As Tim Frantz put it, he's gone from dreaming the dream to living the dream.
Gone from talking about NASCAR races to being part of them."I always used to talk about going to NASCAR races," said Frantz, who has been with Warsaw-based ML Motorsports since its inception 10 years ago. "I never thought I'd be on pit road. Thanks to Dane and Mary Louise Miller, I've gone places I never thought I'd be able to go."
Frantz, better known as Flounder, will be on the go again this weekend, as he'll be behind the wheel of the team's 1999 Kenworth T-2000 semi en route to Daytona International Speedway, site of a three-day test for the NASCAR Nationwide Series, formerly the Busch Series.
The Nationwide Series kicks off its season February 16 with the Camping World 300 at Daytona, and ML Motorsports is scheduled to be there. It'll be the first of approximately 20 races the Warsaw team will enter this season.
February's race marks the start of the 10th season of competition for the Warsaw-based stock car team, which spent its first six full seasons competing in the Automobile Racing Club of America (ARCA).
Frantz and Tony Barnes, the team's manager, have been involved with the team since day one and have seen the operation grow from a 12x20 square foot work area to an 8,000 square foot hangar at Warsaw Municipal Airport to its current 40,000 square foot location at U.S. 30 and 500W.
They've worked with drivers Jimmy Kitchens, Andy Hillenburg, Brian Ross, Jason Jarrett, Chad Blount, Justin Diercks and current wheel man Mark Green.
"It's hard to believe it's been 10 years, it's gone by fast," said Frantz, who left his job as a mechanic at Petro's GM Showplace to work full-time with ML Motorsports prior to the start of the 2001 season. "I've gone from working part-time, putting in hours at the hangar and working another job full-time, to this being my full-time job. Dane and Mary Louise have been good to us. It's been very rewarding. We're a team from northern Indiana, around here a lot of people talk about sprint cars or the Indy 500, but we get to go to the track and see our car run against the Tony Stewarts and the Kevin Harvicks. Yeah, it's been very rewarding."
Though the ML Motorsports shop is 12 hours away from the hub of stock car racing - places like Mooresville and Charlotte, North Carolina - Frantz said the shop here in Warsaw rivals a number of shops in the southeastern part of the country.
"If you walked through the front door here, you wouldn't be able to tell if you were in Indiana or North Carolina," said Frantz. "We've got a shop that rivals a lot of the shops in North Carolina. Our shop is nicer than some of the shops down south, but it's obviously smaller than some of the shops that get big-money backing from the Cup teams."
Jeremy Marsh, who started volunteering with the team during the 2000 season and became a full-time employee five years ago, said he is proud of the fact that team management has remained close to its roots, keeping the shop in Warsaw and providing a number of locals a chance to be involved.
"Normally, we wouldn't have this opportunity without moving the family the Charlotte area, at least not at this level anyway," said Marsh. "We definitely have to thank Dane and Mary Louise for this opportunity. I think it's a very special thing for the community that they've kept the team and the shop here in Warsaw. There's NASCAR fans everywhere, and thanks to Dane and Mary Louise, there's a team right here in Warsaw."
Mary Louise Miller is listed as the owner, as is her daughter, Stephany Mullen, a Warsaw Community High School graduate.
Barnes and Marsh also graduated from WCHS, while Frantz graduated from Lakeland Christian Academy.
Pit crew members Mike Shingledecker and Craig Barnes are WCHS grads, while pit crew member Ken Nisly resides in Nappanee.
"Ten years ago I was watching NASCAR races from my couch," said Marsh, a member of the 1992 WCHS boys basketball Final Four team. "Now I go over the wall during pit stops and we're in the garage area and on pit road with guys that are in the Cup races on Sundays."
The one downfall so far to running in the Nationwide Series is that a number of the Sprint Cup (formerly Nextel Cup) teams use the Nationwide Series as an extra test, an opportunity to get more seat time for their driver.
ML Motorsports, with its limited number of full-time employees, is battling 100-plus person teams from North Carolina that get big-money backing from sponsors.
"I'd like to see us run a full schedule, but we'd have to get help from a sponsor," Marsh said when asked how he'd like the team to continue growing. "We'd have to get more guys in the shop. We're trying to run this shop the way things are run in Charlotte, and it takes a lot of money to do that."
In the 2007 season, ML Motorsports competed in 17 races - seven with Iowa native Justin Diercks and 10 with North Carolina resident Mark Green, brother of NASCAR drivers Jeff Green and David Green.
Mark Green, who highlighted the Warsaw teams's 2007 season by qualifying seventh for the fall race at Bristol Motor Speedway, is under contract to drive the No. 70 Chevy this season.
