4-17-2008

Three years ago, three 16-year-old drivers teamed up to run the Rolex 24 at Daytona. This weekend, two of them will go at each other in stock cars on Mexico City’s famed Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez.

Their career paths have taken Brad Coleman and Colin Braun in different directions, but the Team 16 teammates have remained close. So close that a conversation with both drivers leaves one in stitches, laughing from the stories they tell and the put-downs each makes to the other.

Take, for instance, the question of who is the better road-course driver:

“I just want to be nice,” Coleman said.

Braun said he was better, Coleman is told.

“I’d say he’s a little better in [a sports-car] prototype,” Coleman said. “I’d say we’re about dead-even in the Porsche, though.”

“And we’ll see in the stock car,” Braun said.

“I’m not going to lie, he’ll probably have a better road race car than me,” Coleman said of this weekend’s Nationwide Series Corona Mexico 200.

“Oh, sure, blame it on the car,” Braun said.

“I’ll have a built-in excuse right there,” Coleman said.

Granted, Braun is driving for powerhouse Roush Fenway Racing, while Coleman is with Baker Curb Racing, an independent Nationwide Series team.

But both have plenty of experience in road-course racing, even though both are at the tender age of 19.

They first met each other at a race track, of course. At age 13, both were racing karts in North Texas.

“I remember the first race,” Braun said. “You were in the hospital more than you were on the track.”

“Here’s what happened: The first heat race, some dude comes barreling over me and jumps over my kart and in the process somehow knocks the tube off my gas tank, and I get fuel all up my leg,” Coleman said. “Also, somehow I suffered a heat stroke in the process.

“When I pulled in after the race, I was freaking out. I couldn’t get my helmet off. I was flipping. I had to get help taking my helmet off, and then I had to over to the ambulance. That was fun. Apparently, he thought it was funny.”

“I thought it was hilarious,” Braun said.

“He should tell you beforehand, though, I was in first place,” Coleman said.

“But who ended up winning that weekend?” Braun said.

“You did. But I was in the hospital,” Coleman said. “Some kid ran over me, and I was in the hospital. That’s all I’ve got to say.”

Three years later, they were teamed with another 16-year-old, Adrian Carrio, to drive a Porsche for The Racer’s Group in the Rolex 24 at Daytona and a few other races. Later, the three teamed to drive a prototype in the Grand American Series.

The experiment was a success, as Coleman and Braun later graduated to better things. But it wasn’t without hiccups.

Coleman remembers a test at Infineon Raceway in California with TRG owner Kevin Buckler.

“We had all just ridden with Kevin Buckler, and he taught us how to do it,” Coleman said. “Adrian was the first person to go out alone. He comes by one time, and there was a car behind him. Coming into Turn 10, the hairpin, we see the car that was behind him come around, but we don’t see Adrian. We’re like, ‘Hmm. Wonder what happened?’

“[TRG driver] Andy Lally pulls in, and he said, ‘Hey, is that your car upside-down near the tires?’ We’re like, ‘What?’”

They ran out to the track, and Carrio was upside-down, and the car was destroyed. That was the end of the test.

A race at Homestead-Miami Speedway was cut short by an accident.

“We were running second or third when he was about to pit,” Coleman said of Braun. “I had my helmet and everything on, and his dad was like, ‘All right, one more lap.’ I’m on the wall looking, and you could see Turn 4 from the pit. The only thing I see is our car coming backwards, and I was like, ‘Uh, oh.’”

“I backed it in real hard,” Braun said.

“That was the end of our race,” Coleman said. “I had my helmet on and everything, and I didn’t even get to do one lap.”

“I said, ‘Sorry,’” Braun said. “That was a bummer.”

After the Team 16 experiment, Coleman turned to stock cars, moving up the NASCAR ladder to join Brewco Motorsports before signing with Joe Gibbs Racing. This year, he’s driving full time for Baker Curb Racing.

Braun stayed in sports cars, winning two Grand-Am races in the Daytona Prototype category. But Roush Fenway Racing figured he could drive stock cars, too, and signed him last year.

His second race in NASCAR was the caution-filled Busch Series race in Memphis last year.

“We met each other,” Coleman said. “I was running second …”

“And you just wiped that dude out,” Braun interrupted.

“Someone in the very back did not pit,” Coleman said. “They were probably running 43rd when they decided not to pit, and they were up [front]. For some reason, they were in the middle of the corner, and decided to stop and hit the brakes again in the middle of the corner. I flat-out plowed him.

“I got him so hard that the fuel cell got up on my car and ripped my hood pins out. I had to pit, and I had to lose a lot of track position, which put me back to Colin.”

Ouch.

“I’d already gotten in wrecks prior to that, though,” Braun said. “There was a time when you were behind me.”

“That was after I had gotten my hood pins pulled out,” Coleman said.

“You were still behind me,” Braun said.

Barbs will likely be traded this weekend in Mexico City, no matter what the results are. It would make for an interesting story should Coleman and Braun be running first and second, respectively, in the closing laps.

Would one friend intentionally wreck the other to get a victory?

“I’d love to be able to joke around and say I would, but I probably wouldn’t, nope,” Coleman said. “I’ve got to have someone to go eat dinner with.

“I’m sure he’d flat-out dump me.”

“You’ve seen a race before, Brad,” Braun said. “I’d still go out to dinner with him. I’ll buy you dinner, though, if I dump you. That would make it all better, wouldn’t it?”

For once, there was no response.