Long time coming

JANN HENDRY/Acorn Newspapers THE CREW—Race car driver Tim Huddleston (standing right) credits much of his success over the past 17 years to the company he’s kept. Here he poses with a few members of his team. From left to right are Brad Mulvihill of Newbury Park, son Trevor Huddleston, Branden Mulvihill and Joe LePelusa. According to Agoura Hills’ resident race car driver, Tim Huddleston, there are two things a person needs to get started in racing: 1) a big stack of money and, 2) an even bigger stack of friends.

Huddleston said he’s fortunate to have started his career with the latter and, today, thanks to the success of his racing and his racingrelated business, he’s rapidly accumulating the first.

This Saturday at the Irwindale Motor Speedway, Huddleston and his crew will reach a milestone in a mission he and five other buddies started 17 years ago when they decided to build a race car in their high school auto shop class.

For the first time in his career, Huddleston will be named the year’s point champion in the NASCAR Dodge Weekly Racing Series late model class—an honor that is mathematically assured as long as Huddleston starts his engine in Saturday’s race.

“Right now we’re so far ahead in points (with two races to go) that all we need to do to win the championship is for me to start the car,” said Huddleston, who hasn’t finished out of the top five in 13 races this season at Irwindale, and has captured seven checkered flags. “Once they say, ‘Gentleman, start your engines,’ I’ve basically won.”

The fact that he has pre-race knowledge of this huge accomplishment is expected to only slightly dull a post-race celebration many years in the making.

And while several local residents will be in attendance at Irwindale to share in the biggest night of Huddleston’s racing career, it’s doubtful that many of them are fully aware of just how far the 35-year-old father of three and his crew have come to get to this point.

“It took me 12 years before I ever won my first race—12 years before I could put together the right team of guys to make us a force in racing,” Huddleston said. “Now, five year later, and we’ve finally reached that milestone. It’s huge, but we’ve earned it. We’re in line for a big celebration.”

Huddleston’s story of his ascent atop the late-model series, which is much like the minor leagues of NASCAR, is worthy of a Hollywood script.

It begins with six friends in an auto shop class at University High School in West Los Angeles in the late 80s. Today, three of those six—Steve Wall, Rick Guzman and Brett Barnett—remain in Huddleston’s circle.

“We didn’t have any background in racing, we just decided to build a race car and race it,” said Huddleston, who raced for the first time at Saugus Speedway when he was a senior in high school. “I remember barely being able to afford to buy the paint to paint the car— all of us would just pool together whatever we had. But we put the car on the back of a trailer and showed up there week after week on just enough borrowed money to get us to the race.”

“Unfortunately, racing is like a bad (addiction), and I remember scraping and pulling anything I could just to keep my habit going.”

For many years, the team’s lack of funding and lack of racing experience kept them just out of reach of the checkered flag, despite scores of second-place finishes and a growing amount of respect from the racing community.

“We were just kids racing against millionaires,” Huddleston said. “We had so many secondplace finishes that we started to think we were always going to be the bridesmaid, never the bride.”

Then in 2001, Huddleston made a business decision that would forever alter the course of his life, and put an end to his team’s financial shortcomings.

Huddleston opened up a distribution center in Agoura to sell Justice Brothers car products to auto mechanics all across Greater Los Angeles, a business he named High Point Distributing

Mortgaging his house to do so, Huddleston started with one van and one small shop he said was no bigger than a walk-in closet. Today, High Point has 11 vans, 14 employees and a 4,000 squarefoot facility located in the Agoura Business Center.

Huddleston’s business success came about because he had enough savvy to forge a relationship with auto mechanics, a group that generally shares his passion for the sport of racing.

“One thing I knew about sales is that when you go into a place you’re always looking for common ground, and racing gave me that,” he said. “It allowed me to make contacts I never would have made otherwise.”

Thanks to his wise thinking, Huddleston has now created a situation where his career and pastime are solidly linked. In fact, all of the work done on his racing cars is done in his shop in Agoura—and Justice Brothers is his crew’s title sponsor.

Just a few short days from his long-awaited points championship and Huddleston can’t help but think back on how far he’s come, and how many people helped him get there.

More than anyone else, Huddleston gives the greatest thanks to his wife of 11 years, Lisa, an Agoura native and daughter of Southern California racing legend, Oren Prosser, Sr..

The two met on the race track through Lisa’s brother, Cal, who currently works as a pro crew chief for a NASCAR Nextel Cup team.

“It wasn’t always easy. In fact, for a lot of the time, it was a struggle,” Huddleston said. “There were a lot of 20 hour work days and a lot of days away from the house spent racing, and she’s been there every step of the way. She’s just incredible.”

On hand at Saturday’s race will be the couple’s three children: 9year-old Trevor, 4-year-old Hailey and Tanner, who will turn 2 on the biggest night of his father’s racing career.

“I’m so happy for him,” Lisa said. “He’s been waiting 17 years and now he’s finally got it.”

Always ready to give credit to those around him, Huddleston constantly reiterates the fact that his accomplishment is far from an individual one. When talking of his success, the driver always uses the word “we,” never “I.”

“In racing, you are only as good as the crew of people around you— that goes for Mario Andretti, Jeff Gordon and myself. It wouldn’t be possible without the people in our corner,” Huddleston said. “It’s unfortunate that it’s just one name the fans get to know.”

This kind of attitude is why Huddleston has never lacked a large stack of friends—and why so many of them will be cheering him on come Saturday.

Everyone in the community is invited to attend.

“Sometimes, until you look back on how far you’ve come, you don’t realize it,” Huddleston said. “This Saturday will be my wake up call.” NASCAR Auto

Club Late

Model Season Point Standings

1. Tim Huddleston 652 2. Mike Johnson 556 3. Travis Thirkettle 510 4. Brian Kelley 492 5. Scott Youngren 484

(two races left)