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"  Samantha Busch pulls off her Prada heels, adjusts the top of her strapless jumpsuit, and climbs a narrow metal ladder. A cluster of NASCAR fans tilt their cameras upward to snap pictures of her teetering to the top of the hauler \u2014 a massive truck that houses her husband Kyle Busch&amp;#039;s spare race car and his crew. Samantha slips her shoes back on as a wave of smoke from burgers grilling below wafts into her face. &amp;quot;I feel like I&amp;#039;m going to fall over,&amp;quot; she says, clutching a metal bar for support, &amp;quot;but this is so fun!&amp;quot; Behind her, Kyle&amp;#039;s car zips around the track, along with 42 other drivers&amp;#039; at the Richmond International Raceway in Virginia, churning up a deafening buzz. It&amp;#039;s only a practice run; this time tomorrow, 90,000 fans will pile into the metal bleachers for race number nine (out of 36) in NASCAR&amp;#039;s Sprint Cup Series. The crowd for this single, not-so-special race will rival the one that attended the last Super Bowl, and that&amp;#039;s typical. NASCAR boasts more of the top-attended sporting events than any other sports league in the country, and 100 million viewers follow along on TV.  Samantha looks out onto the track for a moment, and then turns back and fluffs her hair. When REDBOOK&amp;#039;s photographer asks her to smile, she lights up like a natural \u2014 because she is. Now 25, she met Kyle four years ago when she was working as a model at a track in Indiana, her home state. The two got married this past New Year&amp;#039;s Eve, with a bejeweled dress custom-made in Dubai for Samantha, a five-foot-tall cake, and a camera crew from the Style Network trailing behind.  Word gets out that Samantha&amp;#039;s on the hauler, and some of the other drivers&amp;#039; wives start sending each other eye-rolling texts about the spectacle. Forget that they, too, were once new to The Pit \u2014 the infield of the track, where the cars, haulers, and drivers&amp;#039; motor coaches are parked. Samantha is perky, with perfect makeup and cleavage that can&amp;#039;t possibly be real. (She&amp;#039;s not shy about the boob job: &amp;quot;Oh, come on,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I think a blind man would know that.&amp;quot;) For Samantha, one of the youngest of what fans call WAGs (wives and girlfriends), life on the road is fresh and sparkly, kind of like the eyeball-size diamond on her finger. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re a traveling circus 10 months out of the year,&amp;quot; she cheerfully notes. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s one big family.&amp;quot; And that exactly pinpoints the weirdness of life as a NASCAR wife: For about 40 weekends each season, they live in the world&amp;#039;s ritziest RV park. The drivers, thanks to winnings and deals with their sponsors, rake in serious cash \u2014 in 2010, Forbes reported that Kyle Busch earned $13 million, while the best known drivers, like Jeff Gordon, can net double that \u2014 but for three days out of any race week, they park their motor homes in a gated lot, spitting distance from one another. The rest of the time, most of them reside in and around Mooresville, NC, a lush but sleepy suburb of Charlotte, full of stone mansions with long driveways and kidney-shaped pools out back. It&amp;#039;s beautiful, but it&amp;#039;s a company town \u2014 small-town living at its painfully smallest.   While some of the wives consider themselves friends, they&amp;#039;re not exactly reenacting Steel Magnolias in The Pit. &amp;quot;How can you be friends with someone when you hate her husband?&amp;quot; asks Connie Montoya, 33, wife of driver Juan Pablo Montoya. NASCAR operates on a points system, meaning that every race can change a driver&amp;#039;s rank and move him closer to (or further away from) the finals. Come fall, only the top 12 out of the 43 drivers make it to &amp;quot;the Chase,&amp;quot; NASCAR&amp;#039;s version of the World Series. It&amp;#039;s every man for himself; even drivers who race for the same team or owner have separate sponsors. For the wives, this means your husband has to beat your friend&amp;#039;s husband in order to succeed at his job.  