America's Hardest Worker

The race for the Chase went to Texas this past weekend and one of the things that went on as a side note to the race was a contest by race sponsor Dickies. Dickies is a clothing company that mainly caters to the construction workers. They run a contest every year and pick America’s hardest worker. The guy this year was Hale Hughes, an oil field worker from Texas. Hale’s a huge race fan and was as happy a kid in a candy store to be a part of the weekend festivities. The contest started in a Deal or No Deal format. A number of cases were brought into the media center and Hale had to pick one of the cases. Each case contained a drivers’ car number. Whatever number he picked would be the driver that could win him a million bucks. All his driver had to do was win the race.

Hale Picked the number 24 of Jeff Gordon. Gordon happened to be the polesitter for the race. Hale was pumped. Now all Gordon had to do was win the race and he would collect his prize. Another part of winning the contest was Hale gave the command to start your engines, a call that went down as one of the best that I’ve heard in a long time. Let’s move forward to end of the race. Hale’s driver was running in the top ten all day. As the race came to an end, Gordon was in 2nd place right behind Carl Edwards. Edwards had a 10 second lead on the field. The big question was can Carl finish the race without a pitstop? Almost the entire field, including Carl’s teammates had to come into the pits for fuel. Not Edwards, he was going to try and go the final 69 laps without a stop. Jeff Gordon was on the same plan, but he pitted 3 laps later than Carl, so he had a little more fuel to burn.

As the laps counted down Edwards continued to lead the race. The field was catching him, but not quick enough. Can you imagine Hale watching the race and having to watch his driver, racing for a million bucks, just out of the lead and trying like the dickens to catch the race leader? I don’t really know if Gordon knew he was racing for a million bucks and I’m not sure he would really care if he did know. Jeff Gordon had other things on his mind. Like trying to get his first win of the season, also Texas is one of two tracks that he has never won a race.

With ten laps to go Edwards was still strong and Gordon gave it a shot but could not get to Carl. Carl went on to win the race and Gordon finished 2nd. Hale didn’t get his million bucks, but Dickes did give him a consolation price of fifty thousand dollars. Not bad for Hale who had the experience of a lifetime. Sure he would have loved for Gordon to win and he would have taken home a million bucks, but he got to do something that was a once in a lifetime chance.

I’m sure in the back of his mind, he was praying that Carl would run out of gas. I know if I were in that position I would have.