TEAM OWNER Roush can't get enough racing

His four Cup drivers are in the top 12 in the points and have combined to give him nine wins.
By MIKE HARRIS
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Jack Roush was talking animatedly about his favorite subject: auto racing.
The NASCAR team owner hunched forward in his chair, furrowing his brow as he made a point. Sitting in the rear of driver Mark Martin's hauler at Phoenix International Raceway last weekend, Roush felt right at home.
"I'm just Joe Racer," he said, sitting back and letting a grin spread over his weathered face.
The 60-year-old Roush, who fields cars in Winston Cup, the Busch Series and NASCAR's truck series, is even more charged up than usual as the season comes to an end Sunday with the Miami 400 in Homestead, Fla.
Team success
Greg Biffle already has given him the Busch championship, and Martin, the driver who has been with him since Roush started his NASCAR team in 1988, goes into the season finale in Homestead, Fla., with a chance -- though slim -- to overtake Tony Stewart for the title.
All four of his Cup drivers are in the top 12 in the season points and have combined to give their boss nine victories -- a terrific season by any measure, especially after a disheartening 2001.
Beyond that, Roush is just feeling lucky to be alive these days.
The head of Roush Industries, an engineering and prototype development company employing more than 1,700 people -- independent of Roush Racing -- survived the crash of a small experimental aircraft into an Alabama lake while visiting friends on his birthday, April 19.
Roush, an intense man used to getting his way, has made a remarkable recovery. He walks with only the barest hint of a limp and, except for a titanium rod in his thigh and some metal plates and screws in his ankle and foot, there's not much to physically remind him of that frightening day.
Mentally, it's a different story.
"The accident did change me, but not what you think," Roush said.
After spending 12 days in the University of Alabama Medical Center in Birmingham, Roush was flown to the University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor to begin physical therapy.
Exchange offer
Working alongside him were two young men with spinal injuries that left them paraplegics and a young women who had lost both of her feet and her hands.
"It was my 60th birthday when I went into the water in Troy, Ala., and if I could have given those young men back their legs at 24 years old, and that young woman her hands and feet back, they could have left me in the water," Roush said, his voice cracking with emotion.
"I never had that feeling before in my life. That's given me a better appreciation for how lucky I've been for all the accidents that I've missed."
Roush said he never worried about how his company was being run in his absence. Mostly, he just wanted to get back to the racetrack.
"Racing is about 25 percent of the company," Roush said. "I've got a management team in place that runs the engineering business. They call me in occasionally when they need me for some sales or strategic meeting of consequence with a customer or supplier. I'll be called in to provide the necessary commitment for the company if they think they need it at my level.
"Except for that, I'm embroiled in racing. I go to bed thinking about my race cars and my problems and I wake up thinking about my race cars and my problems. It's only when they stop me that they get my attention on the rest of these things."
Mostly in agreement
However Roush goes about his business these days, it works for his drivers.
"I honestly have to say that every time I've asked Jack for something -- and it works this way for everybody on the team -- if we need something and we have a good case to support it and it's something reasonable, he gives it to us," said Matt Kenseth, series leader.
"It doesn't matter how much it costs or how hard it is to get it. He gives us whatever we need to race, and that's my favorite thing about Roush Racing."