By Mike Mulhern<\/p>\n\n\n\n
ATLANTA
Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson may have the easy part of it these final four races of the year, because all they\u2019ve got to do is win a championship. And whichever one wins, they\u2019ll both be celebrating.
But for the rest of these guys the NASCAR season is not winding down but rather cranking up to an even faster, more frantic pace, because in just 65 days they\u2019ll have to be loading their haulers with 2008 Daytona 500 specials for the trek to Florida. And for every team except the Gordon-Johnson-Hendrick juggernaut there\u2019s a long way to go and a short time to get there\u2026which is why there are shakeups galore. If you\u2019re not winning, then you\u2019re losing, and someone gets the blame. And nobody fires the car owner.
So the 2008 season probably starts here Monday, with the next model of that awkward car-of-tomorrow, which promises to be a scary situation for all. Of course Gordon and Johnson themselves are skipping that deal, leaving it up to new teammate Dale Earnhardt Jr., now the low man on the totem pole, to do the heavy work.
Earnhardt isn\u2019t the only guy with new agendas and new teammates and new goals, and old burdens to shed. He\u2019s not the only winless driver this season.
Start with Toyota:
Still winless this season, its first on the Cup tour, Toyota needs to get a victory under its belt before the end of the year, and that doesn\u2019t look promising. Brian Vickers, who should be carrying much of the freight, just got a new crew chief after missing the past several events. So Doug Richert, his old crew chief, is now working the garage marketplace.
Teammate AJ Allmendinger, who needs a lot of laps everywhere, has been more promising lately, though here he\u2019s not that confident: \u201cThe first thing I need to work on is just getting better at the race track. I\u2019m pretty confident we\u2019ll have a good car. More than anything I need to get better around this place.\u201d
Ironically Dale Jarrett is the Toyota surprise so far, starting from the second row. What he can do with one of Michael Waltrip\u2019s cars, though, is uncertain.
Toyota execs themselves may be waiting for next year, when Joe Gibbs and his men \u2013 Tony Stewart, Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch \u2013 join the camp. All three would be top contenders in the Daytona 500 if they were still in Chevrolets, so Toyota engineers will have to be up to speed very early on.
And then Brent Dewar, here Friday, made another pitch for Stewart not to sign any long-term contract with Toyota or Gibbs, because General Motors \u2013 Dewar is the GM VP in charge of sales and marketing, and thus racing too \u2013 wants Stewart back in the fold: \u201cWe\u2019d love to have Tony Stewart back. If Tony is listening: \u2018We love Tony Stewart.\u2019
\u201cHe\u2019s our team owner in the USAC series. He has two years left on his contract with Joe Gibbs, so he doesn\u2019t have a lot of options: he has to race with the team he\u2019s with, or sit out a few years, which wouldn\u2019t be good.\u201d
Consider Dale Earnhardt Jr., winless in a year and a half: \u201cWe feel we missed a great opportunity this year, with a great chance of winning the championship, challenging for it. We\u2019re really ticked off about that. We feel we\u2019re a top-five team; we\u2019ve run top-five every week. But I don\u2019t think anybody even realizes that, because when we blow a motor and fall out, the story is who won, and we\u2019re lost in the back of the newspaper somewhere, no credit for how good we\u2019ve run.
\u201cI\u2019ve never run up front as often as I have this year, never have. I\u2019ve been in the top-five 95 percent of the races. It\u2019s a shame we won\u2019t get an \u2018Attaboy\u2019 for it.
\u201cBecause I\u2019m going somewhere next year there\u2019s really no building toward next year, as far as the mentality here with me. These guys who know they\u2019re going to stick around and work on this car next year, they\u2019re probably looking forward to next year and building relationships. And I\u2019m trying to not hurt that or slow that down or get in the way of that.
\u201cI\u2019m trying to drive hard and help them learn what they need to learn and get what they need to get. There ain\u2019t no pressure.
\u201cBut I feel ridiculous going winless this year because we should have won. I feel pretty gypped.\u201d
And consider car owner Ray Evernham, who\u2019s suffered through a miserable season.
And consider car owner Richard Childress, who put his three teams in the championship playoffs only to watch veterans Kevin Harvick and Jeff Burton falter rather dramatically, in a downer to a turnaround season.
Fellow car owner Chip Ganassi hasn\u2019t had a terrible year, not with the surprising success of newcomer Juan Pablo Montoya, winner in Mexico City and Sonoma. But Ganassi, for his five years on the tour, still hasn\u2019t lived up to reputation and talent. So he\u2019s bringing in another new driver, Indy-star Dario Franchitti (who may have a long, long way to go) and a new competition manager, veteran Steve Hmiel, a classic \u2018true racer.\u2019
Hmiel and Earnhardt have both left DEI, an operation that looks increasingly shaky, particularly with team manager Richie Gilmore out of the picture since suffering an aneurysm three weeks ago.
It was in fact more a bit startling to watch Friday\u2019s DEI press conference here, with Chevrolet\u2019s very top brass on the dais announcing a new three-year deal with the team built by the late Dale Earnhardt and now run by his wife, Teresa, who made a very rare \u2013 and very brief \u2013 appearance (and left without answering any questions, as has been far too typical).
When the Chevy brass shows up like this, they should see their driver-investments wearing something a little spiffier than scruffy black tee-shirts and jeans. One of the first things the Big E taught Jr. was to dress properly (though since his father\u2019s death, Junior has taken off in a different direction, though one certain to change now that he\u2019s with Rick Hendrick.)
