Ask.com Celebrates Bobby Labonte’s Birthday and Everyone’s Mothers Day

by Charlie Turner

Thanks for stopping by OnPitRow.com and the Bench Racing with Steve and Charlie blog. The best NASCAR and IndyCar news and opinion, exclusive pictures and video. I'm Charlie Turner. Follow me on Twitter @onpitrow

May 8, 2009 10:01 pm UTC No Comments

I watched qualifying for Saturday’s Southern 500 and most of the Diamond Hill Plywood 300 Nationwide Series race tonight. Maybe Kyle Busch should have won the latter, but he didn’t. Matt Kenseth did. And Matty won the pole for tomorrow’s race too. Watch the Roushies this weekend. And maybe Sam Hornish. Yeah, Sam Hornish Jr.

NASCAR gets the racing out of the way early this weekend so that teams and fans can concentrate on Mothers day. It’s a NASCAR tradition that I appreciate. Quaint, but nice.

Ask.com is Bobby Labonte’s sponsor on the Hall of Fame Racing no. 96. Labonte’s birthday is this weekend and this week, the official search engine of NASCAR ran a promotion to celebrate.

Hundreds of fans submitted their ideas to Ask.com to be considered as the gift the Official Search Engine of NASCAR presented to Labonte on his 45th birthday. The suggestion from Hilary Mathis of Danville, Ill., inspired the gift – a commemorative racing helmet that includes the names of each fan that sent their supportive wishes and gift ideas over the past week.

Mathis has been a Labonte fan since 1997 and lists him and Brian Vickers as her top-two favorite NASCAR drivers. Ask.com has pulled together Mother’s Day content for fans. A special page on Ask.com includes interviews with the mothers of Jeff Gordon, Casey Mears, Ryan Newman, Reed Sorenson and Mathis’ fave, Brian Vickers. Here’s the Vickers story – from his mom….

When he was about 10 years old, he and his father were in the basement working on his go-kart getting ready for the next race. He was actually sitting in the go-kart while being weighed and just couldn’t sit still. He started sticking his fingers in the holes on the steering wheel and one of his fingers got stuck. We worked for hours trying to get his finger out, but that only made his finger swell. He wouldn’t let us cut the steering wheel off because it was his favorite one, so we had to take the wheel off the go-kart and he slept with it. He thought his finger would slide out just like it slid in – but that didn’t work. We went to the emergency room the next morning to see if they could get his finger unstuck, but they couldn’t either. And after all that they finally took him down to the maintenance department and had to cut the steering wheel off anyway.

To read more stories straight from the mouth of Brian Vickers’ mom, as well as childhood tales from the moms of NASCAR stars including Jeff Gordon, Reed Sorensen, Ryan Newman and Casey Mears search NASCAR Mother’s Day at Ask.com for some great Mother’s Day material.

Photo credit: Getty Images

Filed under: Ask.com Racing, Bobby Labonte, Brian Vickers, Darlington Speedway, NASCAR, Nationwide Series

Tagged with: Ask.com, Diamond Hill Plywood 300, Hall of Fame Racing, Southern 500

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