TALLADEGA, Ala. -- Ricky Stenhouse Jr. nearly didn't see his father in Victory Lane on Sunday at Talladega Superspeedway.
That's because his father, Ricky Stenhouse Sr., almost didn't get there.
The elder Stenhouse watched the race from Turn 3, and when he saw his son win for the first time in 158 career NASCAR Cup starts, he wanted to celebrate. And he apparently was willing to do just about anything to get to his son, who was parked in the celebration area behind the frontstretch.
At first, the excited man in his mid-50s tried to climb the Turn 3 fence to get on the track and run to Victory Lane.
"He found out he couldn't," Talladega spokesman Russell Branham said.
Stenhouse's father eventually ran on the road that runs on the perimeter of the track -- probably at least a half-mile -- to the Turn 4 tunnel, but no one is allowed to walk through the tunnel. So track security promptly put the determined Ricky Sr. in a vehicle to calm him down. The detention was short-lived.
"They called our director of security, and our security guy said, 'Take him to Victory Lane,'" Branham said.
Apparently, this wasn't the first attempt by Stenhouse's father to climb a fence. After an ARCA victory at Kentucky Speedway in 2008, Stenhouse Jr. figured his father had climbed the backstretch fence. So he went looking for his dad.
"When I won at Kentucky, he climbed the fence, and I climbed the other side and met him at the top," Stenhouse Jr. said.
Stenhouse Jr. said his father already was stressed because his golf cart was apparently stolen Saturday.
"My dad has done so much for me and my career," Stenhouse Jr. said. "Everything I have learned is from him."