The closeness and competition would fray any woman&amp;#039;s nerves, but the drivers&amp;#039; wives had better not let it show: Women make up about 40 percent of NASCAR&amp;#039;s followers, and with no female drivers in the Cup series, the WAGs are the next best thing. They&amp;#039;re expected to be a perfect and perfectly manicured partner, glad-handing sponsors and smiling for fans who pay big bucks to wander The Pit, even as their husbands rev their engines and prepare to take curves at 180 miles an hour. Samantha basks in all the attention. But ask Nicole Biffle, 35, the wife of driver Greg Biffle, about it, and she practically recoils. &amp;quot;This is my husband&amp;#039;s job,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;We get to live a fantastic life, but it&amp;#039;s not about me. It&amp;#039;s about him.&amp;quot; Even today, as a stylist does her makeup for a REDBOOK photo shoot, Nicole looks a mix of annoyed and amused. &amp;quot;The last time I had my makeup done was my wedding, and before that, prom,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I bet Samantha was used to this, huh? But it&amp;#039;s just not my thing.&amp;quot; Nicole&amp;#039;s sitting on the couch in her sparkling motor coach, complete with marble floors in the kitchen, creamy leather upholstery, and a built-in floor-to-ceiling wine rack that looks like something you&amp;#039;d find in a high-priced Vegas bar. But if the interior telegraphs five-star luxury, the scene outside any driver&amp;#039;s motor home is plain ol&amp;#039; parking lot. White lines on the asphalt take the place of picket fences, dogs sleep in the shade, and when the garbage starts to smell, the wives lug it out to the communal trash cans. Today, Greg sits outdoors on a folding chair, watching a flat-screen TV (which is, somewhat amazingly, installed on the outside of their motor home), as relaxed as a suburban dad in his backyard. Nicole and Greg met when she was in college. She wasn&amp;#039;t exactly wowed by his status as a race truck driver (the minor leagues of racing) but dated him anyway. They married in 2007, and their first child is due in July. &amp;quot;I just hope I have the baby on a Tuesday, because Greg will be racing that Saturday,&amp;quot; says Nicole, touching her belly. &amp;quot;And I don&amp;#039;t know what I&amp;#039;ll do if she&amp;#039;s colicky, because there&amp;#039;s not a lot of room in here and Greg needs his sleep before a race.&amp;quot;  Nicole studied to be an elementary school teacher, but once she and Greg got serious, she hit the road with NASCAR. &amp;quot;It was the only way I would see him,&amp;quot; she says. Since then, she has focused her energy on the Greg Biffle Foundation, which gives grants to no-kill animal shelters nationwide. She&amp;#039;s passionate about the charity, but admits, &amp;quot;It gives me something to do.&amp;quot; Similarly, Samantha works for the Kyle Busch Foundation, helping raise money for children&amp;#039;s homes across the country, while she takes online classes for a master&amp;#039;s degree in industrial-organizational psychology. She plans to use it to help manage employees of Kyle Busch Motorsports. &amp;quot;It doesn&amp;#039;t make sense to work for another company. Kyle&amp;#039;s schedule is what our life revolves around,&amp;quot; she explains.   DeLana Harvick, 38, the wife of driver Kevin Harvick, is more involved than most: She recently received The Business Journal&amp;#039;s Women in Business award as co-owner of Kevin Harvick Inc., which races teams in all levels of NASCAR. She&amp;#039;s as busy as her husband, which is part of the reason they haven&amp;#039;t had children \u2014 not now, while Kevin is essentially unavailable for a big chunk of the week. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m not doing it alone,&amp;quot; she says. DeLana isn&amp;#039;t considered Miss Congeniality among the wives, or, really, anyone else. