NASCAR WCUP: Ricky Rudd heads to Dover still searching for victory
Posted By Terry CallahanMotorsports Editor, The Auto Channel
May 30, 2001
One-third of the way through the 2001 season, Ricky Rudd, driver of the No. 28 Texaco/Havoline Taurus, sits in fifth place in the NASCAR Winston Cup points standings. Through the year's first 12 races, Rudd has collected three top-five and eight top-10 finishes - including a seventh-place showing in Sunday night's Coca-Cola 600 at Lowe's Motor Speedway. Also, Rudd has been quite successful at Dover Downs International Speedway, winning four races (in 1986, '87, '92 and '97) and four poles ('81, '82, '84 and '88), and collecting 13 top-five finishes - including a third and a fifth in last year's two races there.
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GOING FROM THE LONGEST RACE OF THE SEASON TO DOVER, WHERE YOU CALL IT MORE OF A SPRINT, IS THAT A RELIEF TO YOU? "Dover, with the concrete, makes things a little interesting. It's probably one of the best concrete tracks we run because there is side-by-side racing at Dover, where some of the concrete tracks tend to be a one-groove race track, where Dover, it doesn't start off at the beginning of the race as a two-groove race track, but about 150 miles into that race it becomes a two-groove race track. That's when the racing, to me, gets more exciting, when you get to lap 150, 200. But as far as a sprint race goes, Charlotte, 600 miles, believe it or not, at least for us the other night, we had a sprint race because we had a flat tire early in the race and had to run 120 percent all night long just to try to get our lap back. We finally did, [but] it was late in the race. That race, typically, is not a spring race but because of our conditions, getting down early in the race, it became a spring race. Dover, it's an exciting track, it's very similar to Bristol, it can take its toll on equipment there, and you just have to make sure you got the car really prepared well because the track does tend to shake and rattle the car a little bit there."
YOU'VE BEEN A DRIVER ONLY FOR ABOUT TWO YEARS NOW. DOES IT SEEM LIKE AGES SINCE YOU WORE THE TWO HATS OF OWNER AND DRIVER, AND WHAT DO YOUR DAYS CONSIST OF NOW? "It does seem like it's been a while. It seems like more than - I guess I'm going on my second season as just a driver again. For many years, for six years, I was an owner and a driver, so it's really nice. The schedule right now is pretty grueling with the pace that we have to go and the schedule. It would be increasingly harder to be an owner/driver, at least an active owner, like I was, because there just wasn't enough free time in a day. And now it seems like the days get filled up, but not so much in the management role. I leave that up to Robert Yates, Doug Yates and Michael McSwain, they handle all the day-to-day headaches. It's just a nice refreshing way to go racing now. It seems almost like I'm not doing my job because I have a little bit more free time on my hands."
AFTER SUNDAY NIGHT'S RACE, CREW CHIEF MICHAEL MCSWAIN WAS IN THE RED TRAILER FIGHTING TO SEE WHETHER YOU FINISHED SIXTH OR SEVENTH. WHEN IT WAS ALL OVER, HE WAS THINKING ABOUT BEING ONLY 169 POINTS OUT OF FIRST PLACE AND GOING FOR A CHAMPIONSHIP. CAN YOU FEEL HIS ENTHUSIASM, AND DO YOU SHARE THAT ENTHUSIASM? "Yeah, I really do, but actually it's closer than that - 143, I believe, out of the lead. The enthusiasm is definitely there. We sorta thought, at the beginning of the year we had some mechanical failures - a major failure, a gear failure at Rockingham, an engine failure at Texas and a flat-tire situation at Vegas - to be honest with you, the first five or six races in, we sorta wrote the championship off. Now, here we are, I think we're 69 out of second. So, really, we're in this thing, as there's a lot a cars this point in the season that's in there. But, it's kinda exciting again to see that it's in reach, especially this early in the season. A couple of bad races or a couple of good races one way or the other, we could find ourselves in the lead."
