Geisler

Travis Geisler will be living a dream — for the next four weeks, at least.

Geisler, 25, son of longtime Lernerville Speedway Late Model driver Lynn Geisler, has been named temporary race engineer of Dale Jarrett's No. 88 on the Nextel Cupcircuit.

The Cranberry Township resident will be serving in that capacity during Saturday night's Nextel All-Star Challenge at Lowe's Motor Speedway in Concord, N.C.

The move is part of the temporary restructuring of Jarrett's race team after a four-week suspension of his crew chief, Richard "Slugger"Labbe, was upheld Thursday.

"Iwouldn't call it a promotion, but it's a great opportunity to accelerate my learning curve,"Geisler said. "This I how I see myself making a living."

That wasn't the case two years ago, when Geisler was looking for a ride as a Busch Series driver, hoping to one day make NASCAR's topcircuit from behind the wheel.

Last year was the first time since 1996 Geisler didn't enter a racing series with a full schedule lined up.

Unable to secure a ride and sporting a mechanical engineering background, Geisler decided to take his racing career in a different direction.

After numerous interviews, he signed on with the Robert Yates Racing team to serve as engineer for the No. 90 Busch team of Matt McCall and Steven Leicht.

McCall is 24 years old, Leicht is 20.

"I love working with those guys because while they're learning, I'm learning,"Geisler said. "I can draw upon my experiences as a Busch driver to help them out that way, too."

As a race engineer, Geisler serves as a consultant to the crew chief. He keeps up with all of the changes and data on the car, pools the information and presents it to the crew chief.

Jarrett and Elliott Sadler's No. 38 car are part of the Yates team as well. When Labbe was suspended for illegally mounting the sway bar on Jarrett's car two weeks ago at Richmond, the Yates team moved other crew members up in position to fill the void and slid Geisler into the race engineer role.

Labbe is not eligible to return as Jarrett's crew chief until the June 18 Nextel Cuprace in Michigan.

"I have a chance to keep a hand in getting cars to go faster," Geisler said. "It's not behind the wheel, but it's the next best thing."

Geisler is in no hurry to move up to the Nextel Cupcircuit on a full-time basis. He's just happy to be extending his career in racing.

"Right now, I enjoy the Busch Series and the ability to work with younger guys. Having a hand in developing their talents is rewarding,"he said.

"I'm spending more time at the race track than ever. Racing is the only field in which I've ever worked. I can't imagine doing anything else."

Besides working with Jarrett's team, Geisler will be working with Tommy Baldwin, crew chief for Sadler's No. 38.

"There's a lot of communication and sharing of information,"Geisler said. "That's the benefit of working for a multicar team."