Q. I have the same question for both but I’ll ask Rusty first. This is probably a topic that will come up this weekend. What’s your take on driver development programs? You had some experience with Chase Austin. Is financing the big issue, and how critical are driver development programs to the future health of the sport?
RUSTY WALLACE: Well, it’s a great question. I really think that driver development programs are definitely crucial. We’ve got to get these drivers from somewhere, although I will tell you NASCAR has got a pretty good amount of pretty good drivers right now.
Back to your question about Chase Austin, Chase Austin is a fantastic little driver. In fact, he was in my office yesterday at the race shop, just came by to say hello, and Chase would have definitely been in one of my Nationwide cars if we had the funding. Unfortunately what we thought we could put together for him just went away. Atreus Homes Company, a fellow by the name of John Bean out of Atlanta who was funding that program, as everybody knows the home industry just went into shambles and the finances went away and unfortunately we couldn’t continue on with Chase.
But there’s a lot of great young drivers out there. I tell people, yeah, we need to get these guys going, but I’ve got something in my head that tells me in order for one of these guys to be real successful, to get in the sport, to get a good firm foundation, a good footing, it takes three years. I’ve watched many times, and it’s not one, it’s not two, it’s three. And if it’s two, you’re an extra special driver to be able to catch on that quick.
I look at Juan Pablo Montoya, who’s been in his third full year right now, and we’re finally starting to see Montoya lay some good steady, good performances now. Look what he did at Indy, look what he did at Pocono. He always runs good here of late. And I think three years is the key. In order to bring up the young guys and keep them going, they’ve got to be funded. But you’ve got to be able to fund them for a solid three years, and that’s the tough part.
Q. You’ve got an up and coming young kid in your group, but in your opinion who’s a couple of the best young developing drivers right now, whether it’s Nationwide, Truck or Sprint Cup Series?
RUSTY WALLACE: Well, I think Steven Leicht, he’s got a lot of talent. I think he’s a kid who if Richard Childress Racing can keep developing him, he’ll be a good one. My own son, Steven, has just really been doing really good this year, and he’s he’ll be in his third full time year. Another three time story. This is three years with Steven now, and got a lot of people saying, hey, he’s finally looking really good, and maybe he’s ready for a win right now.
You look at Steven, you look at Steven Leicht, you look at I had some high hopes for Brad Coleman. He’s been having some struggles of late. I think I’m going to come back to you with my third choice after you talk to Ray a little bit. I’ve got to think on that one a little bit.
Q. I guess this concept for this weekend is a little foreign, and I’m not sure if the viewers are going to quite understand it. My question is who’s going to be leading the show here? You guys all have great personalities, you guys are going to be mixing it up I’m sure, but at the end of the day someone needs to be running the broadcast, I guess, so to speak. I guess I’ll give it to Ray first.
RAY EVERNHAM: As far as I know, when we drop the green flag we’re all headed towards the first corner together, so you know this group, someone is going to be trying to lead. I think I’m going to rely on DJ a little bit to help in and out and Alan Bestwick will really be traffic cop, but it’s going to be up to us. We’ve all been able to take tosses from the director, from Neil Goldberg, on when to pass to the pit reporters or when to go to break, so we can all kind of do that. It will be a bit of a different show.
It’s not really going to be a free for all because we really do have a conversation flow. I don’t know if you got to see the roundtable discussion that we did from the boxing ring for ESPN, but it’ll be a little bit of stepping over. But I think clearly ESPN doesn’t want a direction, they don’t want somebody in the lead. They want us, they want our personalities, they want us to be just like we’re sitting around a table at somebody’s house watching the race on television talking about it.
RUSTY WALLACE: I totally agree, I think DJ has been in the booth a lot the last couple years, and I think when it comes down to maybe trying to end a conversation or take it to a break or to commercial, Neil Goldberg our producer will tell him that, but we’ll be all hearing the same thing. This isn’t something that’s real hard. We’ve been doing this for a long time.
But one thing I think you’ll see that will be different, I don’t think you’ll hear a lot of numbers. You won’t be hearing a lot of statistical information. You’ll hear a lot of talk about what we’ve done in the past and what we would do or what we wouldn’t do and more of kind of an open table conversation. We won’t be talking about what city the guy grew up in, how many top 10 finishes he’s had, how many top 5s he’s had, all the number stuff that to me is really boring. I think we’re going to talk racing and try to call what’s on the track, and like Ray said, DJ will be a little bit of a traffic cop in there.
RAY EVERNHAM: You’ll probably hear some of, “Don’t tell me, I beat you in 2000,” or “Don’t tell me, I beat you in 2001,” and “you should have done this.” It’ll be a lot like that.