IS THIS THE MOST CONFIDANT YOU'VE BEEN WITH THIS TEAM, KNOWING THAT YOU CAN CONTEND FOR A CHAMPIONSHIP? "Everything is going good as far as a championship run. We're really consistent, we've been good on the superspeedways, we've been good on the short tracks, we've been good just about everywhere we've been. We need to be maybe just a notch better, you know, we'd like to be able to be a winning factor in every race. We run about three or four races and all of a sudden we become a factor, three or four goes by, and all of a sudden we're good again, you know, a chance to win. The other night we had a good run at Charlotte going and we got down early, a freak situation. I think the first caution, 43 cars on the racetrack and I'm the one finding a piece of debris with a flat tire that handicapped us. That's kinda the little circumstances we've had to overcome, but as far as being able to challenge for a championship, I think we're in the middle of it as good as anyone. We would like to get out there and lead a few more laps and that's something, I think, as time goes on, we'll get better at doing."
YOU'VE BEEN AROUND NASCAR A LONG TIME. IS IT AS ENJOYABLE NOW AS IT WAS ALL THOSE YEARS AGO? "The years sorta fly by. I started Winston Cup when I was about 18 years old, and most of the drivers back then were much older when they finally achieved enough experience, so when someone would notice them they were usually in their early 30s, so I got an early start. Age-wise I'm in there with [Dale] Jarrett, Rusty Wallace, Mark Martin, Terry Labonte - quite a few of us the same age gap, but I probably outrank them in Winston Cup experience. To answer your question, to me, the only part I enjoy about racing is when you're competitive and you have a chance to win an event. When you're out there and you're having to limp around just to gain points - I guess I've been doing it so long, that is part of the job but you don't necessarily enjoy it [and] I don't know anybody that does. Whenever we're competitive, where we've got a chance to win, I enjoy it as much as anybody. I was telling Robert [Yates, team owner] the other day, I think it might've been the Martinsville race, I told Robert, I said if we have a car like this every weekend, I'll pay him to drive instead of the other way around."
ASIDE FROM THE TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGES, HAVE THERE BEEN ANY OTHER MAJOR CHANGES THAT HAVE TAKEN PLACE OVER THE 26 YEARS OR SO THAT JUMP OUT AT YOU? "I would say the biggest thing is just how big the sport has become - and it happened sorta slowly, so you don't notice it all at once. All of a sudden you wake up and you look around and you see a couple of hundred thousand people in the grandstands and you see people lined up to get your autograph. That happened over such a slow period of time that it sorta snuck up on me and now it's almost overwhelming. If you took somebody from 20 years ago and all of a sudden put him in a Winston Cup environment today they would be in awe of how big the sport has become. But, again, I think the key is the fan support. That's what really what makes our sport work, the fan situation and the things like what The Winston did the other night, to have the fans' involvement where they have a chance to win a million dollars, things like that to keep the fans' interest. Plus, the number-one thing the fans are coming for is to see exciting racing. If the races remain exciting then there's no telling where it's gonna end up. Just the attention level that sport receives now from where it used to years ago is just amazing."
AND YOU FIND THAT GRATIFYING? "To be honest with you, I'm not one that goes out and seeks the limelight, I'm kind of low-profile. It's going on around me but yet I'm not mixed up in the middle of it. I'm there to race and I'm there to take care of the loyal fans that have supported me over the years. The rest of the time my number-one loyalties are with my family, and anytime I can find time to spend time with the family, I will do it, and a lot of times it's at the sacrifice of maybe making some extra side money like a lot of guys make."
IT'LL MAKE IT A DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD IF YOU WIN THE CHAMPIONSHIP. "Yeah. Like I say, we'll just pack the family up and we'll do all the necessary events that we have to do - as a family. We'll do what we have to do. I think probably the key to survival in this sport is trying to eliminate the stress factors as best you can, the burnout factor, and I've been fortunate enough that I've been able to do that, hopefully, without damaging the career on the other side."
YOU TALKED ABOUT THE FRUSTRATIONS YOU EXPERIENCED AS A DRIVER/OWNER. WHAT FRUSTRATIONS HAVE YOU EXPERIENCED RETURNING TO A DRIVER-ONLY SITUATION? "I guess, maybe, the rebuilding process that we endured when we came over to the Texaco/Havoline team of Robert Yates. It was a major rebuilding process - and I realize we had our work cut out for us. I would say the patience, know that it takes time to basically - I wouldn't say build a brand-new team, a lot of it was in place, but it's been a major, major overhaul and thought process that has gone into the 28 Texaco team in just the last two years. Every driver's anxious, they want results and [they] want them right now. But from the owner's side, I've been down that road to construct a team and to get it to winning form, it takes a little while [because] you hand pick people along the way. I guess the biggest thing is having the patience to see this team to the top level that it's now become."
