Days til Daytona!
You and Dale Jr. originally split up because there were some personality clashes. What are you doing now to make it better: Couples therapy? Trust falls?
No, we’re like two brothers. You don’t like it when your brother gets on you like, “Hey, let’s get to practice on time.” It turned into that. It was a bunch of child’s play. You know, I think I’m really good at what I do. He thinks he’s really good at what he does. Splitting up showed him what I was carrying for him and showed me what he was carrying for me. It was a wake-up call for both of us. Both of us are good at what we do, but we’re better together.
Can you give an example of how you worked through something recently that would have been a problem before?
[The last race of the year at] Homestead wasn’t a great weekend, but I don’t think there was one argument. We were just like, “All right, we know we don’t have a great car here.” Years before, we might have said a few words and gotten angry at each other. Instead, we just chilled out, made it through the weekend and came home. That was a big sign of everything getting better.
In 2007, NASCAR is talking about switching to a whole new car—and you have one of them here. What do you think of it?
None of us really like it. They’re trying to make it more like a truck. It’s four inches wider and they stood the windshield up a whole lot more. They want to lower the bumper so, in case a guy hits you, you’re hit more square instead of spinning out. The roll cage is wider and longer to give the driver more room, and they’re trying to keep the driver’s window as big as they can, so the bigger guys can get in and out.
How’s it run?
It runs all right. The guy who’s leading does fine; he’s got enough down force that he can run one certain speed. But it busts such a big hole in the air that the guy behind him has trouble. There’s no air. Think of driving down the road and traveling behind a tractor trailer—you feel the car wobble. That’s what the guy’s doing behind you. So he doesn’t have the down force or grip to make a move on you. You actually have to mess up. So it’s something they’re experimenting with.
What happens if NASCAR goes ahead and makes that the car for 2007?
You’re basically throwing away every car that you have in your complex and building 15 new cars. Their goal is for this to be one car that you run at every track from Daytona to Rockingham. They don’t want to see much difference in the cars. But there will always be a Daytona car because there will always be little stuff that you can do to a Daytona car.
What’s the driving force behind NASCAR and their rule changes—both with the new car and the current one?
NASCAR’s perfect world is to have 39 Matchbox cars lined up and each driver gets in one. They want you to have the same equipment as the guy in front of you, and the only thing that’s going to decide the race is your ability as a driver, how your crew set up your car and what happens on pit road.
How does your job as crew chief fit into that?
My job is to tweak and find as many gray areas as I can around NASCAR. Say I come up a spindle package or geometry setting that works really well—that’s not against the rules, but it’s an innovation and an advantage. If NASCAR thinks it’s too far over the line, they might make a rule against it, but most of the time they don’t. We all know where the rules are and if you break them, you’re going to pay the consequences. Sponsors don’t like that headache and publicity. They just want to win races. And it’s our job to do it within the rulebook and gray area.
When you find something new, how long before NASCAR takes the advantage away from you?
It depends. Sometimes you can do stuff for six months. But if a guy comes up with something pretty wild, it’ll be a rule the next week. Hendrick [Motor Sports] got away with some shocks at Dover and ran first and second. The next Monday morning we had a bulletin on our desks with a rule about it. But when they look back six years from now and say, “Jimmie Johnson won at Dover in 2005.” No one’s going to say, “Well, he had those shocks.” They’re just going to say he won.
What’s the craftiest way you’ve seen someone out and out cheat?
In 1995, Ricky Rudd had hydraulics that would change the height of the back of his car—because the lower you get the spoiler to the ground, the faster your car runs. He could hit a button on the clutch pedal and it would lower the car or release it. I actually have a book called Cheating on what some of the old-time guys used to do. It’s hilarious.
You’ve got high ceilings here in the shop. Ever take the cars out and set up some basketball hoops?
No, but a lot of times we’ll throw a football around. We usually quit when it bounces off a hood.
Are guys always bringing their kids’ pinewood derby cars to the shop to juice up?
Oh yeah, and we also work on our [remote control] cars in here. We’ll tear the motors apart to sand blast the cranks and the inside of the blocks. We’ll fab up a spoiler or come in and order some titanium bolts to put inside. Then we go run them all day at a track we built at Dale Jr’s house.
How does Junior do?
He’s got a lot of hand-eye coordination, so he does really good. He doesn’t like the little cars, though, because they run so fast. He’s like, “You can’t control them.” But we’ve also been playing around with a lot of quarter-scale cars because they run a lot slower and you can rub on each other and turn a guy sideways. You’ve got a lot more car control.
So who’s got the fastest RC car?
Oh, me. No doubt.
Days til Daytona!