Journeyman Files: Nathan Buttke

 

There’s a deep, fascinating world out there of “Almost” drivers, young guys and gals who showed a lot of speed at lower levels and just seemed one good ride away from success in one of the national series but it just didn’t quite happen for them. These particularly picked up in NASCAR post-Jeff Gordon when you started regularly seeing folks in their late teens and early twenties trying to break into the ranks and later in the 2000s when the official driver development programs first became a big thing in stock car racing. Often times they showed flashes of brilliance or at least competitiveness but the full time rides never came. It was thinking about these kinds of drivers that led me to this journeyman spotlight, Nathan Buttke.

A product of Randleman, North Carolina, the longtime home of the famous Petty family, Nathan Buttke was a mere 17 years old when he first started racing in the Busch Grand National Series in 1992 for a family owned team sponsored by Buttke Dairy Farms, fielding Oldsmobiles in their final supported year in NASCAR. Making three starts at Rougemont, Martinsville, and Hickory, Nathan scored top 20 finishes twice with the best result of 17^th 3 laps down at Martinsville.

The Buttke family greatly expanded their efforts, now in Chevrolets, in 1993 where they made 17 out of 28 races with 3 DNQs. The team had 8 DNFs, almost half their starts between crashes and mechanical failures, not particularly uncommon for smaller teams of the era. Nathan scored top 20 finishes in both races at the Orange County Speedway, at the legendary Myrtle Beach Speedway, as well as the fall support race to the Southern 500 at Darlington and topped off the season with his first career top 10 finish at the famed Hickory Motor Speedway. At year’s end, he ranked 28^th in series points.

The 1994 season started rough for the Buttke family, with Nathan failing to qualify the car 3 times in the first 5 races of the year. However, then came an opportunity when Barry Owen offered some races in relief of noted piece of garbage Mike Wallace who was then balancing a Cup and Busch schedule, running 3 races including a 19^th place finish at Orange County Speedway and his second career top 10 finish coming in South Boston, Virginia (home of the amazing Bologna Burger). The family team also resumed their efforts, not failing to qualify for any of their next 5 attempts but having just one top 20 result, an 18^th place finish four laps down at Hickory Motor Speedway.

After skipping the 1995 season entirely at the national level, where the Busch Grand National series switched from running V6 to full V8 engines more similar to the Cup series, the Buttkes returned in 1996. In their first 6 starts of the year, in which they also had 2 DNQs, they failed to finish every single race with a trio of mechanical failures to start and crashes that followed before finally breaking off a decent run at the Indianapolis Raceway Park where Nathan qualified 11^th and finished 17^th on the lead lap, one of very few lead lap performances he’d ever had at that point in his career. However, in the second half of the season Nathan Buttke actually found outside employment, being offered to finish out the Truck series season for Wayne Spears in the now-iconic 75 Spears Manufacturing Silverado which Bobby Gill had started the season in, scoring 4 top 10s himself. The gig began remarkably well for Buttke, scoring back to back top 10s at I-70 Speedway and IRP and backing it up with another top 20 at the rectangular Flemington Speedway. However, 7 DNFs (5 mechanical, two crashes) followed in the next 10 races although when the Truck did manage to finish he had a 6^th at Richmond and a 14^th at Mesa Marin.

The performance wasn’t enough to keep the ride full time though, as he’d be replaced by Winston West series regular Dan Press who himself would then be replaced by future Busch and Cup champion Kevin Harvick. However, it seemed to be enough to convince Carquest Auto Parts to join up with the family owned team back in the Busch Grand National circuit in 1997. Qualifying 3 times in 4 races, they had two DNFs but also a solid 20^th place finish at Darlington before deciding to combine their efforts and sponsorship with the more established and funded effort of Dan Browder. With Browder Buttke qualified 10 times in 12 attempts, but had his most regular rate of top 20s in his career thus far with 50% of his starts with the team including an 11^th place finish on a 7^th place start at the legendary Bristol Motor Speedway.

However, the Carquest relationship didn’t last and with the family team largely done Nathan found himself sitting on the bench hoping to pull supersub duty if a team needed. In BGN, well over half the season had passed before got a call to fill in for a suspended Jeff Purvis for notorious “personality” James Finch’s Phoenix Racing. He finished 22^nd at Michigan, scored his third career top 10 finish at Bristol with a 9^th, and came home 17^th at Darlington, largely taking advantage of much more competitive equipment than he had usually driven. He also did one race resulting in a DNF or the Washington-Irving team’s no. 50 Dr. Pepper sponsored car and returned to Dan Browder’s team for the final 4 races of the year, qualifying for half with a best finish of 23^rd. He also made a single start in the Truck series with a 17^th place finish for Ed Scherer at New Hampshire.

In 1999, Nathan Buttke made just a single start in either series finishing 16^th 2 laps down in his final ever Busch Grand National start at Myrtle Beach Speedway. He skipped the 2000 season entirely, returning in 2001 in the Truck series with Rick Ware Racing. Sponsored one of many internet-based crowd sponsor efforts of the early 00s that could frequently be seen on low budget cars in the top 3 series, Buttke ran the first 8 races of the year. Despite the notoriously low budget of those Ware trucks which sometimes start-and-parked before it became a more common practice and likely small sponsorship funding, they didn’t perform poorly, with top 20 finishes in half their starts and engine failures in almost the other half (3 races) and a best finish of 16^th at Miami. And just like that, that was it.

Nathan continued to race for a number of years at the Caraway Speedway in North Carolina and some short track based series, but he would never again make another major national stock car start. It makes me a bit sad, while I don’t think Buttke was ever the next star in the series, I think he absolutely had the talent that had he been given a more competitive, well funded ride he could have easily been in a regular fight for top 10 finishes at either the Busch or Truck level. If you consider what he did in a Spears truck versus what Kevin Harvick did in his first partial season in the truck in nearly the same amount of races the next season, Buttke probably slightly performed better overall but they are directly comparable at least. So many drivers don’t fully reach their prime until they are in their late 20s or early 30s, and Buttke was essentially sidelined by 26 years old.