Daily News-Record

Heading around a turn, driver Sterling Marlin brushed the wall, spun out and found his NASCAR car badly damaged.

But don't worry. Marlin, who quickly flashed a smile, was OK.

He lifted himself up - off the purple couch in Circuit City, faced the crowd watching him play NASCAR Heat 2002 on the Xbox game system and chuckled.

"That's the first time I ever played," the 46-year-old Marlin said.

Marlin was in town Wednesday for the grand opening of the electronics store, located in Harrisonburg Crossing. He briefly played the video game against a trio of children from the Boys and Girls Club, then signed autographs for fans.

Marlin, who drives owner Chip Ganassi's No. 40 Coors Light Dodge and is 15th on the Winston Cup points leaderboard, said he makes 20 to 30 such promotional appearances during the year.

That's a far cry from the NASCAR circuit he grew up with; the one where his father, Clifton "Coo Coo" Marlin, raced from the '50s through the '70s.

"It's totally different," Marlin said. "When he ran, it was more driver than it is car. Now it's engineers and it's a lot more car now than it is driver. The money's a lot better now. There's about six times the fans."

It was during the '70s that Sterling joined his father's pit crew, changing right-front tires.

Coo Coo Marlin ran his last race in 1980 at Talladega, Ala. Twenty-two years later, Sterling announced the premature end to his most promising season at the same track.

Marlin was leading the points race last season when a pair of wrecks - one in Richmond and one in Kansas - left him with a dislocated vertebrae in his neck, forcing him to miss the series' last seven races.

"I think my health is more important than the championship," Marlin, who won consecutive Daytona 500's in 1994 and 1995, said the day before last year's race at Talladega Superspeedway.

Ironically, it was Coo Coo's crash at Talladega that put Sterling in his first NASCAR ride.

"He broke his shoulder at Talladega," Marlin said. "We drove the car home, fixed it up. Me and my high school buddies and my cousin fixed the car and went racing."

In today's NASCAR, drivers have crews of engineers working on cars in expensive, fully outfitted garages. But that wasn't the racing circuit Sterling's dad competed on.

Fan support and media attention has ballooned from the sports earlier days.

"Back in the old days it was hard to even get a TV crew to come out to do anything," Marlin said while signing a Circuit City T-shirt for a fan. "Now you can't even sign without a camera in your face."

Outside of the occasional appearance at a local Chevrolet or Dodge dealership, drivers didn't make promotional appearances.

Few drivers had their own major sponsors. Today, every driver has a major sponsor and a host of smaller contributors.

But for the sport to continue to grow, Marlin, the 1983 Winston Cup Rookie of the Year, thinks changes need to be made to hold down owners' costs and increase driver safety.

Marlin said having soft walls at tracks and a traveling medical team like the one the Indy Racing League brings from track to track would improve racing safety.

But the biggest challenge facing the sport, Marlin said, is costs.

"They've got to watch costs for the owners," Marlin said. "It's gotten so expensive. We can't be going to Coors every year and saying, 'We need more money.' NASCAR has to step up somewhere and try to curb some costs."

While that question may be growing in importance, the sport's present looks as strong as ever.

Marlin had to smile when he stepped into the store's lobby and saw hundreds of fans waiting in line to get his autograph on an assortment of NASCAR memorabilia.

Now, Marlin is hoping to give those fans a victory before the 2003 season ends.

"The last month's been kind of bad for us," Marlin said. "I think we can get us a win in the next couple of weeks."

Marlin has eight top-ten finishes, but hasn't placed higher than 18th in any of his last four outings. He is winless in 19 starts, with four sixth-place finishes his best in what he called a "disappointing" season, but has still earned $2,161,835.

As for video games, Marlin said he never plays much, preferring to spend his spare moments collecting Civil War artifacts or watching his daughter play basketball.

After all, spare time is a rarity for today's drivers.
Copyright (c) 2003, Byrd Newspapers, All Rights Reserved.
Record Number: 109E3A10AA39717E