Tim Steele always thought it was the race driver who needed to tame the track. Today, in a fight to reclaim his life, Steele, the three-time ARCA/REMAX Series champion from Coopersville, is hoping the track can tame him and his addiction. “I had the world by the tail and cocaine took it all away,” Steele, 36, said before taking the track Saturday night at Berlin Raceway, a track where he was Rookie of the Year in 1988. “When I finally hit bottom I realized all I had given up. It took racing away from me. It took my family away from me.” Saturday’s 100-lap double late model feature at Berlin was Steele’s first competition since last June in the ARCA Flagstar 200 at Michigan International Speedway and his first race at the local track since 1990. It came less than two months after the end of his self-imposed stay at the Hazelden Clinic in Minnesota for a cocaine addiction that had spiraled out of control and thrown a red flag at his promising track career. Steele, with the financial backing of his father and the HS Die and Engineering Motorsports Team, parlayed his two years at Berlin Raceway in 1988-89 into an ARCA ride, which soon produced three championships. Continued success took him to a run on the NASCAR Busch Series, to the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series in 1999 and to five starts atop NASCAR’s peak, the Winston (now Nextel) Cup. In 1993, Steele racked up nearly $135,000 in winnings on the ARCA circuit. In all, he’s won 41 ARCA races and 31 poles and secured three MIS victories in 11 starts at the two-mile superspeedway. He and Green Bay quarterback Brett Favre were discussing the possibility of forming a Winston Cup team. Then Steele’s career crashed. He got hurt at Atlanta Motor Speedway in November of 1997. Part of his recovery included the use of pain killers. “When I got off (the pain killers), I substutited one drug for another,” he said. “Toward the end, I was using drugs every day. Every minute of every day. I hit bottom when I got sick and tired of being sick and tired.” Last week, Steele traded his ARCA machine to former Berlin racer Chad Blount in exchange for Blount’s late model Berlin ride and the chance to run again every week for a Berlin Raceway points championship.(see full article at Michigan Live)(5-19-2004)
