Hear the full interview with Ryan Sieg: Listen and/or Download

On the heels of an exhilarating end to the 2011 NASCAR season, the talk in racing circles is the intense battle Carl Edwards and Tony Stewart and Carl Edwards waged at in the Sprint Cup Series Homestead-Miami Speedway season finale. And while champagne suds showered Stewart, Nationwide Series champion Ricky Stenhouse Jr., and Camping World Truck Series champion Austin Dillon, other teams celebrated smaller victories as they left south Florida. One of those is RSS Racing, the team that fields the full-time NCWTS No. 39 Chevy Silverado for 24-year-old Ryan Sieg.

RSS Racing is housed in a small shop near Downtown Tucker, Georgia, a small city in Metro Atlanta, about 15 minutes northeast of Downtown Atlanta. The actual race shop is in a small building behind the much bigger S&W Towing, which has lots full of towed cars or car carcasses – some of which haven’t moved in ages. RSS Racing not only fields the No. 39 of Sieg, but also several start and park efforts that help channel funding to keep the No. 39 on track. A handful of drivers, including Ryan’s older brother Shane, who is listed as the team’s owner (and whom NASCAR banned for violating its substance abuse policy earlier this year, because of use of an expired prescription not registered with the sport), have had their hands behind the wheel of the Nos. 93, 38, and 27 trucks, running them a handful of laps to secure the few thousand dollars for last place at minimal cost.

Unlike most small teams, RSS Racing actually has a solid blueprint for success. The team has been buying rolling chassis (a race-ready truck, that comes with just about everything except the seat, which drivers often have custom-fit to their sizes) from Kevin Harvick Inc. With KHI now closed, RSS will look to another Chevy team that races trucks, such as Turner Motorsports, to update its fleet when it needs to. Switching from Chevy to another make would throw the team for a loop, as it currently buys motors from Earnhardt Childress Racing and would be behind if they had to switch to another provider.

Fortunately, RSS Racing does not need to update its collection of trucks very often. The team has a couple of short track trucks, a couple of intermediate ones, and a couple of backup pieces. Sieg knows the team’s limitations and, therefore, races within his bounds. Knowing the No. 39 is a step behind the front-running KHI, Kyle Busch Motorsports, and Turner Motorsports trucks, Sieg races cleanly and conservatively, keeping his nose clean and letting more aggressive drivers fall by the wayside. In the 2011 season, Sieg only crashed out of only one race (after cutting a tire and hitting the wall at Kentucky Speedway), saving his team the time, money, and hassle of having to repair too many trucks, with only a handful of employees on-hand to complete the already long checklist before race day.

As Sieg explains to me the differences between his team and the ones with larger funding, he pauses to help load his No. 39 primary and backup trucks (the latter of which will serve as the team’s fourth entry into the Homestead-Miami race) into RSS Racing’s brand new No. 39 hauler. The older hauler, branded with the No. 93, houses two other trucks, which will serve as the team’s two other start and park entries. Until recently, Sieg actually drove the team’s hauler to the track, but now he flies there with his dad, Rod, the owner of both the team and S&W, which serves as the No. 39’s sponsor.

"This is pretty much our own business. Me and my dad - we plan everything, do everything, and get everything going for each race," Sieg says with a simplicity and matter of fact cadence that strays from the PR-glazed responses most drivers and personalities in NASCAR’s higher realms offer.

The RSS Racing shop in Tucker is the main hub for the team, where the team does the last prep work for its entries before departing for the track. Inside, a couple of trucks are up on lifts for work, while the rest sit on the main shop floor in various stages of repair. The trucks sport all-black bodies and are adorned with decals that Sieg himself cuts in the shop’s decal room and places on his trucks each week. Sieg, unlike most NASCAR drivers, also does just about any kind of work on the trucks – from chassis setup, to parts installations, to sweeping the shop floor. He is as involved in the success of the team outside the truck’s cockpit as he is inside it. But the team does have the benefit of other partners that shoulder the work load and handle some details that the team members in the RSS shop would have trouble dealing with.

RSS Racing does have some pretty good aces in the hole. No. 39 crew chief Mike Garvey, who often start-and-parks one of the team’s trucks before assuming duties on the No. 39 pit box, does more than drive and wrench for the team at the  track. From his McDonough, Georgia shop he fine tunes the No. 39 trucks before the team drives them to the track. Garvey races Late Models around the southeast and even has a handful of Sprint Cup and Nationwide Series starts to his name. His experience and connections in racing certainly are assets to the team.

Sieg says that his team is at a disadvantage, being based several hours away from most other race teams. But they have made strides growing roots in the sport.  "We just have little connections with people we've known over the years. But most of it - we're out of the loop. We're out of the loop here in Georgia. We pretty much do most of it on our own."

