were fun.”

You were a test driver for Earnhardt and IROC. What was that like?” I enjoyed it. The IROC series I did for 30 years. If it hadn’t been for that, I probably couldn’t have stayed in Cup, because I was able to use that money to buy stuff for the Cup car. Getting to test for Dale was a great honor. Richard Childress would always try to pay me money, but it wasn’t about that. I told him one time, ‘just give me some good used parts so I can run better. I can earn the money, just give me the parts.’ He would do that. He would always give me an engine to run at the restrictor plate tracks. That helped tremendously. They could give me $5,000 to do a test, but for $10,000 I couldn’t buy what they would give me used. Those parts would help me for four or five weeks.”

Second most starts behind Richard Petty. You were a great representative for independents. “That means a lot. It is something that just happened in the course of going to work every day. It is what I did for a living, and just like you go to the office every day,  I was just going to work and the numbers started happening.”

Weren’t you a relief driver at Bristol for someone?” I won an event here at Bristol driving relief for Bobby Allison. I think I ran about the last 170 laps of the event and won the event. Of course, Bobby got the credit.”

What do you remember about that day? “It was extremely hot. I think he was sick or something before. When I dropped out of the event, Mario Rossi’s team came over and asked if I could stand by for relief. When Bobby found out they had a relief driver, he got me in the car. He was running up front, had been leading the race. We got back in contention and won the race. It was a great honor to be able to do that. I came close here many times on my own though. I had a few opportunities as an independent in my own car to win here.”

What would it mean to win this race? ‘’It would be fantastic. I’m sure it is what each of us wants to do. If we didn’t we shouldn’t be in the race. I’m going to work hard at it and try to stay out of trouble. I’m going to find a good groove and hopefully do well.”

What are you doing these days? “I loved to fish and hunt. I’ve got my shop. We build street rods. We hand build chassis just like my cup cars. Then we build a body around it. It is about a $180,000 car. We just took one car to a TV show on Tuesday in Nashville.  It is actually a ’34 Chevy built on one of my retired Cup cars with a retired Cup engine.

I’m looking forward to racing. It will be a lot of fun. It didn’t take me long to tell Wayne yes when he called.”