DO YOU SEE THE SITUATION AS A VETERAN-VETERAN DRIVER-TEAM AS BEING AN ADVANTAGE OVER A TEAM THAT HAS A VETERAN DRIVER AND A NEWCOMER TO WINSTON CUP? "I've seen it work both ways. You can take a young driver and you can put him with a very experienced team - all the way through the depth of team being, all your key people are in place and they've been there working together side-by-side for many years - that scenario works. It probably fails more than it works, but it can work and it can be successful. Then I've seen the other side, where you take a veteran driver and more of an inexperienced crew and that can work. So, I don't think there's a right way or a wrong way to do it, I really don't. You kinda compare it maybe to building a NFL team where you can use all experienced guys but you know that there's no long-term growth there, that, I wouldn't say that you peaked right away in your first season, but you're not recruiting rookies and so on along the way. And then our team I think is a combination of both. We got a lot of senior guys and we got a lot of young guys, and I think that combination, to me, kinda works best."
BEING A CUP DRIVER SINCE 18, HAVE YOU EVER THOUGHT OF OTHER FORMS OF RACING YOU MIGHT HAVE WANTED TO PURSUE? "When I was a kid coming up, I came from open-wheel go-karts, that, normally, that process you go through the karts, 120-mile-an-hour go-karts, and then the next step is usually some form of Indy Car open-wheel racing. A lot of my friends went on to run Indy Car racing. At that time, when I was young, 16 years old, I was ready for Indy because I didn't know that much about stock-car racing. But I sorta blindly stumbled into the stock-car Winston Cup scene. Around 1975 was my first race, and I think was 18 years old. My first race, I had never been to a stock-car race, so I didn't know what to expect, I didn't even know what all the flags meant. I went from a go-kart one weekend to a Winston Cup car the next. After being involved in it and getting into it, I knew that I had a lot to learn and there was enough challenges in Winston Cup without having to think about going Indy Car racing. I don't think my career would've been as long as it's been had I chose the other route, to go Indy Car racing, generally those guys in that time era, they'd usually get broken up pretty badly where it would eventually end their career early. So, no regrets, but early on a desire to run Indy Cars, but not now."
IN LAST SUNDAY'S RACE YOU WENT FROM A LAP DOWN TO A TOP-1O FINISH. COULD YOU TAKE US BACK TO HOW YOU ACCOMPLISHED THAT FEAT? "It was just odd circumstances, I guess. The way we got a lap down, the very first caution that came out with about 10 or 15 laps into the event there was an accident on the front straightway and we ran about 10 laps or so under caution and then we re-started the race, I took off, went down into turn one and the car wouldn't turn. I had a flat right-front tire so I had to pit under green-flag conditions, and we went down a lap and a half, a lap and three-quarters, and we worked all night long to get that back. We ended up a lap down most of the event, but we were able to stay in front of the leader on several occasions where a re-start would take place and we would get out front and be ahead of the leader, sometimes as much as a straightaway. But we would never get that caution flag when we needed it until I think it was about 500 miles into the race. Again we were ahead of the leader when the caution came out and that put us back on the lead lap. The only bad side was that that was our final fuel stop of the day so, now I'm sitting on the lead lap but I'm about 15th on the re-start. So our guys moved up to about seventh and it was actually a photo finish for sixth. But, we basically ran out of time. I don't know that we could've won the race but we were a top-three car. We ran in front of the leader most of the night."
YOU GOT INTO RACING SO YOUNG. WAS THERE EVER A TIME IN YOUR LIFE YOU THOUGH ABOUT WHAT YOU WOULD DO INSTEAD OF RACING? "That's a tough one because really I grew up from a time, like most kids who move on to professional sports, eight, nine years old, I was racing go-karts professionally and then racing motorcycles professionally at a very young age. That's what I wanted to do. I never really had any other thoughts. But I guess hindsight looking back now, if I had to go back and get a real job, I guess, it would probably be in the aviation side. I'm a pilot and I like flying, so it would probably be something in the flying area, and probably I wouldn't have been satisfied, I don't think, with just an average flying job, it probably would've been some type of a military combat situation, I probably would've enjoyed that."
