3-27-2008 - Scene Daily article on Colin

Colin Braun: From small town to big expectations

By Lee Montgomery - Associate Editor

Photo by David Griffin / NASCAR Scene

Jeff Braun wanted to be in racing so bad that he took a job as a data logger with an oil company so he could learn how data acquisition systems worked. The systems weren’t in vogue back then, and only a few companies had them.

“He got the choice to live in Texas or Alaska,” said Colin Braun, Jeff’s oldest son and a driver some think could be Roush Fenway Racing’s next superstar. “So they took this town in Texas and ended up falling in love with it.”

“This town” is Ovalo, Texas, and to call it a small town would be a stretch. Ovalo is at the corner of U.S. Highway 83 and nowhere in central Texas, about 45 minutes south of Abilene.

In 2000, the population was a robust 225. That meant that when the Braun family left town to go racing, 1.7 percent of Ovalo was gone.

“I didn’t even know if anybody even counted everybody in Ovalo,” said Braun, who is driving the full Craftsman Truck Series schedule and a handful of Nationwide Series races for Roush Fenway this season. “But apparently they did. I heard 225 people. That seems like a lot. It seems like there are about 10 people who live there.”

The Texas State Historical Association boasts that by 1988, Ovalo had a post office – the “size of four portajohns put together,” Braun said – a Baptist church and a combination grocery store/gas station. If you thought this was a one-stoplight town, though, you’d be wrong.

“I don’t think there’s actually any stoplights there,” Braun said. “I think there’s a few stop signs, but I don’t think there’s any stoplights at all.

“You drive through it, and you blink, it’s gone.”

Braun – pronounced “brown” because of Jeff’s German heritage – was gone a lot, too. After Jeff got a job as an engineer in racing, Colin also turned to the sport.

Colin raced in quarter-midgets from age 5 to age 8, and then drove karts until age 14. His family was his race team, and they traveled all over. Ovalo wasn’t a hometown as much as it was a place to sleep when he wasn’t racing.

Braun eventually landed a ride in the Grand American Sports Car Series and caught the attention of car owners everywhere with his success. He became the youngest driver to win a major American race when, at age 17, he helped Krohn Racing win the Brumos 250 at Daytona in 2006.

In 2007, he finished second in class at LeMans, becoming the youngest podium finisher in the long history of the famed 24-hour race.

Braun, who dreamed of becoming a Formula One driver in his younger days, soon turned to stock cars. Roush Fenway Racing signed him and put him in a stock car for the first time for an ARCA race last year. He finished ninth.

In addition to his regular truck series duties this year, Braun has a couple of Nationwide Series races sprinkled in. One of those Nationwide races was at Nashville Superspeedway last weekend, where Braun was the fastest of the drivers needing to make the race via qualifying, and then drove from his ninth starting spot to finish a solid 15th.

That was his second Nationwide race, and his first on a track bigger than a mile. And it was his eighth race – ever – on an oval.

Ovalo, by the way, is from the Spanish word for oval, and clearly ovals have been foreign to Braun.

“I don’t even know what to ask sometimes,” Braun said. “Luckily, everybody’s figured that out and have been more than helpful, telling me things I don’t even know to ask.”

Braun is being modest, says Nationwide crew chief Eddie Pardue. Pardue has been used to working with Sprint Cup driver Greg Biffle in the Nationwide Series, so much so that Pardue and Biffle have a sixth sense about what changes need to be made to the No. 16 Ford. Pardue can often tell by Biffle’s voice what needs to be worked on.

Braun?

“Colin's getting there,” Pardue said. “What I’ve noticed with Colin is you forget he’s a kid. He’s intense and he’s working hard and he’s learning. He’s doing so much, but then you forget, ‘Well, he’s a kid.’”

Pardue has tested with Braun on a few occasions and says the 19-year-old driver acts like a veteran when he’s behind the wheel. When it comes to giving feedback about the car, Braun “does as good as Greg,” Pardue said.

“He can talk while he’s driving the car,” Pardue said. “Some guys struggle with that. He gives good information.”

Not that Braun is perfect. Far from it. For his series debut last fall in Memphis, Braun noticed a light on the dashboard that was foreign to him. So he had the crew take it out.

Turns out it was a light indicating pit road speed.

“He had the guys at the shop take it out because he didn’t know what it was,” Pardue said. “He didn’t want it because he didn’t know what it was.”

But that’s what these races are for, for getting Braun experience, for helping him prepare for the future.

“You can’t get the experience by loading it on the truck,” Pardue said. “[Team co-owner] Jack [Roush] has expressed that to us. You’ve got to get laps. You can’t be fast loading it in the truck. That is our No. 1 goal, for sure, to get some laps in and get some experience – but to be competitive doing it.”

That lack of performance pressure is comforting to Braun. He doesn’t have to worry about his job right now and instead can focus on learning how to drive stock cars and learning the nuances of racing on ovals.

One day, sure, there will be pressure to post results. But for now, the small-town driver has small goals.

“There’s not really much pressure to go and produce results right off the bat, which is obviously really comforting for me,” Braun said. “All the people at Roush Fenway, the drivers, the crew chiefs, the engineers, everybody has been very helpful, trying to teach me, not only to drive the stock cars, but what they need to feel like at the start of a run to be good at the end of a run.”