ARC MAGAZINE

Richard Laubenstein has visited more resorts in the past six months than many people dream of in a lifetime. Take a peek at his travel itinerary and you’ll see he’s stayed in the most exclusive mountain cities of the world: St. Moritz, Switzerland; Igls, Austria; Winterberg, Germany; Whistler, Canada; and Park City, Utah. Next stop: Pyeongchang, South Korea.

Whatever the location, Laubenstein barely has time to enjoy the view. He’s got important work to do. “We are focusing 100 percent on bobsled,” says the crew chief for the U.S. Bobsled and Skeleton Federation. His mission: To design and maintain the fastest, most aerodynamic bobsleds for America’s elite athletes, including the U.S. Olympic Team, competing around the world.

“I’ve been traveling and dealing with time zone changes for 35 years,” he says. It wasn’t always for winter sports. Before embracing the bobsled, Laubenstein spent 22 years with Penske Racing, working as a fabricator at IROC and IndyCar®, then became Crew Chief at Racing Experience, managing 54 race cars and 25 mechanics. Today his goal endures: “To achieve greatness through racing. Every weekend you want to win.”

Bobsled satisfies Laubestein’s penchant for speed. Just like car racing, bobsled is “a very, very specialized sport.” There are so many variables to consider: athletes, equipment, speed, tracks, weather conditions. However, “not everything correlates,” he says. One major difference: Bobsleds are high performance machines powered by people, not motors.

The “engines” are the athletes, who are often track and field competitors. The “road” is a mountain track about 1,200 to 1,500 meters long with sharp curves and icy terrain. A bobsled is like a high-tech version of your childhood sleigh. Athletes push the sled in a sprinting start to gain velocity, and then jump in and enjoy the ride, careening down icy tracks at speeds exceeding 100 mph. One bad bump or turn can be disastrous. Similarly, one head raised too high could cause drag that slows you down by a few hundredths of a second, the difference between a trip to the podium and going home empty-handed.

There are three major strategies to being fast on the track, says Brian Shimer, bobsled Olympian and head coach of the men’s U.S. bobsled team. First, bobsledding is “a gravity sport,” so the push at the start is critical. Next, the pilot needs “years of experience and lots of seat time,” he says. “One day of training is about two minutes. We don’t get a lot of time.” That’s because a competition is typically a four-heat format over two days of racing with two heats on each day. “It’s not like NASCAR® where you can train and do 500 laps and dial in your car. It takes a number of years for a pilot to be really good,” Shimer says. Finally, making advances in equipment and technology are essential “to get you on the podium.”

Laubenstein is blazing the trail on the technology front. He joined U.S. Bobsled and Skeleton Federation just before the Sochi Olympics in 2014. With a degree in automotive technology and business, he also has hands-on motor sports welding experience that easily translates to the bobsled.

Laubenstein – who hails from Kutztown, Pennsylvania – grew up watching his father and uncle take on various metal fabrication projects. “A large part of that was installing custom hitches on vehicles to tow trailers,” he says. “I recall wanting to install a hitch on my tricycle. It might not be the first thing I welded, but it’s the one I remember.”

In the progression from tricycle to race cars to carbon fiber bobsleds, Laubenstein developed and honed his skills every day to a point in his career where he now orchestrates a far-flung team of like-minded people who understand speed and racing.

Bobsled: NASCAR on Ice

Laubenstein coordinates more than 30 experts to make one bobsled. The U.S. Team owns 20. Many of these collaborators hail from “Race City, USA” the Mooresville, North Carolina, hub of auto racing.

One of the U.S. bobsled team’s first partners helped change the face of the sport. Decades ago, the U.S., like many countries, was purchasing bobsleds overseas, effectively buying up other countries’ seconds. But in the early 1990s, Bob Cuneo of Chassis Dynamics – a colleague and mentor to Laubenstein – partnered with former NASCAR driver Geoff Bodine to build a bobsled from scratch in the United States. This was the beginning of Bo-Dyn Bobsled.

Cuneo, who fabricated the American-made sleds as part of the Bo-Dyn venture, initially “knew absolutely nothing about the sport.” He and Bodine and rest of the crew started with “a clean sheet of paper” and got to work.

