NASCAR Camping World Series Tour - Team Tending

"We had fun this past season with the ARCA West but we are really looking forward to the challenge of competing against the best competition on the West Coast, with the different tracks, pit stops, and longer races," Jim says. "I feel that the bigger tracks suit my driving style, but qualifying at the beginning of the season will be my biggest challenge."

No one on the team is comfortable talking about goals. It is an operation with the talent, equipment and organization that should make Jefferson a contender for a championship and Warn in the hunt for the rookie title.

They expect to do well.

Mike Warn says he is willing to support the team out of his own pocket, to eliminate pressure from a sponsor on them to perform well.

"All I expect," he says, "is that we'll do the best we possibly can at every track we visit. If we do that, we won't need to make any excuses."

This season, the West Series competes at tracks in Washington, Oregon, California, Iowa, Texas, Utah, Colorado and Arizona.

Jefferson has 24 starts in the West series, where he scored one win, two poles, and a dozen Top 10 finishes.

As a crew chief, Carruthers has worked with some of the big names in racing on the West Coast, turning wrenches for the likes of Kevin Harvick, Brendan Gaughan and Hershel McGriff.

"I was actually up here working with a team and just got the urge to drive around and look at the country," he says. "I stumbled onto Prescott and got to thinking there was no reason to stay in California if I could live here."

It didn't take him long to adapt to the rural lifestyle. His shop logo proclaims it is located "at the center of the universe" and he often shows up at the track in blue bib overalls.

Carruthers even served as Prescott's mayor for four years, a job he says made him a better crew chief.

"There is a tendency for folks to see only one solution to a problem," he says. "But when you are an elected official, you have to listen to everyone's solution, and suddenly you discover your way of doing things is not the only way. It may not even be the best way."

It is a philosophy he has adapted in his shop and team.

He's a crew chief who builds teams the same way he builds cars. Every part and every person has to work with every other one in order to succeed.

"Inside the shop, we can be brutally honest," he says. "But in this sport you have to be. If we screw up, we step up and take the blame, figure out what went wrong and try to make sure it doesn't happen again. And then we move on."

Carruthers says that not making mistakes and having a team with depth in equipment and crew is going to be the key to success this year.

"There will be a lot of teams that will be strong at certain tracks," the crew chief says. "But I think the ones capable of winning the championship are those who can come back to the track weekend after weekend-like the stretch of back to back races in the middle of the season-and still perform."

"It's going to be rough," says Jefferson, who sees his role as both lead driver and mentor to Jim Warn. "He's a very talented driver, but one with no experience in cars like these."

Warn knows he's on the steep end of the learning curve.

"Most of the tracks we'll race on, I've never even seen," says Warn, who feels his sports car background may give him some advantage at the road courses at Infineon in California and Miller Motorsports Park in Utah.