TO WHAT DO YOU ATTRIBUTE NASCAR'S GROWTH, AND DO YOU THINK IT CAN CONTINUE TO GROW OVER THE YEARS? I think the growth's probably a combination of things, probably good racing over the years and then guys like yourself, the media, that are constantly coming to the races, doing stories, getting it out in front of fans that supported us. And then I think along the way the national television exposure that started probably around the early '80s with the live broadcast of the Daytona 500, that really exposed a lot of people to the racing that maybe had never seen it before. But probably step back a little bit before that, around that time, I think, is when ESPN and TNN got involved and carried the sport to the point where not only did you see the races, but you began to learn the drivers and you got to know them more on a personal level. From that point on the good-racing people tended to follow the sport. Plus, all the major sponsors that support the Winston Cup teams and the series are all out promoting, sort of self-promoting themselves, but they also carried the sport to a new level of awareness that has really helped to grow the sport."
NOW THAT NATIONAL TELEVISION HAS IT, WILL THAT HELP IT GROW EVEN MORE? "I think it will if it's handled correctly, and I've been watching what FOX has been doing. I know they started off with a little bit of a shaky start and there was some ruffled feathers along the way with sponsor mentions and so on but I think that was quickly worked through, and growing pains of a new relationship. I think they've done an excellent job, and I think NBC will be out there trying to outdo what FOX has been doing. I think they'll keep leap-frogging each other and I think the people that will benefit will be the fans, the exposure that they're going to see and the level of racing that they're going to see as far as the way it's covered will even continue to get even better. The key to the whole thing is good racing, and I have a lot of confidence that NASCAR will always continue to jockey around with the rules to keep the races exciting. I think you can be pretty much guaranteed that."
Michael McSwain, crew chief - 28 - Texaco/Havoline Taurus - THE TEAM HAS HAD SOME REALLY GOOD RUNS THE LAST TWO SEASONS, BUT SEEMS TO HAVE A STRING OF SOME BAD RACING LUCK. DO YOU THINK THE TEAM CAN SHAKE THAT AND WHAT'S IT GOING TO TAKE TO DO THAT? "I think our team has matured a lot over the past year and a half. For us to move from a top-five team to a top-two team week in and week out - and be the consistent team, who has a shot to win - I think it's gonna take what we've done, which is going through these growing pains and remembering what happened here - we had a bad gear, a flat tire here. There's the kind that everyone who is championship potential right now has already been through, and I think as we go through more and more of those things, we'll become more and more of a championship contender every week."
RICKY HAD MENTIONED THAT THERE WAS A GOOD MIXTURE ON THE 28 TEAM, SOME PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN AROUND RACING FOR A WHILE AND SOME ROOKIES, SO TO SPEAK. HOW DO YOU KEEP THOSE GUYS MESHED? "The good thing about the veterans, so to speak, that we have is [that] they're down-to-earth people. They're not high-ego type people and they want to put back into the sport what the sport gave to them, so they enjoy teaching these guys. And most everyone we have as a young, inexperienced person, is like anyone else, they're willing to learn, they're out there, they're digging, they want to know every piece of knowledge they can. So it actually sort of took care of itself, and it's been a pretty neat deal."
WHAT ABOUT THE TEAMWORK BETWEEN THE 28 TEAM AND THE 88 TEAM? HOW MUCH TIME DO YOU, TODD PARROTT, DALE JARRETT AND RICKY RUDD SPEND TALKING ABOUT SET-UPS AND SUCH EACH WEEKEND? "Sometimes too much, and I'd know they feel the same way. They've helped us on weekends when we were struggling and turn around and we run better than they do, and that's one of thing about being a team concept. Todd and I talk usually every Monday about the past weekend. We talk probably twice during the week, sometimes more, sometimes less, according to what our testing schedule is, and usually once a week either I'll go to his shop or he'll come to my shop and we'll discuss what we're going to do the next week - especially if one of the two teams has a really good history at the past race. Some of the racetracks are really, really good to us, like Martinsville, Pocono, Dover's always been good to us. They'll come to us on those races, and the races where they run good, then I go over there in the mornings. It's been really good. Then usually on Saturdays we'll sit down and de-brief each other. It's a neat deal, it's the first time I've ever been involved with it before."
