The Yates Engine Men

Doug Yates sees the world a bit differently than you or me, because he lives 12 hours in the future. It may be mere minutes after a Winston Cup checkers, but Yates has already opened his eyes to Monday morning. As the head engine builder for Robert Yates Racing, he will have already huddled with his father,legendary engine builder and team owner, Robert, and zeroed in on the Yates engine shop’s Monday priorities for the following NASCAR Cup weekend.

He will have put a complete battle plan in place for the team's No. 88 and No. 28 Ford Taurus Winston Cup cars, as well the team's Winston Cup engine customers. And he will have formed a very good idea for the next step in the Yates team's perpetual engine development program. An obsession? Sure, and it had better be. Future thinking (and acting) was a major factor in bringing Dale Jarrett's Ford Credit/Ford Taurus to the head of the Winston Cup pack last season and will certainly help lift Jarrett's new teammate Ricky Rudd in 2000. But the real key to remaining competitive in Winston Cup is having the strongest organization, the best planning, and the most information.

Robert Yates Racing maintains over 60 in-house Yates/Ford engines a season in Winston Cup alone, with six engines per car per race for the No. 88 Ford Credit, No. 28 Texaco, and No. 10 Tide teams, maintained by over 40 technicians.

With their outside customer units for the No. 66 and No. 23 Travis Carter and No. 75 Butch Mock Cup cars, as well as Craftsman Truck engines for Mike Wallace and Rick Crawford raising the number to well over 120, the Yates' engine program demands consummate attention to detail. What it provides in turn is a massive engine performance data base--a huge test session every weekend. Or as Doug Yates puts it, "A lot more at bats." Doug Yates sat down with Stock Car Racing recently and detailed how Robert Yates Racing approaches the pressures of the four P's: planning, preparation, performance, and prediction, to consistently provide what are widely-hailed as the most powerful engines in Winston Cup, all while maintaining a large and healthy customer program.

"The public probably has quite a few misconceptions remaining about a modern NASCAR engine program," reflects Yates. "The days of the dirt floor garage are long gone. By any measurement, there are world class engines being produced here at Yates for Winston Cup, capable of running at huge speeds for four to five hours at 9,200 rpm under incredible stresses while still making 5 miles per gallon. "We have also built engines for the world endurance racing events like Le Mans, with the Panoz team, that have proven to be equal to the best that Mercedes, Toyota, and BMW have to offer. While we don't see NASCAR accepting E.F.I. in Winston Cup any time in the future, we wanted to get involved with that program to learn all we could about the systems.

"We are rapidly getting to the point where we will be able to produce most of our components in house," adds Yates. "For outside parts, we have an in-house quality check program that is second-to-none. Every part that comes through our door passes through the check before getting close to the machine shop. Further, our staff has a handful of guys that could be top engine builders anywhere, for anyone.

"We take pride in having a plan for paying attention to every detail with everyone knowing what to do for each situation. Still, you can never really get ahead in racing; you can only respond to changes. With all the different tracks, with different configurations we run, you can't get more than a week ahead." Robert Yates Racing's proven system for producing great engines begins with a post-race chassis dyno session every Monday morning. Data is logged on the No. 88 and No. 28, then compared to the pre-race chassis dyno measurements. Then the race engines are torn down. "The Monday night post-race tear down process is just as important as the build," stresses Yates. "We document everything as it comes apart so we can cut off problems before they go any further. A problem with incorrectly ground push rod radii was discovered this way two weeks ago. "If anything unusual comes up, we have the added benefit of Robert's experience.

He's seen it all and is always available to go. He deserves so much credit for the strength of this team. I feel so lucky and so fortunate to work with my dad. I think he's a real genius when it comes to an engine." A bit of background: any block that aspires to reach a Yates' car spends over 80 hours of machining, boring, decking, and fine-tuning tweaks before any consideration. That is, if it ever makes it out of the crate. "Mass production is a lot better than it was five years ago," says Yates. " We still end up rejecting 50 percent of the blocks we see due to cylinder wall thickness problems." (The few that make the cut still face over 1,000 dyno miles with no problems before even being installed in the No. 88). As the season progresses, the tear down inspections dictate which engines are delegated to certain roles...qualifying, short track, testing, restrictor plate, and road course. "We end up running the best engine each week--four or five races in a row," says Yates. "No matter how closely you try to maintain tolerances, one engine will always be better than the rest. The differences used to be maybe 30hp, but now its closer to 10hp."

