Holmes adjusts from fast lane

Switching gears to new job tough By WILLIAM B. TREML NEWS STAFF REPORTER CHELSEA - After 20 years chasing the brass ring of race cars, Howdy Holmes has turned the page. He has had his shot at the gold and glory. He ran as far as his skill and his daring and his luck took him. Now he is home from the wars, working as an executive in the family business in Chelsea that's been producing Jiffy Mix since Herbert Hoover was president. His resume bulges with notations about the high points in the tenuous game of auto racing: twice Sports Car of America Central Division Champion, Rookie of the Year in the Formula Atlantic Series, winner of the Labatt's North American Formula Atlantic Championship, a starter in seven Indy 500 Races, Rookie of the Year in '79, front row qualifier in '84. The valleys of a racing career also are not ed: three years when there was no racing ac See HOLMES, B4 HOLMES CONTINUED FROM B1 tivity, a wreck at the Ontario track in California when the car spun end-over-end seven times and engine failures at Indy and Phoenix. But the agony and the ecstasy is over. "There really are no regrets," the one-time Pioneer High hockey star says. “I had an interesting racing career. I met a lot of good people, and I had some success. "But some drivers when they retire, don't. Because when the season starts, when the cars start coming into Indy every May, they can't stay away. They have to go down there. They want to hang around, talk to the drivers, the crews, eyeball the track, try to recapture what they once had. "But eventually they realize you can't go home again. I don't have that problem. What I did, I did. I don't have any need to go back to Indy. My racing book is on the shelf. I've started a new one with Jiffy Mix. It's a new career, a new chapter, a new life.". Holmes and his wife, Carol, haven't been to Indianapolis for the race since 1988. They planned to take their young son, Howard Samuel, to qualifications this year. "I imagine every father wants their kids to realize what they've accomplished," he says. “I'd like our boy to know that his dad did something in racing." Meanwhile, Holmes is trying to adjust to life behind the desk. “I didn't realize until recently how different business work is from racing," he said. “When you're on the track you have seconds, hundredths of seconds really to make a decision. You can't sit there and think about it, then decide. If you don't do some you're going to be into a wall. "That's not the way it is in a regular job. You have time, and you're expected to take it. You think, plan and then act. Sometimes I have trouble doing that. "Some here in the office say I still act like I'm driving a race car -- still going 200 miles an hour."