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m portrayed as opinionated and harsh, and I can be,&amp;quot; she says from the back of Kevin&amp;#039;s hauler, brushing aside her sheet of yellow-blonde hair. She&amp;#039;s not one to be messed with, although she seems to enjoy it when somebody does. Last year, driver Joey Logano made a post-race dig at Kevin, saying, &amp;quot;His wife wears the firesuit in the family.&amp;quot; It&amp;#039;s true, in a literal sense: Unlike the other wives, who sit in Pit Row dressed up in pretty blouses and heels, DeLana wears the same bright coverall as Kevin&amp;#039;s crew. The very next day, DeLana unzipped it to reveal a T-shirt that said, I WEAR THE FIRESUIT IN THIS FAMILY, and had thousands more printed. Proceeds benefit the Kevin Harvick Foundation, which helps high-risk kids and gives out scholarships to young athletes. To date, the tees have raised over $30,000. DeLana grew up in racing \u2014 her father was a driver \u2014 and has a particularly clear view of the downsides of NASCAR life. For one, there&amp;#039;s the physical danger. Kevin was in the minor leagues until 2001, when he was selected by his team to take Dale Earnhardt&amp;#039;s spot in the Cup series, after the legendary driver died in a crash at the Daytona 500. Since then, modifications to the cars have made them safer, but the risk persists. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m not going to tell you that certain tracks don&amp;#039;t make me nervous,&amp;quot; DeLana says, mentioning the famously dangerous loop at Talladega. &amp;quot;But I just have to be calm and know that he&amp;#039;s as safe as he can be.&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;You can&amp;#039;t spend every weekend saying, &amp;#039;Is my husband going to die today?&amp;#039;&amp;quot; says Connie Montoya. Some of the most dramatic moments in a race are when drivers purposefully bump each other \u2014 to get out of the way, or as payback for an earlier incident. There&amp;#039;s nothing like road rage at nearly 200 miles per hour, and the fans love it \u2014 although not as much as they love a wreck. &amp;quot;The fans will say it was a bad race if nobody crashes,&amp;quot; says Connie. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s like, &amp;#039;Oh, that was boring,&amp;#039; and I&amp;#039;m like, &amp;#039;What do you mean, boring?&amp;#039;&amp;quot; Connie&amp;#039;s at home in the couple&amp;#039;s gleaming high-rise waterfront condo in Miami, lounging on a white sofa as Juan putters around barefoot and maids in white aprons refill her whiskey-spiked iced tea. Of course, she says, when her husband gets hit, he hits back. &amp;quot;Juan&amp;#039;s known for it, and he&amp;#039;s not going to change. He&amp;#039;s one of the best drivers in the world,&amp;quot; she says, a sexy accent rolling off her tongue: Both she and Juan are from Colombia. His aggressive driving is the source of much fan grumbling, but one wonders if any of the backlash has to do with the fact that he&amp;#039;s one of only two international drivers in the Sprint Cup series \u2014 and the only minority. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s difficult. Fans like people they can relate to,&amp;quot; Connie admits. In some respects, though, the couple are outsiders by choice, living in Miami instead of Mooresville, Connie foregoing most races to stay home with her kids, Sebastian, 6, Paulina, 4, and Manuela, 1. When asked if she&amp;#039;d ever have any of the other wives over for dinner should they come to town, she wrinkles her nose. &amp;quot;I guess I&amp;#039;m the antisocial one,&amp;quot; she says, although her bubbly personality suggests otherwise.   Connie was in law school when she and Juan met 10 years ago; they married in 2002, and now she too spends much of her free time working for their foundation. It&amp;#039;s called Formula Smiles, and helps children in Colombia stay away from drugs and violence, providing activities and funding recreational teams. She&amp;#039;s perhaps best known, however, for her knockout looks: Sporting News named Connie one of its 60 Most Beautiful People in 2009. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s flattering,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I show Juan. I say, &amp;#039;See? See?