Jeff Gordon was in a place you were unaccustomed to seeing him Feb. 14 -- out of the lead with 10 laps left in the Daytona 500. That's when he proved it's not just the car. As he rushed into Turn 1, he saw
Rusty Wallace in the high groove and the lapped Ford of
Ricky Rudd puttering low. "Oh, Ricky, I hope you see me, because I'm coming real fast," Gordon thought. Then he threaded the needle between them. Rusty has been in hideous accidents here. Gordon has not. Rusty flinched. And just like that, as
Mike Skinner pulled to his outside, we had a three-wide wall of sheet metal flying to the start/finish line, with, of all things,
Dale Earnhardt stalking them in fourth. Earnhardt could have helped his teammate, Skinner, but instead he gambled on genius. He bumped Gordon's rainbow Chevy from behind, punting No. 24 into a lead that Earnhardt then followed. For the next eight hair-raising laps, they were nose-to-tail, in first and second, with Earnhardt pulling out every move to set the kid up. How good is Jeff Gordon? You saw it there. His nerves were tungsten. Check, please. Season's over.
Or is it?
The No. 24 team is the richest and most inventive in NASCAR. Its guru,
Ray Evernham, employs the only full-time pit crew trainer in the Winston Cup garage. He has a former nuclear sub engineer on the payroll as an engineer. When a rumor surfaced that Evernham's boss,
Rick Hendrick, was considering building a $50 million wind tunnel for him, no one thought it too ridiculous to be true. (A Hendrick spokesman will only say that it's "under consideration.")
Robert Yates, a revered engine builder whose No. 88 car finished third in the Winston Cup standings last year with
Dale Jarrett, simply threw up his hands and said, "It's almost enough to make you cry uncle."
Don't do it, Robert. What can be built can be built again. Or at least stolen. It's not going to be cheap. But big-time sponsors who want to play in the fast lane can't penny-pinch against an outfit that spent half a million dollars just to test for the Daytona 500.
Junior Johnson once kept a picture of
Richard Petty taped inside the urinal of his race shop to motivate his guys. But times have changed. Now you need deep pockets, the Pope's patience and the following advice (hey, it's the only thing in NASCAR that's still free).
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1. Off the Crew Chief Carousel
In NASCAR, familiarity breeds speed. "What takes us an hour to figure out, Jeff and Ray can diagnose in 15 minutes," says racer
Jeff Burton. Half of the Winston Cup regulars have less than a year of experience with their crew chiefs; two-thirds have less than two years. But Gordon and Evernham have been together since 1991, when Jeff still had a bad prom mustache and Ray was studying
Pat Riley's motivational speeches. Their ability to diagnose problems using shorthand gives them a fantastic edge, especially late in the race.
Jack Roush is still steamed about the Pepsi 400 in Michigan last August, where Gordon and Evernham quickly addressed an ill-handling car by replacing two tires instead of four. That made for a speedy exit from the pit, and Gordon made up a 20-second deficit to dust
Mark Martin's dominant Ford. As Martin's teammate, Burton, put it: "When the green flag drops after a caution late in the day, Ray has told his team exactly what they need to know to help him win a 30-lap race."
2. Pamper Your Pit Crew ...
Gordon's performance on pit road last year was phenomenal: He gained or maintained position in 80% of his stops. Much of the credit goes to an offensive lineman with a master's in organizational behavior from Stanford named Andy Papathanassiou. Andy Papa, as he's known, is unique in Winston Cup because his sole job is to get Gordon's Rainbow Warriors ready for Sunday -- supervising their diet, weight training and daily drills. Many of the Warriors are hired guns, not mechanics, and have jobs ranging from schoolteacher to UPS driver. When they're flown to the track on a private plane Sunday morning, they're the freshest crew on pit road. That will be incalculably important this year when the schedule expands to 34 races, fraying crews to the breaking point.
3. … Or Just Steal Gordon's
It happened to Dale Earnhardt's Flying Aces. His team owner, Richard Childress, stood idly by as rival teams cherry-picked his championship crewmen with big free agent offers. As a result, the Aces have been eclipsed by Childress' other team -- the one piloted by Mike Skinner. If you can't steal Gordon's crew, then consider buying one ready-built, and right off the rack. Last year, a wandering pit crew approached several B-list teams, offering its Sunday services for a reported $12,000. With race teams bringing ever greater numbers of specialists to the track to work on shocks, chassis alignment and just about anything else you can think of, NASCAR is considering a rule that would limit the number of crewmen representing a team each weekend. It would undercut Gordon's decided manpower advantage, but NASCAR hasn't pulled the trigger on the rule yet. There's no word on when, or if, it will.
4. Hope the New Monte Carlo Gets Here Soon ...
Chevrolet debuted a new version of its Monte Carlo at the Chicago Auto Show on Feb. 11, but NASCAR has to approve the dimensions of the car's racing cousin before it can be put on the track. In theory, Winston Cup automobiles are supposed to be mirror images of the production models. But when Ford introduced its new Taurus last year, NASCAR allowed it to have a shorter roof, longer hood and wider rear end -- all key aerodynamic advantages. NASCAR is expected to take a harder line on the new Monte Carlo, but when? Its racing rollout was scheduled for May, leading to hopeful predictions among rivals that Chevy teams would need several races this summer to get used to the new machine. "That's when we'll be looking to make our big move," says Ford owner Robert Yates. Last week, however, the rollout was moved up to the Brickyard 400 in August. And it may even have to wait until next year. Almost no one would like that, including Chevy teams that see the new chassis as a way to pull even with Gordon on the aerodynamic front. (See 5.)