Sieg and his RSS cohorts do talk to people they know at Germain Racing and ThorSport Racing. Sieg even gets some driving tips from veteran driver Johnny Sauter, who just finished 2^nd in points in the No. 13 ThorSport Chevy. And the prospects for the team seem to be trending even more in their favor.

With Kevin Harvick Inc. closing, Germain Racing scaling back or completely shutting down, other teams with uncertain futures, and Kyle Busch likely running less races in his own truck, teams like Sieg’s have a great chance to improve on their showing on the track. Sieg gave a Cheshire grin while contemplating 2012. "I think we'll be pretty good next year." 

But 2011 did throw the team off just a bit. After scoring two top 10s and an average finish of 19.4 in 2010, Sieg scored only one top 10 and an average finish of 21.5 this year. A new tire compound from Goodyear set the No. 39 team back, as other teams had more resources to adjust and fine tune their setups - such as multiple tire specialists, wind tunnel testing, chassis dynomometers, and racing simulators. RSS Racing has one tire specialist (who serves several other roles on the team) and has no money for the fancy tools and gadgets other teams use. 

"It's kind of thrown us for a curve this year. We've hit on it at some tracks and at some we've missed it. We've hit on something on our setups recently and have been running better. We had some problems with little mechanical failures at the beginning of the year. We should be better next year, because we should have the same stuff."

That continuity will be a savior for all small teams in the NCWTS next season, but the gap between the well-funded and the shoe string operations is still nearly insurmountable for teams like RSS Racing. NASCAR has tried to bridge the gap, instituting a limit of four sets of tires (which cost about $2000 each) and a sealed motor rule (where teams have to use each motor for three races before rebuilding it). From a small team perspective, Sieg would like to see a little more. “I guess they could go to an engine rule, where everyone has a sealed or spec engine. I don't see them doing that.”

For now, RSS Racing soldiers on. Sieg, his dad, and the shop employees continue to make gains on the truck technology any way that they can. Susan Bates, who does marketing and public relations for the team, calls company after company in search of additional sponsorship on the No. 39. The team has landed Pull-A-Part Used Auto Parts, another small, family-owned business, which sponsored the No. 39 at Talladega in October and will again in 2012. After hundreds of calls to dozens of companies, RSS Racing has landed a great partner, but not many other companies are takers for pricey NASCAR team sponsorship. Sieg hopes the team can expand its partnership with Pull-A-Part to bigger and better things in 2012 and 2013.

"I would love to do Nationwide [Series]. I know we are thinking of getting a Nationwide car and trying a few [races] next year. There are a few tracks we'd like to run. I'm thinking we can get our feet wet for 2013 and do a full Nationwide and full Truck [schedule] then, maybe."

So, while many big teams like Red Bull Racing, KHI, Roush Fenway Racing, Richard Childress Racing, Turner Motorsports, Rusty Wallace Racing, and others that have had or still have big funding are cutting back, RSS Racing, with its limited funding and resources is looking to expand. There are some success stories in NASCAR.

At Homestead Miami Speedway, rain canceled qualifying, so one of RSS Racing’s trucks, the No. 27 of Ross Chastain (which was supposed to run the full race with sponsorship from the National Watermelon Promotion Board), failed to make the field. Chastain, instead, took the wheel of Garvey’s No. 93. He spun out, but finished the race two laps down in 27^th. Sieg had an uneventful race and finished 24^th, one lap down.  

The stats do not spell the story of the weekend. RSS ran two trucks that gleaned over $21,000 in race winnings. Combined with the sponsorship that Chastain brought on board and the $8,350 that Dennis Setzer won by starting-and-parking the No. 38., the money is just enough to pay for the tires, the two pit crews rented from Hendrick Motorsports (for about $2000 per race), and the two motors that ran the full race. The team turns a small profit and puts it back into the business – which involves getting ready for next season.

Sieg is impressed with how far RSS Racing has come. "We've progressed a pretty good amount. You know what I mean? It's a pretty cool deal. It took a couple of years to get going, but we're there every week now. It's a fun thing and it's something I like doing."

There are no givens in the world of motorsports, but amidst the doom and gloom of the NASCAR economy, small teams like RSS Racing forge ahead and buck the trends and the stats. And that is something that race fans have to appreciate. 

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On Saturday, join Capt. Herb, Jason Durden, Mark Arum, myself and many more at Fred's BBQ House (Thornton Rd./Hwy. 6 about one mile north of I-20) for our annual U.S. Marine's Toys for Tots broadcast. Bring an unused, unwrapped toy or a donation to support this great charity, come meet WSB radio personalities, and come see all sorts of great exhibits. There will be NASCAR racecars, short track racecars and racers, the GBI bomb squad, and lots of giveaways. This all kicks off just before lunchtime and lasts into the afternoon. Come on down! 

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