Q. I wanted to talk to either Ray or Rusty, get either of their thoughts on the Chase. There’s four races to go and there’s some big names kind of teetering on the brink of not making it like Kenseth, Mark Martin, Kyle Busch. A couple weeks ago Kyle Busch said that if you don’t make the Chase, it basically means you’re running for nothing the final ten races of the season. I wanted to get you guys’ thoughts on that, is there much at stake, and who do you guys think is in trouble or in good position to make it?
RUSTY WALLACE: First off I’ll say it’s an awful, awful tight Chase right now. Between 7th and 13th there’s only 154 points separating all these guys. And Kyle Busch, I’m actually one of the guys that said, I don’t think he’s going to make it because he’s so aggressive and he’s been having all these problems and now he’s only 58 points out of 12th.
The Chase is definitely open for 7th through 13th, that’s for sure. I think the guys in the top 6 are pretty well locked in. I think 7th through 13th are obviously in trouble. Kyle Busch is going to be driving with a lot of aggression, Clint Boyer, guys like that, trying to get in. The guy I’m a little concerned about right now is actually Matt Kenseth because Matt has got to be looking in his rear view mirror the whole time. He can’t really just drive flat out. He’s got to be protecting that 12th spot he’s in right now.
So there’s different agendas, that’s for sure. And that’s my opinion. Ray, what do you think?
RAY EVERNHAM: I think Kyle is going to race his way in. They’ve got four races to get settled down. He’s a guy that I picked early to win this title. Now, Tony Stewart has certainly come a long way, but I still believe Kyle can get his team and his act together. He seems to be maturing, focusing on the right thing. They’ve got a points race a little bit over here in the next four, but 58 points out, he’s not that far out. He runs awful good at some of these tracks coming up, and I still believe Kyle will be a factor in the Chase.
RUSTY WALLACE: Ray, this year has been awfully competitive, too. We’ve had 12 different winners already this year. From what I remember, that already equals last year’s best for the whole year.
Q. To follow up on what Rusty was saying on about it being so tight, 9th through 15th is separated by 141 points, and that’s the tightest margin 9th through 15th with four races to go until the Chase since the Chase was started. Why do you guys think it has been so tight? Is there anything in particular that’s causing it to bunch up there toward the back?
RAY EVERNHAM: I think it just says how incredibly competitive this sport is. I think that the COT has done a lot of what it was asked to do. Certainly driver safety with that thing has just been fantastic. They get an A+ for driver safety, again, based on some of the things we saw yesterday.
But more so the competition in NASCAR. The cars are equal. The teams are equal, and from 1st to 15th it’s just an incredibly, incredibly competitive sport. I think that that goes to show on how they’ve tightened up the rules and regulations.
There’s a lot of talent now spread through the garage area. You look through the top teams, I think there’s seven different organizations represented in that top 12, and it’s just an amazing competitive sport.
We went from 10 cars to 12 cars because all of a sudden you’ve got 15 Top 10 cars, and I’m going to tell you pretty soon it won’t be long, you’re going to have 20 Top 10 cars, and it’s going to get tighter and tighter to make that Chase or not.
Q. I’ll direct this to Ray. Could you talk about your experience with driver development programs both at Hendrick Motorsports and then with your own team, how critical you feel they are to the future health of the sport, and in your opinion who’s a couple of the best up and coming young talents these days?
RAY EVERNHAM: Well, I do feel like driver development is incredibly important, no different than if you look at all the major league sports. They’ve got leagues you can start playing football, pop warner, baseball, little league on up through high school, college, different things you can do, and racing is not really like that. I think that’s why from the grass roots side of things that’s some things I’m working on, some spec series that we can keep these kids in cars without having to spend a lot of money and have some crazy engineering knowledge so they can get up here.
And NASCAR has done a good job of that with the Camping World Series with the spec motor and spec tire and the amount of people to keep those costs down. As Rusty said, the biggest thing that stops driver development is the funding that it takes to run a guy or a girl in a Cup or Truck or Busch, even ARCA. It’s very, very expensive. So I think from focusing on a spec short track series so you can really get to know if somebody is talented or not, and then being able to get a sponsor or a partner to be able to fund that, again, like Rusty said, for two or three years.
You’ve got a lot of great kids that have come in and not been able to get a full shot at it because sponsors or owners or people just couldn’t be patient enough while they learned.
So we have to continue to develop the young people in this sport. Now, with that said, I think it’s a great time, we’ve got some extremely talented young guys. Rusty and I did that race in Milwaukee. And you look at Ricky Stenhouse and Steven Leicht like he talked about, the Darnell kid, there’s five or six guys. I think Steven Wallace has come a long way in what he’s done. He’s on the verge of winning a race now with his new crew chief Trip Bruce.