5. … And Then Stay on the Gas
Yates argues that Gordon's biggest advantage in 1998 was that he could "run flat-out in the last 10 laps of any race. We maybe could outpower him in Pocono or Indianapolis [both flat tracks], but at the other tracks he was on the gas longer than we were." The reason: handling. It's an elusive combination of chassis setup, aerodynamics and horsepower, and Gordon had it where the others didn't. Yates and Ford's other kingpin, Jack Roush, say they spent an additional 20%, or a staggering $1 million, in the off-season to buy themselves better handling. And they're far from alone. Chevy owners Richard Childress, Dale Earnhardt and Andy Petree have also sunk nearly $1 million into a research consortium to discover the aerodynamic secrets of the No. 24 team. Its president, Ford's former aero guru Louis Duncan, says he may never match what Evernham has achieved with the currently used '96 chassis. But, he adds, "The '99 Monte Carlo chassis gives everyone a clean sheet of paper to work with."
6. Pump Up Pontiac
How well would Gordon have done if the Pontiac brigade led more than just 7.1% of the laps raced in 1998? For one thing, a more aggressive contingent could have cut into the 170-bonus-point total that Gordon notched for leading the most laps of eight races. (He won the title by 364 points, but was ahead by only 199 in late September.) Pontiac is strongest at the super speedways of Daytona and Talladega. Bobby Labonte won three poles (overall), won a race at Talladega and notched two second-place finishes at Daytona. But everywhere else, its five teams averaged just a 20th-place finish. This year it has its strongest lineup of the modern era. With Ernie Irvin healthy, John Andretti and Ward Burton ready to crack the top 10, Kyle Petty facing a make-or-break year and Labonte getting former IRL driver Tony Stewart as a teammate, Pontiac won't lack for aggressive drivers. The question is whether those drivers will keep their cars on the track long enough to be effective spoilers.
7. Keep the Old Guys Healthy
Until Dale Earnhardt Jr. lives up to his billing against the A-list crowd, and Buckshot Jones decides whether he wants to jump up the standings or over Snake River Canyon, the racers with the best shot at beating Gordon were born when Eisenhower was in the White House. Half the drivers in last year's top 20 are over 40, and their health problems could fill a season of ER. Mark Martin was scheduled to have off-season back surgery but changed his mind, deciding to live with the pain. Dale Jarrett, meanwhile, went into a 16-race slump last summer when gallstones got the better of him. Both men say they feel much better. But the length of the season (they have only five weekends off the entire year) will be unforgiving for this crowd.
8. Start a New Tire War
The last time Hoosier tried to challenge Goodyear in Winston Cup, it introduced a tire that was so fast it immediately vaulted Geoff Bodine -- Hoosier's marquee driver -- into contention. Unfortunately, the 1994 racing deaths of Neil Bonnett and Rodney Orr, both Hoosier drivers, are still fresh memories. Their Hoosiers had nothing to do with the accidents, but drivers with long memories still think the quest for speed got out of hand back then. Maybe it did. But allegations that Gordon used chemical softeners to get a better grip in New Hampshire last August -- NASCAR subsequently called the allegations unfounded -- suggest a tire war is still raging in some form. Goodyear has a three-year exclusive contract to supply tires that runs through next year. Why not open it up, and let some rivals shuffle the deck after that? Bob Newton, Hoosier's president, thinks it's inevitable. "There's too much money to be made for it not to happen," he says.
9. Get Your Own Sprint Car Driver
If you can't beat Gordon, who was a sprint car legend before heading into NASCAR's Busch series at 19, then find a Gordon of your own. A few years ago, open-wheel dirt-trackers from the Midwest had no hope of breaking into NASCAR. But the search for "the next Jeff" has helped Indiana open-wheelers Kenny Irwin and Tony Stewart to get high-profile Winston Cup rides, and dirt-track alums Dave Blaney and Mike Bliss are knocking on the door from the Busch and Craftsman truck series. The learning curve is steep. Gordon wrecked out of a third of his races in his 1993 rookie year, and Irwin finished a disappointing 28th in his rookie debut last season. Stewart will probably eat a lot of concrete this year, too. But patience pays off: Gordon finished eighth in his second season, then won his first title in his third.
10. If All Else Fails, Pray for the Curse
There have been seven repeat champs (Dale Earnhardt did it three times) since the 1950s, but only one three-peater -- Cale Yarborough, who reigned from 1976 to '78. "I like the kid's chances," Yarborough says. "All you hear about these days is people talking about being steady, collecting points. To hell with that. I went out there to win in '78, and the kid does too. He's a throwback." If the curse holds, Gordon will be in good company. The ranks of failed three-peaters include Buck Baker ('56-57), Lee Petty ('58-59), Joe Weatherly ('62-63), David Pearson ('68-69), Richard Petty ('71-72, '74-75), Darrell Waltrip ('81-82) and Dale Earnhardt ('86-87, '90-91, '93-94). But judging from his Daytona pyrotechnics, the only curses Gordon will come across will be the ones muttered by the racers he dusts en route to Victory Lane.
This article appears in the March 8, 1999 issue of ESPN The Magazine.
