BC lived for this sport. He ate, drank, slept and breathed it with everything he had. You saw it in the level of work he put in at every race track, throughout America, that he visited over the course of his career.
It was evident from the time he became USAC’s youngest-ever winner at the age of 16 that he was destined to be a superstar.
And he was, too, winning 112 USAC features during his time. That number included 41 USAC National Sprint Car Series features and 38 USAC National Midget Series races, seventh all-time on both series’ win lists, as well as two championships in each division and three-straight USAC National Drivers’ Championship titles, from 2010-2012.
His combined USAC number leaves him fifth all-time in wins, on the same hand and in the same breath as USAC Hall of Famers Rich Vogler, A.J. Foyt, Sleepy Tripp and Mel Kenyon.
But Clauson never let the massive amount of success he had go to his head. He never let it affect him at all, really. He simply lived for the next opportunity he would get to go out and do it again.
“I have the best job in the world and if I could race 365 days out of the year, I would,” Clauson said last August, when he first announced his plans to compete in 200 races this year. “I love what I do, and to be able to step into a race car every night is kind of like a dream.”
His humility and his love for the sport is why I once compared him to A.J., and later to Rich, as well. All three were cut from a similar cloth — if not the exact same one — and it’s what made him so well-liked and so well-respected among his fans, friends and followers, from the Hoosier State all the way on up.
That amount of support and love is also why it’s been so hard to see him go so soon.
There’s no denying BC was in his prime and only getting better. He was on pace to win nearly 50 races this season, if not to break that threshold and keep right on winning. He was having a season the likes of which I’ve never personally seen before now, and I highly doubt we’ll ever see anything like it again.
It takes a very special kind of person to have a love for the sport so unparalleled, so vast and so selfless that they make it their life and enjoy it every moment, despite the inevitable hardships that befall a team from race to race and night to night, sometimes making a team question why they keep pushing so hard to find those few shining moments of success along the way.
Bryan Clauson was that kind of person.
