"TIM BUMPS BACK HOME AT INDY 500"
Published, in edited form, in the Indianapolis Star (StarSouth), May 27, 2004 ©
Two-thirds of the Newman/Haas Racing garage in Gasoline Alley has gone dim, lights turned out like a store that has closed its doors for good and gone home. Sections of a cream-colored racing car sit on chest-high stands, seemingly ready to be made whole - and fast -- again.
Over in the other third of the Indy 500 garage, the fluorescent lights are still burning, though. And Tim Bumps, wearing a black knit shirt, is at work, sitting at a long folding table, calling racing vendors on his cellphone, talking with race officials about technical issues and making all the other preparations for another run at Indy 500 success.
Despite the enforced lull -- while the team's young Brazilian driver, Bruno Junqueira, is off competing in a Champ Car Series (formerly CART) event in Mexico - Bumps and the Newman/Haas Indy effort have hardly gone out of business or even come to a virtual standstill. The Center Grove High School graduate, who has made as many trips to Indy's Victory Lane as the legendary A. J. Foyt Jr., is working as hard as ever to get his latest project back to the most valued piece of real estate in Indy-car racing.
The garage spaces numbered B21-23 in the Gasoline Alley scheme of things clearly haven't been put on hold like a dismissed phone call. "No, the work expands for the time allowed," Bumps says, a full smile of straight white teeth forming on his fair, youthful face.
"The extra time has allowed us to do more work on the car. It's just allowed us much more time to be better prepared for the race."
As Bumps talks, a racing engine can be heard firing up at another garage about four doors down from the Newman/Haas compound. Throaty and rumbling, it is the most familiar - and welcome - sound for the 41-year-old Johnson County native to hear, especially after a couple of years away from the inner sanctum of an Indy garage.
Indy 2004 has all the earmarks of a homecoming for Bumps, whose dark hair, tousled at the front, is still full and only slightly fringed by a few gray strands at the edge of his sideburns. His career in auto racing has come full circle for Bumps, after a 23-year journey that began almost immediately after high school and transported him from Indiana to Pennsylvania to Chicago to Los Angeles to North Carolina and now back to northern Johnson County again.
This May, Bumps is back with Newman/Haas, the team he was with from 1995-97, and with team manager Jim McGee, the first person to hire him when he was just a fresh-faced kid out of Center Grove High School looking to break into the world of open-wheel racing. "Coming to work for this team was like coming back home, like working for Mom and Dad," he notes, with another straight-line smile.
"I enjoyed three great years here back in '95-97, and it was the only race team that I would've considered doing this for."
Having been a key player with top-rung racing teams like Newman/Haas, Team Penske, Patrick Racing and Kelley Racing for the past two decades, Bumps has raised his own personal bar for where he is willing to hang his racing uniform -- which, in his case, has ranged from that of a mechanic to an engineer to a team manager. "If this team wasn't going to be here this year, I probably wasn't going to be here, either," he says of the veteran team owned by Chicago businessman Carl Haas and film star Paul Newman that is making its first return to Indy since the CART-IRL split in 1996.
"I made the decision a couple of years ago that, if I was going to get back in open-wheel racing, it was going to be with people I've worked with before and were proven winners. When you work for the best, you kind of get spoiled."
He punctuates his last statement with a knowing laugh, one that continues as he spells out how the job with Newman/Haas came together shortly after he moved back to his mother's home in Greenwood in April. "The same week I moved up here," he says, leaning back in his vinyl-backed folding chair, "I finalized the deal with Newman/Haas to come work here.
"We did the deal over the phone, no squabbling about money or what I was going to do or anything like that. The deal was just a quick 10-minute phone call after I got relocated up here. That was on April 9, and I started work on April 12."
Of course, with a team returning to Indy after a nine-year hiatus, a steeper re-learning curve immediately faced Bumps, who had been merely a spectator the past two race days in May at the fabled speedway on West 16th Street, most of his time occupied by his work at the stock-car driving school operated by his old high school buddy, driver Andy Hillenburg, in Charlotte, N.C.
"Basically, I work on the car, which I haven't done since 1997, so I spent the first week getting myself familiar with that aspect of it again, which wasn't that bad," he explains. "Then, here at the track, I've been basically working with racing vendors here in town, if there are parts that need to be made. I've been assisting in getting those manufactured, logistically.
"And I've also been working with the IRL as far as seeing that our car stays legal."
And race day this year won't be spent in an air-conditioned suite over in turn two, as it was for Bumps in 2002 and 2003. He will have a front-row seat in the pits when Junqueira launches the team's return to the Indy 500 from the inside of the second row.
"My assignment race day will be behind the wall, assisting the CART pit crew in performing the best pit stops possible on race day," Bumps relates. "The reason we did the CART crew is because they do it week in and week out on Bruno's car.
"It was just a natural fit, and they're the best in the business."
Other than the pit crew, the Newman/Haas Indy operation has functioned independently of the team's two-car Champ Car Series effort, which has permitted Bumps and his co-workers to remain in Gasoline Alley during their driver's absence between qualifying weekend May 15-16 and today's final pre-race shakedown during the traditional Carburetion Day session.
Where Bumps heads next after Sunday's race is an open question for which he has several possible answers. "This is basically, at the moment, a month-of-May deal, which is what I wanted," he smiles and says from the lighted third of the silent garage.
"Working here this month has opened up some opportunities to stay in racing, but I'm not going to worry about those until after this race is over. We have an excellent chance of winning the race, so right now we're just going to concentrate on getting that job done."
Win or lose on Sunday, Bumps plans to pursue his options, some in racing and some possibly in documentary film-making, an avenue that drew his interest after working on a documentary film production before he left North Carolina.
"My first choice would be to get into research and development in motorsports, more of the engineering aspect of it," he says, gesturing with his hands spread in front of him like gates swinging open. "I have some opportunities there, and some in the film industry.
"I'm just lucky that I have the contacts available to me to make those kinds of decisions."
Bumps adds that he intends to spend some time after the Indy race visiting with family members - in addition to his mother, Maye, in Greenwood, he has three sisters and a brother, all of whom live in central Indiana - and maybe make an exploratory trip to California.
"I'm at the point now where I want to settle down," reports the much-traveled racing veteran, "and, of all the areas I've lived in, I like the West Coast the best. I have a lot of good friends out there; obviously, the climate is good, and the opportunities that are available to me are out there, both in racing and other careers."
"And, yes," he adds with an emphatic chuckle, before getting back to the tasks at hand inside the momentarily dimmed racing garage, "the moving around is really getting old."
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