NASCAR pilot hails from NH (Article on Dale Jr's pilot)

Written by

 

I KNOW EVERYONE is impressed with the speed with which NASCAR star Dale Earnhardt Jr., practices his trade, but truth be told, he's not even the fastest guy on his own team.

That honor goes to Kelly Caron.

While Dale Jr. is expected to zip around the New Hampshire Motor Speedway at speeds in excess of 125 mph next weekend, as a chief pilot for Team Earnhardt, Kelly routinely approaches 550 mph in his Lear Jet 60.

Yes, it's life in the fast lane for Kelly Caron, the 1977 graduate of Manchester Memorial High School whose quest for a career in flight brought him to Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in Arizona, and then to the United States Marine Corps.

"I was at Camp Pendleton in Southern California," he said, "but I wasn't flying. I had a flight spot originally, but I had a vision problem. I was rated '20-20, minus one, minus two,' which means I would miss a letter on the eye chart.

"It all worked out OK," he added. "I was still in the Corps, and I went to the local airport in Southern California and got all of my flight ratings, and then that same airport hired me to be their flight instructor."

After a year, he flew back to New Hampshire.

"I had a job flying for Precision Airlines out of Grenier Field," he said. "I did that for a little over a year and then I was hired by Eastern Airlines. It was in 1987. I was 28 years old and I was a flight engineer on a Boeing 727.

"You know," he said, "that was my dream. I wanted to be with a major airline based in Boston and living in New Hampshire and then..."

And then Eastern's pilots went on strike.

Kelly went back to flying for Precision during the strike, and in his free time, he developed a fondness for Lear jets, and then, by means of a convenient coincidence, he noticed a high-end Lear regularly flying in and out of Laconia Airport.

"I found out that the principal aboard the plane was a man named Paul Sticht," Kelly said. "He was producing Castle Springs water up at Castle in the Clouds in Moultonborough. I was looking for a job, and sure enough, the captain of his Lear ended up hiring me as his co-pilot."

For all of his business interests in New Hampshire -- Lucknow Beer included -- Paul Sticht's major holdings were in Winston-Salem, NC, and so...

"So Cindy and I sold our home in New Hampshire, moved to North Carolina and we've been there ever since," Kelly said.

He wound up flying for Sticht's AWH Corporation for two years, then spent a dozen years -- a perfectly appropriate total -- flying for Krispy Kreme Doughnuts.

"They're based in Winston-Salem, too," Kelly said, "and I had a ball there. I was the chief pilot from day one, with Lear jets and Falcons, flying all over the world. At that point, I knew the airlines weren't the way for me any more. I told people I was meant to be a doughnut pilot."

And then Krispy Kreme's business plan crashed and burned.

"The doughnut business was going downhill too fast," he agreed, "then someone said that Dale Earnhardt Jr. was looking for a pilot for his Lear jet flying out of Statesville, N.C. That meant we could stay in our house, and I said, 'Let's go!'"

He's been on the go ever since.

Consider the week leading up to the recent Pepsi 500 in Fontana, Calif.

Kelly flew his famous passenger from Statesville, N.C., to Milwaukee for vehicle testing with Hendrick Motorsports, then they were off to Chicago for an appearance at a Naval recruiting station -- the U.S. Navy is the primary sponsor for Dale's "88" car in the Nationwide series -- and then it was off to California for the race.

"It's busy, but comparatively speaking, it's not that bad," Kelly said. "The average corporate pilot will fly between 400 and 600 hours a year, and I fly about 225 hours a year for Junior. That's fairly low time in the air, but it's the same amount of overnights, since you get him to the race, you wait three days and then you fly home.

"We fly the Lear 60, and essentially, the Lear is a business tool for Junior," he explained. "It's a seven-passenger plane, the largest Lear they manufacture and to get where we're going, we fly high altitude, above 40,000 feet, and our speeds are in excess of 550 miles per hour, or .78 mach.

"A lot of people refer to the NASCAR aviation group as the NASCAR Air Force," he laughed. "Two-thirds of the drivers own their own airplanes -- Hendricks has 50 passenger planes they use to fly their engineers, mechanics and pit crew guys -- and when you consider the costs of meals and putting everybody up in hotels for another night, everybody flies home right after the race, no matter the time."

Come Thursday, that NASCAR Air Force will be descending upon New Hampshire for the Sylvania 300, which will be held on Sunday at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon.

Some pilots fly into Manchester, others into Concord, but Kelly will fly Junior into Laconia.

"It's neat for me because when I was 18, I used to fuel airplanes at Laconia," he said. "That's where my fascination with flying began to take hold, and once I get Junior there, my job is done for three days.

"Once we're on site, I spend a lot of time with the other pilot, Jeff Melton. We take our bicycles along and we do a lot of road biking. We'll play a lot of racquetball, and last year we went and we climbed Mount Washington."

If there's a downside to his job, it's the time he spends away from Cindy and their three kids "" daughters Chelsea and Casey and son Dylan -- but they know he'll be flying home on Sunday night.

And if all goes well, it will be very late on Sunday night.

"We had to fly out last in Michigan, and that's a good feeling," he smiled. "When you're the last airplane to leave, it's because your driver won the race, and I'd love to be the last plane out of New Hampshire on Sunday.