“Doc said to me that one of these days, I’m going to take care of you,” Belmont recalled.
What happened next launched the family on an improbable rocket run into NASCAR, first via the then-Dash Series for four-cylinder stock cars. In 1986, Mattioli secured him a ride at Pocono in the Dash Series car owned by Jim McClain, which resulted in a maiden fifth-place finish. Just that fast, Belmont found himself at Bobby Allison’s elbow in a NASCAR press conference. He bought the McClain car, hired Tom Knox as his crewman, crashed out of the next race at Bristol, and was leading the next Dash Series race at Daytona when a valve spring broke with 13 laps remaining. The Belmont resourcefulness was at work, if not on full display.
“Dash cars back then had an eight-gallon fuel cell. The conventional wisdom was that you’d have to stop every 20 laps for fuel. So I figured if we could eliminate a pit stop, we’d win the race,” Belmont explained. “So I went to the Army-Navy store and bought three one-quart fuel filters, and then put in 40 feet of 1-inch fuel line wrapped it in a pile behind a firewall, so we had 11.3 gallons of fuel on board. I pitted on lap 33 and lap 66. At the time, there was no rule on how many fuel filters you had to have.”
Belmont was on stride. He teamed with Larry Caudill as a two-car effort, winning the last Dash Series race at Hickory (N.C.) Motor Speedway in 1987 and garnering rookie-of-the-year honors. A potential Dash Series championship run ended when Belmont was seriously injured in a wreck at Charlotte Motor Speedway, which allowed Caudill to claim the title.
Despite three wins and three poles, Belmont ultimately left the Dash Series. And then the phone rang again. It was sponsorship executive Don Hawk, who was then doing marketing for a major auto group in Delaware, and who arranged sponsorship — with Neil Bonnett and Alan Kulwicki as teammates, for a single Cup Series start at Dover (Del.) Int’l Speedway in 1988.
Belmont bought an ex-Junior Johnson car from Doug Richert that Pancho Carter had previously driven and began a journeyman career in both NASCAR and ARCA, operating the family run team at times from Pennsylvania and North Carolina.
Belmont is highly articulate and personable and was a very proper fit with the NASCAR marketing environment, variously landing sponsors ranging from oil additives to braking components to AOL. It got Belmont noticed in a garage area full of overachievers, helping him build relationships that bear fruit to this day. But the team lacked the money to compete consistently.
“We made eight or nine races, were sent home from others,” he said. “I thought my talent would overcome our lack of equipment. I didn’t quite catch on to the fact that you really need a motor to get down the straightaway, and you have to be able to buy tires. We looked like a ragtag outfit compared to everyone else.”
That’s changed significantly, especially for the next Belmont generation. Youngest son, Brett, scored a sportsman victory at Bridgeport before walking away from the sport. That left Andy with several new Bicknell chassis and no driver. Once more, Belmont’s Garage provided the solution. The team’s new driver is Joe Toth, whose great-grandfather once worked alongside Chic Belmont, Andy’s father, maintaining a modified in Newtown, Pa. There’s more, because Toth’s mother used to handle PR for Andy when he was in ARCA. Running in the tough regional crate sportsman action, the Belmont’s Garage team has won seven championships over the past two years.
Belmont’s Garage is also an active sponsor, supporting racers ranging from neighbor Mike Haggenbottom in USAC Silver Crown to Todd Morey, who runs a street stock at Fonda (N.Y.) Speedway. And there’s decidedly still a NASCAR connection. Andy Belmont’s son Kyle now works at Penske Racing as a tire specialist and interior fabricator for Austin Cindric.
Kyle Belmont said that ultimately, it’s all come down to the life’s lessons learned in Langhorne.
“More than anything, I learned about how to be versatile. This is what we did to put food on the table,” Kyle Belmont said. “The positive is that a lot of the people who came through the building in Langhorne and went on to bigger and better things was that you learned from them. At Penske, it’s funny, because you go into the garage area and there are several people there from different teams who I recognized that worked for my father when I was growing up.”
“The director of competition at Penske is Travis Geisler. His brother worked for me when I had AOL as a sponsor, and Travis drove my ARCA car a couple of times,” Andy Belmont said. “Travis was the one who got Kyle the interview with the Wood Brothers. Kyle gave me his NASCAR championship ring from when they won the Cup Series title with Joey Logano, and now the kid gives me his Daytona 500 ring that he won with Austin Cindric. That’s really special to me.”
This story appeared in the Feb. 1 edition of the SPEED SPORT Insider.
