When watching news accounts of big lottery winners, my wife and I have often commented that if we won, we'd like to help others in need, as well as have some fun for ourselves.
Joe Denette seems to have followed that model by first making a sizable donation to assist research for Autistic children via Hermie Sadler, then starting a NASCAR team and now employing a recently unemployed and popular driver.
Hornaday's jackpot is new ride for 2012
By D.C. Williams
Correspondent
Daytona Beach News-Journal
February 24, 2012
DAYTONA BEACH -- How does one go from an ardent but unemployed NASCAR fan to a full-time Camping World Truck Series team owner?
Win a lottery.
How does an unemployed four-time NASCAR Truck Series champion get a ride for 2012?
Hook up with the guy who won the lottery.
Though Ron Hornaday compiled 51 wins in 300 starts since his first Truck Series start in 1995, the series' winningest driver would in 2011 face the stark prospect of being without a ride for 2012.
It was at about 2/3 of the way into the 2011 Truck Series schedule when he realized owner Kevin Harvick, with whom Hornaday scored two of his four championships, would close the Kevin Harvick Inc. truck race shop at season's end.
"We had hints of it in the middle of the year about what was going down, but he never did say much about it," the grizzled 53-year-old veteran said. "Then about seven races from the end, Kevin gave me a buzz and said, 'We're closing the shop at the end of the year.' "
"I thought that was pretty cool instead of him going down there and just closing the doors. On top of that, he and Delana helped about 100-or-so employees find jobs."
Hornaday, though, was on his own.
Two weeks before the season's final race at Homestead-Miami Speedway, Hornaday and Hermie Sadler talked at Texas Motor Speedway, afterward striking a handshake deal for the former to drive in 2012 for Joe Denette Motorsports.
Sadler met team owner Joe Denette in 2009 shortly after Denette banked a $47.8 million cash-buyout share of a multistate Mega Millions jackpot, later handing Sadler a $250,000 donation for the Hermie and Elliott Sadler Charitable Foundation, which raises awareness and promotes research of autism.
Not long afterward, Denette decided to become a NASCAR team owner and leaned on his newfound friend, Sadler, to help build the enterprise.
After spending the 2011 season getting accustomed to the ways of NASCAR with rookie Jason White at the wheel of the team's Chevrolet truck, in which he'd finish 15th in points, Denette and Hornaday closed the 2011 season by signing a one-year, 2012-season contract at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
Dropping Hornaday's familiar No. 33 in favor of Denette's favorite number, Hornaday has a busy schedule today at Daytona International Speedway. Hornaday will be in Denette's No. 9 Anderson's Maple Syrup Chevrolet for Truck Series qualifying at 4:05 p.m. and the race at 7:30 p.m.
"Qualifying and racing all in one day will make for a lot of hustling, but that's not so bad," Hornaday said. "We might as well get used to it; we've got a bunch of those two-day deals this year."
Will Denette's good vibrations and Hornaday's ability to score championships combine to provide both Hornaday and Chevrolet something neither has previously achieved at Daytona: a win in today's NextEra Energy Resources 250 at Daytona?
"Well, we certainly hope so," Hornaday said. "We'd like to bring Chevrolet its first truck win on a superspeedway."
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"Any Day is Good for Stock Car Racing"
updated by @dave-fulton: 12/05/16 04:02:07PM