NASCAR teams work together to quit smoking habit

	The pressure of guiding Jeff Burton through each race day offers the kind of pressure that ripples through an entire team. Fred Vuich/SI

With New Year's resolutions just around the corner, it might be a good time for more than a a few of us to take a follow the lead of some of the crew members in NASCAR and stop smoking.

Jeff Burton's spotter, Rocky Ryan, is just one success story of the 180 individuals who have completed Nicorette's QUIT Crew smoking cessation program for NASCAR teams, officials and media.

Being a spotter for a NASCAR Nextel Cup Team or Busch Team can be one of the most stressful careers in the garage. Done correctly, acting as the eyes in the sky guiding a driver around incidents and telling the driver where to pass, spotting is largely a thankless job. Done incorrectly it can be a disaster resulting in not just an unnecessary crash,  but perhaps an injury.

It's no wonder that these guys might want to light one up while waiting for the race to start.

As Ryan put it, "an hour before every race I doubt ... [why] I ever wanted to do this. You want to be physically sick, because, an hour before the race you know, an hour from now, this driver is going to put his life in my hands. I have got to make sure the driver will come home to his wife everyday."

Through the program, Ryan learned that the pressure of his job was not the reason he smoked, it was an excuse for why he smoked. Soon after, the 31-year-old, a smoker for more than 20 years gave up his more than a pack-a-day habit.

The program works, in part, because it taps into the thrill of a challenge and teamwork racing people understand. That's how the program got started over at Richard Childress Racing in general, and on the No. 31 Cingular Racing Team in particular.

Burton had been asking his crew guys who smoked if they were interested in the program. Not only was Childress' team involved, but also the Ganassi, Gibbs, Hendrick and Petty organizations as well as NASCAR and some media members. Smoking had been part of the community for decades so making a commitment to quit was a big challenge.