Stanton Barrett Risks His Life So He Can Risk His Life

He comes home from a 14-hour day on a Hollywood set and starts a five-hour NASCAR day on his laptop and phone. He works till 3 a.m. and wakes at seven. He makes business calls while he's paragliding, texts while he's skiing, e-mails and works three phones while he cooks three-course gourmet meals—everything from scratch; Lord, it's like watching a man play a whole marching band's drums. He's on a creeper under his race car loosening the track bar bolts while he's on a phone arranging his next motorcycle, bobsled or snowmobile race; did we mention that he races them too? "Daylight's burning," he announces whenever life pauses for breath.

You can guess, with one glance at his face, how many women have been drawn to him. You can guess, with one glance at his life, how many remain. The most recent one remembers their second weekend together, a few years ago, when a tornado approached Texas Motor Speedway the day before a race. The infield was being evacuated, NASCAR personnel were huddling in the tunnel beneath the track, and monster hail was pelting Stanton's truck as he drove past them juggling four calls on two phones. "Do you think we should pull over?" asked Janae Nyholm.

Long silence. Had he heard her? Was he ignoring her? Stanton's mind was always racing around four or five ovals at once, and all his new friends had to learn to wait as if he were a deep-sea diver coming to the surface. "Gotta make this autograph session," he finally murmured, then went right on phone-juggling his way through all hell busting loose.

Gentlemen, start your engines! booms the voice over the loudspeaker at the onset of the Nationwide Series Sam's Town 300, last March in Las Vegas. CALL FAILED, Stanton keeps reading on three cellphones. He's flipping the power switch with one hand while jamming a fourth phone into the mouth hole of his helmet with the other, straining over the roar of 43 cars, 32,000 units of horsepower and 120,000 fans to hear if his godfather, Paul Newman—yep, that Paul Newman—answers so Stanton can wish him well in his battle with cancer 2,500 miles away, then handing off the phone, popping in his earplugs, shifting into first gear, pulling away....

POP THE clutch. Shift into neutral. Yank the emergency brake. Wrench the steering wheel. We're pulling a 180. Hell, Stanton does it all the time. We're going back to Dec. 1, 1972. C'mon, we can do this. We can watch Act II while we're watching Act I, cover Stanton's first 34 years while he's covering 300 miles at up to 180 mph; let's go, people, daylight's burning! It's the day he's born, but he'd better get moving because here's what Stanton Barrett must do: find his footing in a family that's flying. Find his stature in a house full of giants. Find sunlight in a redwood forest.

Shadows, they're everywhere he turns. People who do things no one else has ever done. Hurry, kid, let's get the intros out of the way. That's the family patriarch, your grandfather, Dave McCoy. He's a legend in California's Sierra Nevada, the man who tamed the untamable, turned a 14,000-foot beast named Mammoth Mountain into one of the world's most renowned ski resorts. Coach of 14 Olympic skiers and a surefire Olympian himself if not for a devastating skiing injury; a hellion who'll win 40-and-over world motocross championships in his late 60s and pump across Death Valley and up Mount Whitney in 100-mile bike races in his 70s. He's that statue on skis in the central plaza of Mammoth Village, forever as powerful as the day back in the '30s when he blew bare-chested into Bishop, Calif., atop a Harley and beneath a red bandanna, booming that Santa Claus laugh that will brand him as Ho-Ho to the tribe soon to spring from his loins.

Beside Ho-Ho stands Grandma Roma, once a local ski champ herself. Of her all you need know is that when she'd piggyback on that Harley, she'd lean into Dave's ear and urge him to swap seats with her ... at 70 mph. Then do it.

There's your ma, Penny. As a 12-year-old she would wake up at 4:15 a.m., hike up Mammoth in her ski boots and ski down at dawn, when the snow was at its iciest and most harrowing. At 16 she was the youngest U.S. woman to win a World Championship medal. In a few years, at 31, she'll be doing 400 laps in Ho-Ho's 40-foot swimming pool, pounding out 18-mile runs through the desert hills behind his house and 30 miles on the kitchen exercise bike while reading the Bible splayed on the butcher block, prepping for Ironman triathlons and kingdom come.

Beside her, that's Dad, Stan Barrett ... ohhhhh, boy. The Golden Gloves boxing champ, the karate black belt, the guy leaping off the chimney just to stay sharp for his day job and the first man to break the speed of sound on land. The man who teams up with Hal Needham to pull off the wild car chases, flips and crashes that make Smokey and the Bandit and its spin-offs one of the hottest film and TV crazes of the '70s and '80s ... not to mention the man who doubles for and pals around with the star of those films, Burt Reynolds.

That's brother David, older by a year and a half, wriggling in Mom's arms. Soon to be a straight-A student, a soccer, basketball and tennis stud, a Junior Olympics skier, a Junior National snowboarder and one of the two best junior motocross racers in the U.S. ... as prelude to a career as a Hollywood director and producer.