By Tuesday night, the prime race engine has been reassembled. Wednesday morning will have it in the race car again and on the chassis dyno for adjustments. The team will have the engine dressed to go into the trailer Wednesday night for departure. Usually, the engine shop has five to six rebuilds a week, three of which are race engines. Yates Racing finds many of its highly regarded engine personnel through referrals, collegiate internship programs, and the armed forces. What makes a truly valuable engine team member? "We feel that in a good team member, attitude is 85 percent and skill about 15 percent of the picture. They have to be able to work well with others," says Yates. "This is still an on-the-job training position, and our approach to it is paying off. We started with a core group of four guys and built on that. We start new team members out in the tear down room and work them through the system. It probably takes a month or maybe longer to bring a new man up to speed." Doug Yates credits Dale Jarrett with a sign that hangs over the shop area. It suggests another trait sought for Yates team members. It reads, "It is amazing how much can be accomplished when no one cares who gets the credit." Is there the chance that, after investing in a person and teaching them the Yates team system, they might take their "inside perspective" to someone else?

"Yeah, no doubt," says Yates. "We have lost a lot of sleep over that. However, race engine building is so specialized today that no one person can know enough of every detail to hurt the program if they leave. In fact, we did have someone leave years ago and our engines ended up getting better anyway. Plus, what works for a Ford won't necessarily work for a Chevy. There are so many variables and combinations anymore that it's nearly impossible to carry much proprietary information from car to car and have it work." The Yates team arrives at each track with their Cup engines needing only minor track-specific adjustments and a good plug check before the practice. Does a driver's style influence how the engine response is set? "Yes, definitely," says Yates. "We tailor our package to what the driver needs. The person who deserves a lot of the credit for our ideas about engine response is Davey Allison.

He gave us so much of our development information in the early 1990s. For example, Dale (Jarrett) wants a car to pull strongly off a corner. Jeff (Gordon) and Terry (Labonte) are different. Darrell Waltrip will tell you how an engine will respond the second he leaves pit road. It’s a matter of moving torque around to get what they need. "Sometimes it might take us to tell the drivers what they need," laughs Yates. Once the response is set, the engine team works with the chassis team to dial the car into the track. Each session finds a very focused Yates switching between hands-on tuner for the Yates Racing No. 88 and No. 28 team cars and roving on-site representative to Yates’ racing engine customers.

It is here that Doug Yates' skill and leadership is most apparent. He blends communication, experience, and feel with some good old intuition and hands-on massaging to bring the Yates engines to their optimum. What tracks give the engine team the most difficult assignment? "Well, the restrictor plate tracks are sort of a 'give-me-everything -you-got with a good aero package' situation. It's the short tracks that are the toughest challenge. It's all about getting the power to the ground. Our cars are overpowered. Horsepower has probably gone up 100hp in the last five years with no increase in tire size. It's important to listen to what the car is telling you and give it what it wants.

Martinsville, Bristol...you have to depend on the crew chief to give you a lot of input so that when you go back to the chassis dyno you can identify the points where the torque curves need to be. You have to be open-minded and give the car what it asks for. And use common sense." How about the most rewarding track for an engine builder? "Indy is the ultimate for us. There are no restrictors, not much banking, an incredible crowd, and a great history... just to be a part of the race is an honor." If the engines are so powerful, can he predict where any gains will be made in the future? "Well, we're a long way from a perfect engine. Even though we use the same carburetor that my hero, Leonard Wood, used to adjust by driving the car to get the feel and then jumping out to tune, I think there's plenty left. It's true that making the valves faster is a great place to find power, but I think the secret will be to tune each cylinder to the optimum. Right now you have just one engine with eight cylinders. I think that someday, we will be able to tune each cylinder individually and end up with eight engines. I can talk about that because it's a lot harder to do than people realize, and I am at it every day."

What are the biggest advantages to your Winston Cup engine program? "We couldn’t afford to run the way we do without our other engine programs," says Yates. "We gain information from every engine we supply and can apply that knowledge to our cars. At the end of the 1999 season, we were able to try out 2000 systems on some of our customer cars and get early feedback. Every big engine builder will be trying out their new systems and that is why some smaller teams will come on stronger at the end of the season."

How would cost containment affect Winston Cup? "It's not what you have, but how smart you are with the budget you have," says Yates. "Racing is all about competition. If Winston Cup became a spec class, the fun would definitely go out of it for me. If engine builders couldn't be creative, racing wouldn't be a full-time challenge anymore; it would just be a job." Yates adds, "We all love spending 24/7 trying to beat the guy next to us in the garage." Spoken like a true engine man.