Full Tilt

In the days leading up to the start of SpeedWeeks at Daytona International Speedway, Ray Evernham had most of the NASCAR Winston Cup world convinced the Dodge Intrepid teams were struggling and would be much slower than the other cars in the season-opening Daytona 500.

So, what happened?

Two Dodges, driven by Bill Elliott of Evernham Motorsports and Stacy Compton of Melling Racing, swept the front row. All 10 Dodges made the field for the Daytona 500, and Sterling Marlin and Ward Burton led major portions of the event. About the only thing Dodge didn’t accomplish was winning the Daytona 500.

“Most businesses get a chance to open their doors and start on a small scale,” Evernham says. “Our first real day on the job was the Daytona 500. When you start out that quickly and that big, you have to have a good plan, good people and a real passion for what you are doing.”

Dodge put together a plan to bring the auto manufacturer back into NASCAR Winston Cup racing after a 22-year absence, and the teams have been able to execute. Through the early part of the 2001 season, some Dodge teams have been very competitive, some have struggled but overall it’s been positive.

Staying On Track

“I think it’s right on target,” says Dave Blaney, one of two Dodge drivers at Bill Davis Racing. “There has been a Dodge that has been fast enough and had a chance to win in almost every race this year. Three or four different Dodges have had a chance to win.

“They probably couldn’t have hoped for a whole lot more. They are competitive. They didn’t make any changes to the body. The car is good and the engines are good. It’s a matter of fine tuning what we have, and that is the key to making it better this year.”

Blaney experienced tremendous improvement at the start of his second season in NASCAR Winston Cup compared to where he was last year when he drove a Pontiac. Part of that can be attributed to gaining experience behind the wheel but some of it can be the car he is driving.

One driver who has certainly enjoyed a tremendous rejuvenation behind the wheel is Sterling Marlin. The two-time Daytona 500 winner struggled at Sabco Racing for the past several seasons in a Chevrolet. When CART team owner Chip Ganassi bought the team from Felix Sabates and switched to Dodge, Marlin enjoyed a rebirth in his racing career.

“Not to knock anybody, but where we were last year, we were a bottom feeder with the brand we had,” says Marlin. “We would find something out a month later. With the Dodge coming in, we are very happy. We never had a chance to do what we have done as a team, and, with Dodge coming in, things have worked out good for us.”

Tony Glover is the team manager of Chip Ganassi Racing. He was Marlin’s crew chief at Morgan-McClure Motorsports when the driver won the Daytona 500 in 1994 and 1995. He then moved to Sabco, where he worked with Robby Gordon in 1997 before Marlin moved over in 1998.

Even though the two were reunited, the entire program didn’t get back to speed until Ganassi bought the team from Sabates. Ganassi hired Andy Graves to take over the two-car Winston Cup team and spent much of the latter half of last season making the switch to Dodge for 2001.

“Dodge has a very good plan in place,” Glover says. “They’re on top of their game, and they didn’t come into this sport to play around. They came in to win. I’ve always been intrigued by a new car. When Chevrolet came out with the new Monte Carlo in 1994, Sterling won the Daytona 500 the first time out with it. That was exciting to me, and I’m really extremely excited about being part of the new Dodge team. If we can help them win some races and contend for the championship that would be great.”

Graves worked with Terry Labonte when he won the 1996 Winston Cup title. Perhaps his biggest race victory came last Memorial Day weekend when he was the team manager for Juan Montoya’s Indianapolis 500 victory for Target/Chip Ganassi Racing.

Lee McCall is the crew chief for Marlin’s Dodge Intrepid and helped get the driver off to his best start in years.

“I suppose there’s going to come a point in the road where we struggle, and that’s when I’ve got to be strong,” McCall says. “There’s a lot of talent on this team and that includes Sterling. I knew all along he could drive a race car. It just depends on what you put under him. We’ve got a great car, a great motor. We’ve got the total package right now.

“I’d say the first four races of the season set the tone for the year. We’ve got a jump on them now, so we’ve just got to try to stay on top. At the first of the season, my goal was to finish in the Top 10 in points. Anything above and beyond that would have been great. I think now we’re going to shoot for the Top 5. If we can stay on top of our game, we might be a contender for the title before it’s all said and done, but we’ve got a long way to go.”

‘Not Too Bad’

Tim Culbertson is the Winston Cup program manager for Dodge and helped oversee the effort to get Dodge back into Winston Cup. While Evernham was in charge of spearheading the development of the car, Culbertson and the rest of the Dodge engineers at Auburn Hills, Michigan, worked diligently to make sure the program got off to a running start in the Daytona 500.

