Being married to a race car driver can be surreal at times.
“I had to fill out some form and it asked for spouse’s occupation,” Mandi Hamlin, wife of NASCAR Busch Series driver Kevin Hamlin, recalled during a recent visit to her native state of Washington. “I thought, do I really write race car driver?”
While the journey to that decision was long and sometimes frustrating – and included a cross-country move to the center of the stock-car racing universe – Mandi Hamlin wouldn’t have it any other way.
She married Kevin Hamlin in 2004. The two had been together since their senior year at Snohomish High School – with racing playing a prominent part in their 11-year relationship.
“When we were seniors, Kevin worked and after he got off work he would go straight to the race shop,” Mandi Hamlin said. “If I wanted to spend any time with him at all, I had to go to the race shop, too.”
At first, Mandi Hamlin didn’t realize the extent of her boyfriend’s involvement in racing. Kevin Hamlin won his first race in a quarter-midget car at age 6. He began competing at Monroe’s Evergreen Speedway at 15. Her first race at Evergreen was an eye-opening experience.
“I think I spent as much time looking at the people around me as I did the actual race,” Mandi Hamlin said. “I was shocked that there was this new culture that I didn’t even know existed. … People knew Kevin’s name and had buttons with a picture of his car on them.
“It was surreal.”
Mandi Hamlin learned about racing and race cars during her visits to the race shop. She began helping out before and during races – driving to and from tracks so Kevin Hamlin and his crew could rest, timing practice runs, working in the pits.
Kevin Hamlin said he knew his wife was “converted” when “I caught her flipping through a stock car magazine at my house one day. That’s when I knew it was all over.”
After they were married, Kevin and Mandi Hamlin – thinking he had secured a position driving in the NASCAR truck series – moved from Washington to North Carolina, the site of many race teams’ headquarters.
Halfway to the East Coast, they learned the truck ride was canceled. Still, they decided to press ahead with their plans.
“Everything in our lives had fallen into place to open this door for us to leave,” Mandi Hamlin said. “I didn’t ever want to look back and say ‘If only we had taken that opportunity to move back East, who knows what would have happened?’”
For almost a year Mandi Hamlin’s job at a medical equipment company in Charlotte supported the couple while Kevin Hamlin worked odd jobs and tried to break into racing.
“She was my sugar momma,” Kevin Hamlin said of that period in their lives. “She got the bills paid every month when I wasn’t racing.”
Despite starting from scratch in a new city on the other side of the country, there was never a thought of giving up and returning to Washington.
“As frustrating as it was, waiting for something to happen for Kevin, we weren’t ready to give up,” Mandi Hamlin said. “We couldn’t let it go. … This is what he was meant to be, this is what he was meant to do.”
Kevin Hamlin’s big break came in 2005 when he signed on with Chip Ganassi Racing. He started 14 Busch races that season when Ganassi loaned him to another team to increase his experience, but Mandi Hamlin’s work schedule prevented her from attending his first few starts.
When she did get to the track, Mandi Hamlin found her role had changed.
“I had a hard time finding my place, I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do,” she said. “The first time I was standing there waiting for him after practice with water, (Kevin) told me ‘No, you’re not supposed to do that. … There are people to take care of that now.’”
There were other indicators that year that life had changed for the Hamlins.
“We were in a big mall by our house (in North Carolina) … and the kid behind the counter said ‘Aren’t you Kevin Hamlin? Don’t you drive the No. 4 car?’ ” Mandi Hamlin said. “I about fell over.”
After starting just one race in 2006, Kevin Hamlin is scheduled to make eight Busch starts this year for Ganassi. He finished 18th in his first, the Pepsi 300 on April 7 at Nashville Superspeedway. Nashville is also the site of his next scheduled start in June.
“The eight races he’s going to run, he’s going to do whatever he can, top 10, top five, whatever,” Mandi Hamlin said. “Keep the sponsors happy, keep the team happy. … His goal is to hopefully next year get a full-time Busch ride with Ganassi.”
Through it all – success, struggle or surreal – Mandi Hamlin has been sure of one thing: She is right where she wants to be.
“Looking back now, for (Kevin) and me too, he wouldn’t want to travel this road that we’ve gone down by himself – and I wouldn’t want him to make the journey without me.”
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