So there’s a lot of talent there. But I really think it’s our responsibility to make sure we all get together on some kind of a true step spec racing for kids to keep them stepping at a goal towards getting to NASCAR.
Q. This is for both of you. We talked a little bit about who might make the Chase and who might not, but I just want to get your feeling on once the Chase comes, do you feel that Tony Stewart is the favorite, or who do you think will win the title?
RUSTY WALLACE: Great question, that’s a one tough, too. Right now it looks like Stewart has got so much momentum going on, it’s hard to bet against Tony. I’d have to say Tony. But I will tell you, at the beginning of the year, I said, Johnson is going to do it again. I’m not going to bet against him. If I have two to choose from, I’d definitely pick Johnson or Stewart because of their sheer momentum and their consistency. They’re so consistent, it’s unreal.
You want me to pick one, I’ll pick one. I think Johnson is still going to do it. He’s won three, knows how to do it. He’s a second half team, he’s always been a second half team. I still think it’s going to come out of the Hendrick camp, which that could be Stewart, too, I guess.
RAY EVERNHAM: It’s tough, Tony has consistently out pointed everybody over the past several weeks, and that’s what you’re going to have to do to win the championship. In the Chase certainly you’re going to have to go after wins, and Jimmie Johnson and Chad Knaus I still say are the best sandbaggers in the business. I don’t think that they don’t show everything they’ve got until it really comes time. I know they’ve missed a little bit here and there. Certainly I don’t expect a change out of Tony’s camp, so I do believe they’ll be strong. I expect the 48 car to be their stiffest competition.
Again, I’ve just got to believe that the Gibbs team with Kyle Busch is going to factor in there.
Q. Ray, you talked about your role at ESPN, and are you missing having a more active role in the competition side of things as you’ve had the last couple years and more?
RAY EVERNHAM: I think you miss certainly certain aspects of it. I mean, I love cars, I love to work on them and I love to be in the race. But I don’t miss the 36 or 40 weekends a year and all the stress that went along with it.
I had a good career, and I’m happy with that. I don’t really feel like I’ll be looking to do something full time in Cup. I love to be involved, consult. As I said, I love the sport. I don’t ever plan on walking away from it, but I don’t really ever plan to get back up on the box full time, either.
I do enjoy my role with ESPN. I’m a very team oriented person, and I love to go to the racetrack with these guys. When you get there it’s a team atmosphere. You’re around a bunch of racing people in a relaxed mode. As I said, Rusty and DJ and Andy and I have all become good friends because we don’t have to compete against each other every week. Heck, there was a time you couldn’t keep Rusty and I from wanting to fist fight and now we travel around together. I do enjoy the ESPN role a lot.
I do see myself somehow being involved either in NASCAR or from the mechanical side in the future but certainly not on a full time basis.
Q. I was going to ask Ray what life is like not being involved full time as a team owner, but let me focus more on how things are going at the East Lincoln Speedway. Are you enjoying that? What kind of shows do they have there at the track?
RAY EVERNHAM: I am enjoying it. It’s something that I get to do. I don’t get there every Saturday night, I get there about twice a month. We keep improving the facility. Our attendance keeps going up. We’ve got a car count that’s going up, and we’re doing what we want, and we’re doing something good for the community. It’s like going to a Friday night high school football game in Texas. It’s the same people over and over again; they cheer for their heroes. We’re giving kids a place to start and learn about racing.
I’ve had a lot of good people come through there and talk to them about safety and professionalism. I feel like we put on a good show. We’re going to continue to do that, and I feel good about it. We’re working on a spec series right now to try and do some of the things that I talked about, giving people an opportunity.
We’re reaching some new fans. We probably get we do these little coupons and we experiment in different markets, people that hang out at the lake and do the golf thing and kind of lake people, and we’re getting 25 to 50 of those people averaging rotating throughout the week. So we’re introducing a lot of new fans to the sport, and I feel good about that.
A lot of my buddies have been stopping over on Saturday nights, and Dick Trickle has been there and Doug Herbert the drag racer several times, and I’m going to get this guy and Steven over there for a little match race one night. It’s great because we’re doing something good, and the fans are over there enjoying it, and I think that they’re the same people that turn their TVs on on Sunday to make sure that they watch their NASCAR races.
Q. Rusty, I just want to get your thoughts on the Nationwide Series debut at Iowa Speedway, and what do you think, if anything, that you guys need to do at that track to get a Cup Series event there?
RUSTY WALLACE: Well, first of all, we were really excited about the turnout at Iowa Speedway. It was a historical day for the state of Iowa. It was one of the biggest races I think that the NASCAR Nationwide Series had ever experienced. We had over 60,000 people there. The people were so excited.
It was five laps to go, I looked in the grandstands, I didn’t see hardly anybody leave at all. The highway was vacant around the track. With five laps to go they all stayed until the very end. It was just one of those really, really cool weekends. We had great weather, great competition, two and three wide racing and I was really proud of the track.
