By TONY FABRIZIO
Rick Mast is known as much for a single qualifying lap he ran at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 1994 as for the 103,137 racing laps combined that he ran in a 15-year NASCAR career.
The one qualifying lap earned him the pole for the first Brickyard 400, the debut of stock cars on the hallowed grounds of America's most famous racetrack.
"I'll tell you how big this thing was," Mast said from his business in Virginia on Tuesday. "Here we are in 2006, and I get stuff either in the mail or at an autograph session that people want me to sign from the inaugural Brickyard."
Winning the pole for the first Brickyard - the race has been renamed the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard and will have its 13th running Sunday - was Mast's most famous racing accomplishment, but by far not his most important contribution.
His most important contribution was drawing attention to carbon monoxide poisoning in motorsports when he ended his career prematurely in 2003.
Mast, 49, spoke candidly during the preseason media tour in 2003, saying he had undergone countless tests to find out what was causing his severe headaches, nausea, dizziness and weight loss.
At a clinic in Colorado Springs, he was finally diagnosed with acute and chronic carbon monoxide poisoning and a related multiple chemical sensitivity.
The carbon monoxide poisoning occurred during prolonged exposure in his race cars, and Mast wanted to make sure NASCAR was working on the problem.
"I called [NASCAR president] Mike [Helton] and said, 'Here's what I want to do and how I want to announce it, and I want to be able to turn to you guys and say, 'Here's what NASCAR's doing about it.'" Mast says now.
"I never faced any resistance. In fact, it was the opposite of resistance. I had a game plan in place in case it hadn't gone that way because I wasn't going to see these other guys go through it."
Widespread Problem
After Mast brought the issue into the open, several other drivers, including Tony Stewart and Greg Biffle, spoke up about difficulties they had experienced with toxic fume exposure in their cars.
Drivers referred to it as "cabin fever," a combination of nausea, vision problems and confusion experienced during some races - particularly short-track events.
NASCAR already was working on a filtering system for carbon monoxide at its research and development center in Concord, N.C., and soon after Mast's announcement, introduced a filtering "catalyst," which sits on the floor next to the driver and sends clean air to the driver's helmet.
Since then, some teams and WIX Filters of North Carolina have come up with improvements. Even so, drivers are still treated for carbon monoxide exposure from time to time.
Mast believes that sleek aerodynamics of today's cars and the lower compression ratios of the engines added to the problem.
"With the cars being more aerodynamic, you actually sit in a low pressure area," he said. "The way the aero works, the low pressure always tries to pull in air from the cracks and crevices and anything around it.
"And the lower the compression ratio of the engine, the higher the parts per million of carbon monoxide."
Mast says he has heard not only from current drivers but also from several retired drivers about their battles with carbon monoxide exposure.
"They'd call me and say, 'Man, you can't believe what your deal has done,'" Mast said. "These guys from back in the '60s and '70s, they'd always kept it to themselves. Everybody did because you felt like people would think it was a conditioning thing, where you weren't in as good a shape as you needed to be.
"But even Richard Petty came to me and said he got it in 1963 or '64, and it took him four or five races to get straightened out. He said, 'I'm telling you right now, I would have won at least 20 more races if I didn't have that, because I never could tolerate it after that.'"
On The Rebound
Mast was told by doctors he would remain sensitive to carbon monoxide the rest of his life, but he is doing much better these days.
He owns and operates RKM Enviroclean, a Lexington, Va., company that - oddly enough - specializes in industrial spill cleanups.
"Up until about a year and a half ago, if my brain detected me breathing [carbon monoxide], it shut my body down," Mast said.
"Now I can at least be around it. If I'm somewhere where there's fumes, I try to avoid them, of course. But the company we've got has equipment and trucks and I've got to be around it to a certain degree. Plus I'm a gearhead, man. I've got four-wheelers and tractors and everything on the farm."
Mast said he's had chances to get back around racing, but he has limited his involvement to an affiliation with Rowdy.com, a racing radio show accessible by cell phone, and "NASCALLS," a CD of prank calls to NASCAR drivers being sold for charity.
He says eight months at home recuperating from the worst of his illness taught him that he doesn't want to spend so much time on the road.
"I came home from doing a Busch race for Fox, and we were celebrating [my son] Ricky's birthday," Mast said. "He was turning 20, and I turned to my wife and said, 'When the heck did he get 20 years old?'
"My twin little girls were, like, 6, and I kind of made up my mind that I am not going to miss these girls growing up the way I did Ricky."
Those who believe things happen for a reason could point to Rick Mast.
They could point to his pole in the inaugural Brickyard 400 and everything that has happened since them.
A journeyman racer has left a mark.
He'll always be the winner of the first Brickyard 400 pole.
Rick Mast & Lee Roy Mercer
Photo Courtesy Of WarHead Records
www.LEEROYMERCER.com
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