Journeyman Files: Paul Menard

 

In the world of auto racing, there is always an inherent populist bias against the concept of a “pay driver”, somebody who gets a good car more by the virtue of the budget they bring through family money, sponsorship, or a mixture of both than by sheer talent alone. Everybody is guilty of it, including myself, despite the reality that almost all drivers in the modern era get their first opportunities because they are bringing a budget unless they land in a particularly good driver development program, and there are plenty of good drivers who just happened to have landed good partnerships who buy their rides nearly just as much. Anyway, today’s entry is one of the most well known pay drivers in the history of NASCAR: Paul Menard.

John Menard founded Menards hardware stores in 1964, which grew into one of the biggest chains of stores in the midwest over the following decades, even rivaling Home Depot and Lowe’s in the area. An auto racing enthusiast, he also became a team owner in Indycar racing, being best known for fielding often multiple entries in just the Indianapolis 500 every year with engines his team built themselves, pouring every effort into the biggest race of the year. When the Indycar split happened in the mid-90s, like many of the one race wonder teams who primarily focused on the 500, he was among the first car owners to commit to running full time in the new IRL series where between 1996 and 2003 the team won a championship with Tony Stewart, and won 8 total races with names like Robbie Buhl and Greg Ray. The team also fielded a winning Craftsman Truck Series effort in 2000 with Bryan Reffner, but despite their top 10 finish in points they only lasted a handful of races in 2001 without finding outside sponsorship and folded. After the team folded, Menards continued being a regular sponsor in all three top series of NASCAR, Indycar, and the title sponsor of the ARCA series.

Paul had a very diverse upbringing in racing, which included karting, ice racing, and legends cars as a youth before choosing to go with late models because Wisconsin had one of the most robust short track racing scenes in the country. Paul made his entry into NASCAR in 2000 racing in the NASCAR Midwest Tour, which was formerly the legendary ARTGO Challenge series that produced so many midwestern legends. As a rookie he scored top 10s in nearly half his starts with a best finish of second at Colorado National Speedway and placed 13^th in points. In 2001, while he had the same number of top 10s as the year before, he was overall more consistent placing in the top 15 in 15 out of 18 races, he scored multiple top 5s for the first time, and most importantly won his first race at Road America, all allowing him to improve to 9^th in points. He didn’t win again in 2002, with his best finishes being a pair of 4ths at Wisconsin International Raceway, but he set a career high 9 top 10s in a reduced 14 races and he finished 7^th in the final points. During this time Paul expanded on his affinity for road racing with competing regularly in the Trans Am series with some success and a few races in the Grand Am series as well.

In 2003, John Menard became the temporary savior of Andy Petree Racing when he offered sponsorship to help develop Paul in the upper ranks of stock car racing. Petree had lost 2 primary sponsors in as many years and his attempt to merge his team with the Dallas Cowboys operation as sponsor and co-owner did not pan out. They didn’t run full-time in any one series, but had an ambitious plan to gather a lot of different experience quickly for Paul that year. From lowest to highest: they entered Paul in 4 ARCA series races where he was instantly competitive, winning a race at Talladega, a pole at Winchester, and leading double digit laps in three of the four races. In the Truck series, the team entered 5 races, where Paul had a top 10 finish at Kansas and an 11^th place finish at Milwaukee. In the Busch series, Paul once again showed a lot of promise in his 6 starts (in 7 attempts), scoring top 15 finishes in his first two series starts and earning a solid 9^th place finish at IRP. Finally, Paul attempted two Cup races for APR, failing to qualify at Infineon as it was then-known and finising 29^th on the lead lap in his Cup debut at Watkins Glen.

In 2004 Paul returned to Andy Petree Racing with the intention of running the full Busch series season. This lasted just 14 disappointing races in which they managed just 4 top 20 finishes with a best of 13^th. After this, they decided to part ways with APR and Paul and John moved over to DEI, taking a mid-season break while they put together a team for him. While he didn’t score any top 5s for the thrown together entry and a lack of owner’s points led to a couple DNQs early on, the overall improvement was immediate and clear with 10 top 20 finishes and his first career pole.

Together full-time in 2005, it was a troubled start to the year for Paul and DEI. In the first 12 races he crashed out 3 times and had just 3 top 20 finishes with a best of 15^th though he didn’t manage a pole and outside pole in qualifying. He ranked just 22^nd in series points. However, from this point something just clicked with him and he began a remarkable turnaround. At nearly halfway in the year, he scored his first top 10 since 2002 and his first career top 5 with a 5^th place finish at Kentucky, and then just kept plugging away until he ended the season with 6 tops 5s, 15 top 10s after having just 3 finishes outside the top 10 after he broke the seal, and finishing a strong 6^th in points. He also returned to Watkins Glen in the Cup series, qualifying 42^nd and finishing 27^th on the lead lap for DEI.

