Struggles in first half of season have not deterred ex-sportscar champ Andy Lally

July 15, 2011 at 12:00a.m.

Associated Press

SPARTA, Ky.

Andy Lally wants a hamburger. Badly. The bloodier the better.

Yet the former sportscar champion turned NASCAR driver won’t have one. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever.

He’ll deal with the craving, internalize it and put it aside just like he’s done every day for the last seven years, since he decided every living thing was entitled to the same rights he enjoys.

Two years ago Lally took it a step further, moving from vegetarian to vegan, which means he’s cut out dairy products, too. Though the 36-year-old from Long Island considers it an ethical choice, he understands it’s not for everybody, particularly the largely meat-and-potatoes crowd that crams the grandstand every weekend at a Cup race.

That doesn’t mean he’s not open to educating whenever possible.

“If [people] were able to see the mistreatment and what goes on and see what shows up to them in a nice shiny package,” Lally begins then cuts himself off, saying “I don’t want to go there.”

Then Lally laughs. Sorry, he can’t help but go his own way. When you’re a newcomer driving for an underdog Cup team that’s had a revolving door in the driver’s seat for three years, you don’t really have a choice.

Halfway through his first full-time Cup season driving the No. 71 TRG Motorsports Ford, Lally is trying to find pleasure in the grind. He heads to this week’s race at New Hampshire 33rd in points, but with something almost resembling momentum.

Lally qualified seventh in Daytona two weeks ago only to fade to 27th after having trouble finding a running partner in the later portion of the race. He finished 32nd at Kentucky last Saturday, not bad considering he started as the 43rd (last) car in the field.

Could the three-time winner of the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona still be winning Grand-Am races somewhere? Sure. Yet he’d rather be sweating it out every weekend in Cup. Even if it means working from the back of the field.

“Every aspect of the Cup series is humbling, man,” Lally said. “People will say, ‘He’s coming from something so different he’s going to get his butt kicked all year and if he makes any strides, great.’ But on my end, it’s not acceptable unless we’re going forward.”

And he’s encouraged by the progress his somewhat thrown together team has made over the last five months. Though the 71 car has been around for the last three years, stability has been hard to come by. Lally is one of nine drivers to hop behind the wheel for owner Kevin Buckler since he founded the team in 2009.

The team switched from Chevrolet to Ford this spring and is already on its third crew chief of the year, with Doug Richert now calling the shots. That’s a lot of moving pieces to deal with, and Lally remains optimistic the program is heading in the right direction.

“Even in races where we don’t finish well, we try to break it down and find some stints in the race, like ‘we hit it, we hit it, we hit the setup right, I drove it right, we did it well,’ ”’ Lally said.

Still, it can be a nerve-wracking experience. He calls failing to qualify at Darlington and Charlotte earlier this year “one of the toughest things I’ve ever gone through as a professional.”

Yet there’s no place he’d rather be.

“There’s still a huge competitive drive in me to accomplish the goals I have set in this series,” he said. “If there’s a good team willing to have me on board, then I’m going to work my butt off to stay here.”