“We got to Daytona and the old term, ‘You are never ready to race, you just go,’ that’s what we did,” Culbertson says. “We said, let’s see what we did and it was, ‘Hey, not too bad.’ It was very rewarding to see that. I don’t know how we could sandbag. You have to have a data point for sandbagging and we didn’t have that.”

Culbertson says he looked at the first eight races of 2001 and saw Dodge had the car to beat in four of them. Ward Burton and Marlin contended for the win at Daytona, an equalized tire kept Bill Elliott out of victory lane at Las Vegas, Dave Blaney was the class of the field at Atlanta until a loose hub sidelined him, and a late-race fender bender kept John Andretti from winning at Bristol.

Oddly, the Dodge team that has struggled at times is the factory-backed Evernham Motorsports with Elliott and rookie Casey Atwood.

“Going in, if you looked at the year 2000, Bill Davis was the team for Dodge,” Culbertson says. “They had finished in the Top 10, and the team has experience. Bill Davis has been doing this for a number of years quite successfully. You cut the bodies off, you get adapted to the new aero package and to the new engine package. You expected them to be our strongest team.

“The Ganassi team this year is arguably the most improved. Sterling Marlin has consistently run well. What you have there is a veteran baseball player and all of a sudden, he gets some new blood and gets good again. The Ganassi contribution is great. Andy Graves has done a great job with that team. I’d like to think it’s the same Sterling Marlin. It’s new blood and Andy Graves is part of that new blood.

“Ray Evernham, as he likes to say, the last time he looked in the mirror, there was no ‘S’ on his chest. Ray is a human being and he’s a fine human being. There are probably three or four areas Ray is a rookie at. He is still new at this. He is new at running a business. He is new at being an owner. We all have a habit when we get into something new and it’s uncomfortable. We all want to get in our comfort zone. You can see Ray wanting to get into the crew chief chair.

“If it wasn’t Ray Evernham, but some other rookie owner, people would say, ‘Keep an eye on this guy.’ The fact is a lot of people do hold Ray in that Superman status. I have no concern Ray Evernham is going to be everything we expect him to be, but it’s going to take some time.”

Although Evernham’s team struggled early into the season, the other Dodge teams compliment him on helping with the one-team approach where all 10 Dodge drivers and crew chiefs work together for the betterment of the overall effort.

“That is the main reason the cars came out of the box running so well,” Blaney says. “The teams pitched in and threw in all the ideas. Once we started racing, honestly, all of that sharing has been cut way back and you had to expect that. It’s another team we had to beat on Sunday. In a way, you are hooked up to them a little bit, but the reason it started off well is they all worked together.

“Our team was together. We were racing every week. On my team, we cut Pontiac bodies off those cars and put Dodge bodies on. It wasn’t like Ray went through. He had to build a whole new team, getting buildings up and people hired. There was a lot more to undertake than we did. It’s the same with Ganassi. They had an up and running race team with Sterling Marlin in place. They brought some new people in but it kept rolling.

“Give Ray this time next year and see where he is at. You have to give him a year to get up and running.”

Small Steps

Culbertson says he is disappointed that all Dodge teams haven’t been able to qualify for every race.

“We are really big on our one team approach,” he says. “When we see one of our cars not make it, we’ve never had any more than one car not make the race, but that is a disappointment.

“The Davis group will get that straightened out. Ganassi has been great with Sterling Marlin. When you get the big picture on Ray, I think he is doing fine. The Melling crew has shown improvement over last year, and the Petty team is starting to show improvement.

“I think we have shown the car is capable of winning on a short track, a mid-size track and a superspeedway. That is what it’s all about in this sport.”

While Dodge made huge gains getting its race program started, the bigger battle will be measured in tenths of seconds and single digits of horsepower.

“We are moving into a phase in engineering I think is very interesting and in some regards, it is a more interesting phase,” Culbertson says. “Ted Flack and his group in 500 days came up with 750 hp. This year, they will struggle to come up with 20. The aero group found a lot of drag and downforce in 500 days. They will never come up with that much. Now it comes in the ones and twos. It becomes a difficult job because sometimes, it’s not obvious to see ones and twos. What is even more important, it’s hard to high-five it when you have ones and twos. We move into another design phase that is as challenging as the one we just accomplished.

“You have to work just as hard to find that extra 1 or 2 hp because that is what will be required to win in this game, constant improvement.”