RICKY HAS BEEN SUCCESSFUL AT DOVER. WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THIS WEEKEND? HE'S PRETTY CONFIDENT. "So am I. We built a brand-new car, we really built it for Dover but we raced it at Bristol. It wasn't quite as good at Bristol as it could've been because it was built for Dover. But we had a car we ran and ran and ran there and it had gotten heavy and kind of old-fashioned so we just made an attempt to build a newer car, because we almost always finish in the top five there and we almost always qualify in the top 10. We've put every piece of pie into it. We're actually testing this week, and I'm leaving Raymond here so he can concentrate on the Dover car and I can do the testing."
WHERE ARE YOU TESTING? "We're doing a road-course test at a little short track down there named Kershaw. It's a road course, a little road course. We'll go down there and shake our road-course stuff down, play with different little combinations on geometry and stuff like that."
WILL RICKY PARTICIPATE IN THAT TEST? "Yes."
SPEAKING OF TESTING, HOW IS YOUR TEAM MANAGING PERSONNEL HEADING INTO THE SUMMER STRETCH, THE PART OF THE SEASON THAT'S GOING TO BE DIFFICULT ON TEAMS? WHAT IS YOUR GAMEPLAN FOR MANAGING THAT? "We actually started putting it into effect last year. I've ordered that my road guys take a minimum of one and a half days off every week."
IS THAT ENFORCED? "I make 'em. I make 'em. And then, every once in a while, they come and tell me that it's my turn, 'You need a day off because you're getting grumpy.' Usually, you know how us crew chiefs are, I'll take a late morning and early afternoon and never take a whole day. I do that. I only take the ones I really, really need to my tests, other than like your Indy and your Daytona where it's so important. I mean every test is important, but those are so important because the Daytona 500 is our biggest race of year and Indy's our next biggest race. We put so much emphasis on it that I take every smart guy, every piece of information I can take with me. I even take people out of the shop for those tests. I just try to get them out of the shop and off the road as much as I can because I know that we're going to be there every weekend."
DOUG YATES AND TODD PARROTT BOTH HAVE BRAGGED ABOUT THE THREE NEW ENGINEERS YOU BROUGHT ON THIS SEASON AND HOW IT'S HELPED DALE JARRETT GET USED TO THE NEW TIRE COMPOUNDS. DO YOU HAVE THE WEALTH OF THAT INFORMATION AND YOU CAN TALK ABOUT HOW RICKY'S ADJUSTED TO THE NEW TIRE COMPUND THIS SEASON? "Any time we have information like that, it's a pool of information that's readily available to either race team. Talking about the tire, Ricky's one of those drivers that's really adaptable to almost any change, whether it be a NASCAR change or a Goodyear change or a change that we decide to make on our own. He's always been one to pick up on that quick. Proof of that is the Charlotte race. We were one of the teams that the new rule, spring and chassis-stop rule, affected. We were one of the teams doing that. That's what's neat about working with Ricky. We had to completely re-think our whole thinking about Charlotte. And we struggled a little bit prior to The Winston Open. Then we ran good in The Winston Open, then we ran good in the 600. That says a lot for Ricky's adaptability no matter what situation we have to deal with."
WILL TIRES COME INTO PLAY THIS WEEKEND? HOW DOES THE TIRE CHANGE ON A CONCRETE SURFACE AS OPPOSED TO ASPHALT? "Of course, concrete is a lot more abrasive so - to me, Dover's not a good place to test because it is so abrasive on tires. And it's very important to remember that throughout the weekend because you can't run the car quite as hard as you can on Sunday all through the weekend, up until all the rubber gets put down from all the practicing and all the Busch racing. Once that rubber starts getting put down, then you can run the cars harder. Dover's one of those tracks where experience is a key because there's certain elements in the front ends that you need but you only go so far because the tires can't help it. But your experience tells you that you can stand a little bit more on Sunday because by the time the Busch race is over with, there's little more rubber down there and it's just a little bit easier on the tires."
FROM A STANDPOINT FROM CAR PREPERATION, IS THERE ANYTHING YOU DO DIFFERENTLY TO DEAL WITH THE CONCRETE AT DOVER AND THE HIGH BANKS? "The car we built for Dover is built especially for Dover. Dover's, of course, a concrete and a high bank, and it's really, really fast, so we have to build a car with enough ground clearance so everything doesn't drag, but yet we want it as low as we can for a center-of-gravity standpoint. Most everyone who's there this weekend will have a car that is built just for Dover, and I think to be competitive you've got to be able to do that."
Text provided by Greg Shea
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