It was a very odd meeting, which showcased Teresa Earnhardt\u2019s imperial approach to this sport, which she handles with all the enthusiasm of a 401-k, with no apparent zest or even much interest. If it wasn\u2019t for the Earnhardt name on the shop, GM might not be all that willing to ante up the millions of dollars it just did, for a team that some rivals say, without Junior, may be just a museum. It looks like it\u2019s up to John Story to shape things up, and if he can keep Mark Martin on mark, it could work. But it will take a lot of work.
Hmiel says the culture of NASCAR racing has been changing dramatically this season, and it takes a lot just to try to stay on top of things, much less get ahead of the curve.
And Dewar, from a higher vantage point, agrees. It\u2019s his job to focus GM\u2019s money in the right place, and NASCAR is hot, so how to leverage that? \u201cWe continue to look at Formula One as an interesting venue,\u201d Dewar says, teasingly. \u201cWe\u2019re not sure where the direction of that will go.
\u201cBut we have a global brand in Chevrolet. We have a Chevrolet stock car series we support in Brazil; and we want to race against other manufacturers there, so we\u2019re trying to interest them in participating. The number one sport in Brazil is soccer, and number two is racing. Racing is very popular in Brazil.
\u201cThere is an interest around the world in this racing series. I think Brazil would accept it. They have some great tracks down there that could accommodate this type of racing. NASCAR has done a great job in Montreal and in Mexico City\u2026.and when we sit down with NASCAR I\u2019ll find out what they\u2019re thinking about Brazil. I know a lot about Brazil; I even married a Brazilian.
\u201cAs the sport gets more international, there is more interest, and you\u2019ll see more international drivers wanting to become part of this series.
\u201cAnd anybody who wants to race in a Chevrolet should give me a call.\u201d
Hmiel is looking at things from more down-in-the-trenches, but he\u2019s been doing since the 1970s and his early days at Petty Enterprises and then with Jack Roush, so Hmiel has a good sense of the big picture: The NASCAR culture \u201chas become extremely corporate. There are different layers of ownership. There are all kinds of mergers going on,\u201d Hmiel says.
\u201cIt sometimes gets confusing as to who is really in charge.\u201d
So Hmiel senses he\u2019ll be perhaps more comfortable at Ganassi\u2019s, because \u201che is there. You can talk to him. He is also a real open guy. You can talk to him and hash out things. It is nice to know his main goal is to have a faster car and win races and win championships.
\u201cI\u2019m not saying the sport is changing for the worse; I\u2019m just saying the culture is a little different, with mergers and foreign drivers and young people and old people.
\u201cI\u2019m very privileged to be a part of that and employed by somebody who looks at that as something we need to be working on going forward. It\u2019s a good opportunity.
\u201cBecause teams are so large, communication is incredible. Well, some people think communication is incredible\u2026and some people think communication is complaining, when actually communication is having a reasonable conversation and using all the engineering staff. There are so many ideas, and so few things that really solve problems.
\u201cEverybody looks at Rick Hendrick. But we also understand there were times he had a terrible time. But he brought in the right people and got it going in the right direction, and he was able to maintain it.\u201d
But Hendrick seems to be the only car owner at the moment who is going in the right direction. Virtually every other shop on the tour is either in disarray or shaken with loss of confidence, and sometimes downright confusion. Throw in the next phase of NASCAR\u2019s still controversial car-of-tomorrow program \u2013 Monday\u2019s test of the new intermediate model, which may not have enough downforce or the right tires for the 180-plus mph speeds here \u2013 and it\u2019s easy to see why a lot of these guys have long faces.
Monday\u2019s test should be interesting in another respect \u2013 Montrealers\u2019 Jacques Villeneuve and Patrick Carpentier will be on the track together for the first time in years. They\u2019re both 36, both trying to restart their careers, and both making the dramatic shift from open-wheel to NASCAR. Two kickers: Carpentier is driving for Evernham, who just sold 50 percent of his Statesville operation to George Gillett, who owns the Montreal Canadiens, and Villeneuve is driving for Bill Davis, who is reported to be selling his High Point operation to Villeneuve himself.
Davis, Toyota\u2019s lone veteran operation this year, got off to a fairly good start but didn\u2019t improve much, and problems getting Jeremy Mayfield\u2019s half of the two-car team even in the fields has been a major issue. What lies ahead now with Villeneuve coming in to replace Mayfield, and apparently also taking majority ownership of the entire High Point operation?
Well, Mayfield himself just bailed. He\u2019s now running for Gene Haas and Joe Custer, replacing Jeff Green.
\u201cWe had talked about doing some stuff next year, and I wasn\u2019t doing a very good job over at Bill\u2019s,\u201d Mayfield said. \u201cWe just weren\u2019t clicking. So we decided to make a change. Joe knew that, so we said \u2018Hey, let\u2019s go ahead and do something now and get a jump-start on next year.
\u201cTo me it was a no-brainer: jump in and let\u2019s go racing, and do the best we can, and hopefully it will all pay off.\u201d
That seems to be the philosophy of most teams here that aren\u2019t owned by Rick Hendrick.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Mike Mulhern ATLANTA Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson may have the easy part of it these final four races of the year, because all they\u2019ve got to do is win a championship. And whichever one wins, they\u2019ll both be celebrating. But for the rest of these guys the NASCAR season is not winding […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n