It’s no secret that that was the first track I ever designed, and it’s one of the first tracks with multiple groove banking. That track has got 12 degrees on the bottom, 13 in the middle and 14 up top, and the reason we did that was trying to create side by side racing because we heard so much problem about aero tight. These cars get behind cars and they lose their downforce and it’s hard to pass. We made a decision, let’s try to get them so they can change lanes, just simply get out from behind each other, and that’s where the multi groove banking angles came from.
So the track raced good, and when all was said and done we looked at each other and said, wow, what do we do now to get it better. One guy said, well go down in the garage and look what they wrote on the wall. They said, great track, Rusty, but we need more bathrooms. So I think that’s the thing we’re going to work on next.
Q. I had a couple questions. I wanted to ask both of you guys first off, how do you look at those in the Cup and in the Nationwide Series at the back who are essentially kind of the start and parkers? Do you look at those as guys who are somewhat in a sense smart business people? There are a couple teams that have already earned close to $2 million doing it this year. Or is this something that’s kind of a drag on the sport in the sense of it’s not in the true sense of maybe what a competitor should be doing on the racetrack?
RAY EVERNHAM: I can give you my opinion. If you’ve got a guy that’s running the whole series and he’s racing sometimes and he’s got a week that he just can’t afford it and he has to do a start and park, but 75, 80 percent of the time he’s racing, you can deal with that. But I don’t really care for the guys that come in there and they plan to do a start and park. I think those people are taking out of the sport rather than giving to it, and I just don’t like it.
RUSTY WALLACE: I agree with you totally. I’m a little vocal about this. Again, if the guy has got plans to compete in this series and puts some good racing on for the fans and help build the great name of NASCAR by racing, that’s one thing. But if they’re going to come in like Ray just said and just go find a car and just get in and as soon as they make one lap just pull out, grab the money and go home, yeah, it’s a business, it sure is, but for the guys that are out there competing every single week and working like crazy to find sponsors like all of us are and have that happen, I don’t like it.
I know this is probably going to start a firestorm, but I’m not big on it. I totally agree with what you said, Ray. If his intention is to run and he’s running and all of a sudden he has four or five bad weeks where he’s kind of down on his luck, he doesn’t have the money and he’s got to do a start and park, so be it. But to start out from the getgo and plan, I’m going to work this system and just do a start and park and just take the money and run and not invest it putting a show on, I’ve got a problem with that.
Q. Can you further just explain that, because some of these people would say that they’re trying to do that to kind of get started and try to make the money that they can get into an organization kind of like yours, Rusty, or what you had, Ray. Can you further explain, is it just the spirit of the competition, or why is it so bad because somebody would say, look, on the Cup side there’s only 45, 46 cars showing up at some of these races, are they really taking away a spot from anybody.
RAY EVERNHAM: Again, from my standpoint, I think it is. If you want to race, if you’re really trying to make it in the sport and get a sponsor, running one or two laps and pulling in is not going to get it for you. I’d be fighting for everything I was worth, I’d be asking guys to give me tires off their car, or beg, borrow and steal to try and run a whole race. That’s how you get a sponsor.
There are a lot of people that come in and they look at a business plan and they figure at the end of the year they can take away a couple hundred thousand bucks and put it in their pocket. They look at it as a purely business. It’s just not that to me. I’ve grown up in the sport, I’ve been around, I’ve seen tons and tons of people sacrifice their lives and families and things like that to be in it, so I take it as a little bit of a slap in the face when a guy wants to come in and just take money out of the sport without putting something in it.
If you want to be in it, that’s great. There’s enough people there that will help you. There’s tons of guys helping people like Morgan Shepherd and people like that. You can always get a used tire or a used part. There’s some great guys, Rick Hendrick, Richard Childress, myself, Rusty, that have given plenty of parts to people who really wanted to race so they can keep racing. I don’t think there’s an excuse for having a business plan and saying, okay, we’re going to make 50 grand this week and taking that check and going home. I have a tough time stomaching it.
RUSTY WALLACE: Well said. Another guy you just said, Morgan Shepherd, there’s a guy right there who doesn’t have a sponsor on his car, and talk to some people, and people do help him. Morgan goes out to put a show on. If you look at some of the last races he’s had, he’s run the whole race. He’s run all the laps. We’ve talked about him a lot on television, and if you just go out there, run one lap and get off the track, we’re not going to talk about you because you’re not there.
I’ve really got a problem with what I call working the system, just run a lap, just plan to run a lap. In fact, I even had one of those guys say to me one time, what is it you don’t understand about start and park. That means start the race and park it right now. I’m like, wow, that’s not the way I was brought up.
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