5. "If we're not having fun, we're doing this all wrong" outlook of Pat Tryson (6 Viagra Ford)
A Foundation For SuccessThere is a scene about midway in the movie Days of Thunder when Tom Cruise tells Robert Duvall that he really doesn't understand how race cars work.
Cruise's character doesn't know the difference between tight and loose, between push on entry or free on exit.
So Duvall goes about explaining how things work, how Cruise can communicate to him and the team, telling them what the car is doing on the racetrack in language they can understand in the pits.
That may be one of the few accurate moments in the movie.Consider what some of NASCAR's leading drivers and crewchiefs have to say about what's important in building a winning team. They are the same whether you compete in Nextel Cup or your quarter-mile dirt oval.
* Communication: "As teams work together longer and drivers and crewchiefs become more comfortable with one another, communication becomes even more critical," says Matt Borland, Ryan Newman's crewchief on the Alltel Dodge.
There is a tendency to take things for granted, to think the other person knows what you mean even when you don't say it. That's how teams get into trouble. Leave nothing for granted.
* It's all elementary: The best crewchiefs are the ones who have built their own cars and raced their own races, according to Robbie Reiser, who helped Matt Kenseth win the '03 Winston Cup championship.
"I think the best chiefs are those who know the basics because they learned them first-hand," Reiser says. "I don't know anything that can substitute for that type of experience."
Because he and Kenseth grew up racing, Reiser has a feel for the car that someone who has never driven in competition can't fully appreciate. It also allows him to better imagine what Kenseth says he is feeling in the car.
* Trust: Just like in marriage, the best relations are built on trust and respect. Chad Knaus says he and driver Jimmie Johnson respect one another's abilities as crewchief and driver, and trust that each will do his job the best way they know how.
Neither one second-guesses the other, Knaus says.
Borland says that type of trust doesn't happen overnight, but that it is critical to go beyond the inevitable errors that will happen in the pits and on the track and allow a team to focus on doing better at the next race.
For Dale Earnhardt Jr., trust goes one step beyond the driver/crewchief relationship.
"We're family," he says of Tony Eury Sr., his former crewchief. "He wouldn't let me get into a car unless he figured it was as good as it could be."
Setting The StandardMost of the current crop of Nextel Cup fans look to the Jeff Gordon/Ray Evernham combination as racing's benchmark of success.
One of the things that put them in the spotlight is they became so successful so early in their partnership.
Over their seven full seasons together, Gordon climbed into his No. 24 Chevrolet 192 times and climbed out of it in Victory Circle at the end of 49 races. Together, the pair won 26 percent of their races. That figure includes Gordon's rookie season, when he didn't win a race and finished in the top five only seven times.
But perhaps the most successful pairing of driver and crew was when David Pearson drove for Wood Brothers Racing between 1972 and 1978.
Pearson had already won three NASCAR championships-1966, 1968 and 1969-when he agreed to race for Wood Brothers.
During his time with the team, he never ran a full season, yet he managed to win 43 times in 138 starts, for a 31 percent average.
Pearson is second only to Richard Petty in the number of wins in NASCAR's top series, during an era when drivers could race a couple of times a week.
In 1966 he won 15 of 42 races for Cotton Owens. He drove for Holman-Moody in 1968, winning 16 of 48 races, and in 1969, with 11 victories in a remarkable 51 starts.