It was a rocky start fueled by passion and patriotism. After a few years, Bo-Dyn’s ingenuity paid off, delivering top-notch machines that helped the U.S. win more Olympic medals, including gold in the four-man event at the winter games in Vancouver in 2010.

Laubenstein takes lessons from the past and looks to the future. Enter his latest partner, BMW North America. In a secret formula that harnesses aerodynamics, carbon fiber material and weight distribution, BMW North American built a medal-winning two-man bobsled for the Sochi games in 2014. They will also have sleds at the games in South Korea.

Jim “Cheech” Garde built cars for racing greats like Ralph Earnhardt and was enlisted by Laubenstein to work on the BMW sleds, among others. Garde, who recently put finishing touches on a four-man sled at the Olympic Training Center in Lake Placid, New York, says the process of building and finishing sleds requires input from all parties – athletes, coaches, engineers and fabricators.

“Fitting the athletes into the sled and the way they get into the sled” is always a part of the process, says Garde, who adjusts components after feedback from the athletes. “You can’t disturb the sled when you get in it. You have to be in correct position in aerodynamics.”

“It’s not just a high-tech piece of equipment like a Formula One car,” says Cuneo. “It’s all about the athlete. The driver’s got to push too – he’s part of the motor. I always tell the chiropractors and the training staff: ‘Make sure you tune up those motors for tomorrow.’”

A Race of Slim Margins

Within a minute-long race, conditions are always a little bit different. “Some tracks are flatter, some are steeper and some athletes are a little bit better at one versus the other,” Laubenstein says. “We are constantly trying little teeny tweaks.”

Those tweaks can be made to a variety of components, including the frame, the cowling, push-bars, steering system, brake and runners. Fashioned out of a regulation stainless steel alloy made exclusively for the International Bobsled and Skeleton Federation, runners are “vital,” says Laubenstein. These “tires” of the sled are typically only 6 mm wide, but he enhances the size to increase speed.

“The larger the radius, the easier it glides,” which also results in less control, says Garde. “The nice narrow runners feel good, but don’t go as fast. Just like in most racing, if it’s comfortable, you’re not going fast.”

After Laubenstien buys the material, partners create the drawings and do the machine work to “smooth and shape” the runners depending on the sled, athletes and conditions.

“It’s a big gain that we are always trying to chase,” says Laubenstein, who owns 40 sets of runners that range between $6,000 and $10,000 a set. Each bobsled is unique, so it’s difficult to buy hardware on the fly. “We carry as many spare parts as we can,” says Laubenstein.

Laubenstein ships a 14-foot-long crate of tools and equipment wherever he travels. He says his is the only crew that, as a matter of standard procedure, shows up at international competitions with a welder. They even have a machine rated for the power supply in most European countries, which differs from the United States “We carry what we call our ‘European welder,’” says Laubenstein. “A few years ago, some things were spec’d out wrong, and we were doing everything [on-site] from welding to carbon fiber repair.”

“Richard has taken it to the next level in terms of getting partners involved and the continued advancement in technology,” says Shimer. “Thirty years ago, when I was an athlete, we worked on our own sleds. We didn’t have a sled technician. We carried a tool box around with a couple of wrenches and a big hammer. That was about it. Today it’s way more involved.”

Still, the resources in amateur sports aren’t as slick as that of NASCAR, says mechanic Garde. “You can’t bring everything and you are limited on what the containers hold. You may need a piece of metal so you are looking at a dumpster to see if there’s a piece of steel you can cut off. Your inner MacGyver comes out on the road with bobsleds.”

Going for gold

Laubenstein has established partnerships that give the United States an edge. Bobsled is gaining momentum as fans and sponsors take notice.

“He has bridged the gap – and he’s gotten a lot of people involved,” says Shimer. “It’s always a challenge to keep up with nations such as Germany that put millions of dollars into their technology program. We rely on the private sector to dig deep and help out Team USA. Athletes are grateful for it. We are grateful for it. Our athletes keep battling, fighting until the end. [With the Olympic team announced] now they can really come together as a unit and focus on winning medals.”

Ultimately, Laubenstein is doing specialized but rewarding work. “Helping a U.S. athlete compete on the biggest stage – it doesn’t get bigger or better than that,” he says. “Some people have a goal to go to the Olympics and others have a goal to win a medal.” Laubenstein wants both. “Our goal is to win medals.”