Getting personal with ... Jack Roush: Pilot, NASCAR owner
06-15-2008, 03:06 PM
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Getting personal with ... Jack Roush: Pilot, NASCAR owner
NASCAR team owner Jack Roush of Northville performed the flyover before the start of Saturday's NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Cool City Customs 200 at Michigan International Speedway.
Roush, 66, always seen with his Panama hat at the track, sat down with Free Press writer George Sipple and talked about his love of aviation and his appreciation of the P-51 Mustang -- a single-seat fighter aircraft that aided the Allies in World War II.
How did you develop the passion for flying? "I was always a kid that liked to draw pictures of airplanes in early grade school. By the time I was in fourth or fifth grade, I was building model airplanes with balsa wood and rubber bands. Little later I got to where I could afford a little nitro-burning piston engine and built U-control models. Teenage years of course, cars take over.
"Twenty years later, my business had grown to a point that I needed a means to chase my road race cars around and my drag race cars around. I got a corporate airplane and had a pilot with it, and very quickly I started flying that -- until 1992, when I bought my first P-51 Mustang and then I went up and got a pilot's license and was able to fly by myself."
How long have you owned your P-51? "It's an old Reno air racer. People talk about finding a valuable and precious old car in a barn or an old airplane that's in pieces in a barn somewhere. This is an airplane that raced last at Reno Air Races in the 1970s. It was disassembled by people that thought they were going to restore it to mint condition. That job was too big for them, and they just covered it up and forgot about it for two decades. I was able to find out about it and bought it. Every rivet, every piece of skin, it's a complete rebuild."
Your fascination for that aircraft -- was that born out of a curiosity as a child? "My father was one of my heroes, if not my hero, as a young man. He was in World War II, on a battleship in the South Pacific.
"The aircraft carriers that were taking the war to Japan, he was protecting those with his battleship. He told me about the other pilots that they were protecting and what their sacrifices were. It made me proud to be an American."
Roush, 66, always seen with his Panama hat at the track, sat down with Free Press writer George Sipple and talked about his love of aviation and his appreciation of the P-51 Mustang -- a single-seat fighter aircraft that aided the Allies in World War II.
How did you develop the passion for flying? "I was always a kid that liked to draw pictures of airplanes in early grade school. By the time I was in fourth or fifth grade, I was building model airplanes with balsa wood and rubber bands. Little later I got to where I could afford a little nitro-burning piston engine and built U-control models. Teenage years of course, cars take over.
"Twenty years later, my business had grown to a point that I needed a means to chase my road race cars around and my drag race cars around. I got a corporate airplane and had a pilot with it, and very quickly I started flying that -- until 1992, when I bought my first P-51 Mustang and then I went up and got a pilot's license and was able to fly by myself."
How long have you owned your P-51? "It's an old Reno air racer. People talk about finding a valuable and precious old car in a barn or an old airplane that's in pieces in a barn somewhere. This is an airplane that raced last at Reno Air Races in the 1970s. It was disassembled by people that thought they were going to restore it to mint condition. That job was too big for them, and they just covered it up and forgot about it for two decades. I was able to find out about it and bought it. Every rivet, every piece of skin, it's a complete rebuild."
Your fascination for that aircraft -- was that born out of a curiosity as a child? "My father was one of my heroes, if not my hero, as a young man. He was in World War II, on a battleship in the South Pacific.
"The aircraft carriers that were taking the war to Japan, he was protecting those with his battleship. He told me about the other pilots that they were protecting and what their sacrifices were. It made me proud to be an American."
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