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If you walked around the pit area of the La Crosse Fairgrounds Speedway this season, you would have likely heard this type of buzz about Sportsman driver Nick Clements. Who? Nick Clements, that’s who.
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Sportsman driver Nick Clements straps himself into his car. Erik Daily photo |
Clements, who is in his fifth year of racing stock cars, is sitting atop the North Country Contractors Sportsman Division as the season nears its midpoint. It’s a division that doesn’t garner near the attention as the track’s premier class, the Kwik Trip Late Model Division, but it has just as many talented drivers. Clements, it seems, has driven his way into that list of top guns.
“Coming into the season, we were thinking to win a feature and finish in the top 10 in points would be pretty good,” said Clements, who lives in Onalaska, Wis. “We got our feature win early in the season (May 3), and now we’re thinking top five is possible.”
Or higher.
Clements, 24, won a feature race last year but he’s rarely been mentioned in the same breath as division powerhouses Larry Bolster, Jimmy Gilster or even Branden Berg, who is just two points behind Clements (350 to 348) heading into tonight’s regular racing program at the Fairgrounds Speedway. So what happened?
“We usually start out slow in the first half of the season, then get better,” Clements said. “This year we started out good and have kept it going. There are 14 cars out here that could win on any night. You need to have some good luck, too.”
Clements has had his share of good luck, but he’s created some of his own luck. Being in the right place at the right time, and steering clear of potential disaster, has played a big part in his success. So has a new motor in his sharply painted green and black 1997 Chevy Monte Carlo. But the thing that makes Clements feel really good this season has nothing to do with his equipment. It’s the people surrounding him.
“This is what makes it fun,” Clements said, looking up at the pit crew surrounding his car. “They are down here every night working on the car, getting it ready.”
Clements’ wife, Amber, along with his mother, Sue DeLapp, and her husband, Jeff, and Clements’ father, Ron, are all on the pit crew. Garrett Thicke, the son of former Late Model driver Kurt Thicke, is the crew chief, while Brian Hesselberg is another key pit crew guy.
But in the end, it’s Clements that must power the car around the five-eighths mile oval track at an average speed that approaches 90 mph. And, Clements admits, he wasn’t very good when he first made the jump from go-kart racing to stock cars in 2002.
“I’ve improved 100 percent from when I first started. I was running 30-second laps (he turned a 22.360-second lap on Thursday) and didn’t really have a clue as to what I was doing,” Clements said. “All the drivers down here really helped me out. Rick Shisler has been a big help. So have Branden (Berg), Jes (Tenner) and Jerimy (Wagner). The biggest thing for me was not pushing it when I didn’t have the car. You have to learn to let the next guy go if he is faster than you. You want to keep the car clean and not hog your lane and the other guy’s.”
That doesn’t mean Clements is a pushover if you come up behind or alongside him. Hardly. What it means is that what goes around comes around, he said, as in if you show some respect for a driver who is faster than you on one night, he will likely return the favor the next time.
That simple rule is what allows the top drivers to consistently earn top-five finishes instead of putting their cars back together each week after wrecks. Clements understands this, and was smiling Thursday night as once again his car was relatively unscathed after an intense race night where he finished fourth in the feature.
“I’ve never been this high up in the points,” said Clements, who finished 12th in the Sportsman points a year ago. “I’m definitely driving to stay up front, but I’m driving clean, too. It’s tough sometimes to run everybody clean, but that’s how you get respect.”
Clements has certainly earned a great deal of respect this season, especially as people are quickly finding out who he is.
“It’s been a dream season so far,” said Clements, who works for Interstate Roofing. “I just have to be consistent with my top fives and we’ll be right there.”
Jeff Brown can be reached at (608) 791-8403, or at jbrown@lacrossetribune.com