&amp;#039;&amp;quot;  Of course, a smokin&amp;#039; wife doesn&amp;#039;t ward off the Pit lizards \u2014 women in tank tops and cheek-baring cutoffs who trawl the infield, looking to score with drivers. The wives say they&amp;#039;re easy to spot since NASCAR relaxed the dress code, which used to forbid shorts and skirts. &amp;quot;But I don&amp;#039;t think about it,&amp;quot; Connie says with a shrug. Flirting fans don&amp;#039;t faze DeLana much either: &amp;quot;Kevin and I have always been a package deal. For the most part, the fans are respectful of that.&amp;quot; There&amp;#039;s little scandal in NASCAR. Rare is the driver divorce. But more than one insider admits \u2014 anonymously, of course \u2014 that affairs happen. The reason nobody hears about them, they say, is because measures are taken to keep what happens in The Pit quiet. The last thing a sponsor wants is for a mom to buy her kid a Kevin Harvick or Kyle Busch T-shirt and then, after a Brett Favre\u2013esque sex scandal, have to explain why it&amp;#039;s gone from his dresser drawer.  And anyway, a lizard might be surprised by the reality of being a NASCAR wife. &amp;quot;I would imagine one of these girls saying, &amp;#039;We&amp;#039;re going to Las Vegas to party all weekend,&amp;#039;&amp;quot; Connie snorts. &amp;quot;But it&amp;#039;s not like that. You sleep in the motor coach. There&amp;#039;s no party. But if they want to watch my three kids, sure, go ahead.&amp;quot; On any given race day, you&amp;#039;ll find Samantha running around her trailer, brandishing a chicken breast, trying to see if someone can bring it to Kyle for lunch. (She grocery shops at Target.) &amp;quot;We have to get a week&amp;#039;s worth of chores and errands done in three or four days,&amp;quot; says Nicole, who, like DeLana, makes the point that they do their own laundry.  Back at the race in Richmond, Nicole climbs up the ladder to the top of the pit box \u2014 a mini makeshift repair station \u2014 looking matter-of-fact with her big baby bump and high heels. She says she has calmed way down from her days as Greg&amp;#039;s girlfriend, when she once stormed over to Eva Bryan and screamed in her face after Eva&amp;#039;s then-fianc\u00E9 Kurt Busch bumped Greg&amp;#039;s car. (&amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m glad she didn&amp;#039;t do that to me or I would have punched her in the mouth,&amp;quot; notes DeLana.) Now, Nicole takes a seat next to Greg&amp;#039;s crew chief, calmly texting some of the wives she&amp;#039;s friends with as their guys attempt to pass each other. Her expression doesn&amp;#039;t change as Greg slides from 14th place to the top 10 and back again. She stands up only when he pulls into pit road, peering down as his crew switches tires in a perfectly choreographed, seconds-long dance. Several pit boxes down, Samantha sits watching the race with the Mars family, which sponsors her husband (hence his bright blue Pretzel M&amp;amp;amp;M&amp;#039;s car). As Kyle turns into the last lap, she stands and cheers. Then his car whizzes across the line first. It&amp;#039;s his 21st Cup series win, and Samantha&amp;#039;s a pro at this by now: She greets the photographers in her tight jeans, stiletto boots, and leather jacket, making a point to flash not her diamond but a costume ring decorated with plastic M&amp;amp;amp;M&amp;#039;s. Then she trots to Victory Lane. She&amp;#039;s waiting along with his crew and sponsors when Kyle pulls himself from his car to cheers and camera flashes. After a while, he lowers his arms from the victory &amp;quot;V&amp;quot; he&amp;#039;s been holding in the air and puts one around Samantha, who has settled an M&amp;amp;amp;M&amp;#039;s baseball cap on her long, dark hair. They turn and kiss, and there&amp;#039;s a feeling in the air that everything is as it should be, thanks to the prom king and queen (for the week, at least) of this exclusive class, fast cars and burning rubber all around them. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.redbookmag.com/love-sex/relationships/advice/a12213/nascar-wives/>