In 2006, they kept the whole team together and they produced just consistently solid results. Paul had 5 DNFs from crashing in a year where the team didn’t have a single mechanical failure take them out, and he wasn’t near as consistent as he was in the second half of 2004, but he won his first ever national NASCAR race at his hometrack of the Milwaukee Mile and had nearly identical numbers in 7 top 5s, 16 top 10s, and finishing 6^th in points once again. Paul also made a number more starts in the Cup series as the team prepared him to make the move up, finishing a very impressive 7^th in his Cup Oval debut and collecting 3 more top 20s at the World 600, Michigan and Miami while also failing to qualify 3 times en route to 7 total starts.

Despite the clear promise his starts in 2006 showed, there’s no way to describe Paul Menard’s rookie season in Cup as anything but rough. He failed to qualify for 6 races throughout the year, including the Daytona 500 his team so valued and managed just 6 top 20 finishes, coming home 34^th in points. In 2007 he had just one top 5 and 10 on the year, a second place finish at Talladega, in a year in which DEI was one of several teams to have financial turmoil, having merged with the sketchily financed Ginn Racing the year before and effectively ceasing to exist at the end of the year, merging with Chip Ganassi Racing. However, he had a couple of more top 20 finishes and his bottom end became a bit more shallow and most importantly he qualified for every race, allowing him to finish 26^th in points.

With DEI’s merger leaving Menard without an available ride, took his funding to the Yates Racing team that so desperately struggled for sponsorship in that era. Once one of the best teams in NASCAR, winning a championship with Dale Jarrett in 1999 and several Daytona 500s, the team had been on a stiff and quick decline since the mid-00s despite their legendary engine program. The year was rough, while he had 6 top 20 finishes, the team finished outside of the top 25 a staggering 22 times. They finished 31^st in points, and Yates Racing closed shop at the end of the year. Paul also ran just short of half the Nationwide series races also for Yates, with 4 top 10s and a best finish of 5^th at Texas.

2010 would prove a busy year for Paul, but also a breakthrough. In the Cup series he drovewith Richard Petty Motorsports which had formed from the merged ashes of Gillett Evernham, Yates Racing and Petty Enterprises. He began the year with a 6 race top 20 streak that even had him in the top 10 in points for a period, highlighted by a 5^th place finish at Atlanta. Paul would go on to have 6 more top 10 finishes, easily a career best, and finish higher than he ever had in points in 23^rd. He also ran the entire Nationwide Series season for the first time since 2006 for Jack Roush, which disappointingly did not produce a return to victory lane but did see 19 top 10s and a career best 5^th place points finish.

The pairing would be shortlived though, because this performance opened up the door for the best opportunity in Paul’s career with Richard Childress Racing. Driving the newly numbered 27, Paul would quite simply enter the best period of his career.

In his first year with the team he managed to win his first ever, and ultimately only, NASCAR Cup series race at the legendary Indianapolis Speedway which had meant so much to his family in a good pit strategy call. He quadrupled his career high in top 5s, had 8 top 10s, led more laps than he had his entire career combined at that point, saw his average finish shoot up 7 full positions and he scored his first ever top 20 points finish in 17^th. He had a total of 4 top 5s and 18 top 10s over the next two years and finished 16^th and 17^th in points respectively. In 2014 he slipped out of the top 20 for the first time in 3 years, finishing in 21^st, but set career high top 5s in 5 and top 10s in 13. The next year he had just 5 top 10 finishes but had his first career top 15 points finish in 14^th.

However, RCR’s decline in the mid 10s was steep and swift, and it effected Paul more than any other. He had just 6 top 10s over the next two seasons with 25^th and 23^rd place finishes, and plenty of rumors that he could retire at any point. Despite the final years, it was a strong run that saw RCR and Menard combine to finish in the top 10 50 times as well as Xfinity wins at Michigan and Road America during part-time campaigns in the series during the 10s.

Paul didn’t decide to retire though and instead sought out a better opportunity. Penske Racing had expanded to a third car to make room for Ryan Blaney, which opened up the heavily Penske-supported Wood Brothers Ford that Blaney had proven quite competitive in. These would prove to be Paul’s last in the series, but they also proved that even this late in his career he still belonged on it. In 2018 he had a 5^th at Michigan and 6 other top 10 finishes and finished solidly in 19^th place in points. In 2019, his swan song in the series, he had just 4 top 10s but his average finish was not only considerably improved from the prior year but it was the second highest he ever had during a full-time season and he once again came home 19^th.

Paul has continued to race here and there in his retirement, he’s run a couple truck races a few years back and to this day will pop up randomly back in the Trans Am series where he has had several wins. So sure, I think we all know that Paul’s driving talent alone wouldn’t have likely gotten him the rides with really solid teams he had in his career, but once he got the rough learning curve out of the way in either Xfinity or Cup, he proved to be able to get a lot out of his equipment and put himself in position for good finishes. Sure, with some of that equipment he probably should have had more top 5s at the least, but no driver who manages 6 top 20 finishes in points in his career against 40 of the greatest stock car drivers in the world is anything but a genuinely pretty good journeyman. Just because you bring a budget doesn’t mean you can’t perform at a high level, and Paul performed at a high level more than the vast majority of drivers ever came close to.