Bill Elliott and Ray Evernham Advance-NASCAR BRICKYARD 400

Tuesday,  July 30, 2002					                          Ray Cooper
Indianapolis Motor Speedway               	                                                       Golin/Harris International 
Dodge notes and quotes.                                                                                      803-466-9085
Brickyard 400 Advance Material.


HIGHLIGHTS OF TUESDAY NASCAR WINSTON CUP TELECONFERENCE WITH RAY EVERNHAM AND BILL ELLIOTT

NOTE: Elliott completed Dodge's weekend motorsports Grand Slam by winning the Pennsylvania 500 at Pocono Raceway.  Elliott's No. 9 Dodge Dealers/UAW Dodge Intrepid R/T scored Dodge's fifth victory of the season on the NASCAR Winston Cup Circuit. It was also Dodge's first back-to-back victories since returning to the circuit in 2001. Ward Burton won in the No. 22 Caterpillar Dodge Intrepid R/T on July 21 at New Hampshire.

Dodge teams also won this past weekend in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series with Robert Pressley in the No. 18 Square D Dodge Ram at Michigan International Speedway, Casey Atwood in the No. 19 Dodge Intrepid R/T in the Pepsi ARCA 200 at Pocono Raceway, and Hank Parker Jr. in the No. 36 GNC Live Well Dodge Intrepid R/T in the NetZero 250 Busch Grand National race at Pikes Peak. 

BILL ELLIOTT (No. 9 Dodge Dealers/UAW Dodge Intrepid R/T)
"Indy has been good to me since we started going there in the mid 90s. If you can start up front and stay up front it's a whole lot more enjoyable than being in the middle or the back. It is a fun race track, and it puts on a pretty good show for the fans. That's a real good point from our standpoint. Ray and this Dodge team has done so much to put this effort together. I'm proud to be a part of it. They've busted their cans week in and week out trying to get this program up to speed. They've done an excellent job from Mike Ford (crew chief) and all the other guys and motor guys to Ray. Dodge and UAW supports this deal, and it's been a lot of fun being with them.

"We'll take it a step at a time. First we'll see where we end up qualifying. Then you'll just have to see how the race unfolds. Other than Pocono, there's been different strategies for different races. It depends on when the cautions fall and how they fall within your pit window and fuel mileage and so on and so forth. Gordon last year stayed out. He qualified kind of in the middle and he stayed out and got track position and was able to come out and do what he needed to do. I think that's going to be a crucial part of this Sunday. It seems like a lot of places we go that track position is very critical. These cars are so equal. A guy gets that little bit of lead advantage and you have to be very good to run him down. As close as the cars are, you can nip at it a little bit, but it's hard to gain the time if they get enough of a lead and you have to fight traffic for a period of time.

"You're still the end result sitting in the race car. You've got to be responsible for your actions right, wrong or indifferent. Everybody makes mistakes. It was early in the race and a lot going on and it's easy to make a mistake. If you get pinched off or whatever and everybody is trying to scramble for track position as the first laps unfold. Sometimes things just happen, and I don't know how you can really blame anybody. You try to use what the spotter tells you, yet you've still got to use your own judgment.

"I think the confidence has been an on-going thing. Back when Ray started this deal last year we ran decent. We were nipping and tucking from 10th to 20th and every now and then we'd get a top 10. We just kind of kept stepping it up. Ray would call me on Monday or Tuesday and say 'you're doing your job. We'll get you a better car next week.' The people started coming together and the cars started coming together and I started giving good feedback. They started putting real good stuff under me and that's just kind of been an on-going evolution. It's been a building block. First you've got to get your confidence back of what I need to do. The years that were lean and I was trying to run my own deal, I couldn't keep up with the technology. I think when you're running on a limited budget, it's just hard to keep up. Everybody's got a budget, but some are bigger than others. I didn't have a lot of things to fall back on, and Ray doesn't, either. He was able to have enough resources within Dodge and the people around him to keep building this deal. That's the most important part.

"I'm on the shorter end of the stick than the longer end of the stick. I'll put it that way. I'm not in my 20s or 30s. I'm in my mid or later 40s (46). The evolution clock is ticking along, and you're not going to do it forever. Nobody does anything forever. You live, you die and what you do in the middle you make the best of it. I want to make the best of this. I want to focus on the racing and give Ray everything I can. Then there will be time to do other things, take care of the fans, take care of everything else. If we run good, everything else will take care of itself, and that's going to be the most important part.

"We tested two cars at the Brickyard. The one I ran Sunday (at Pocono) and another one. I think the one I ran at Michigan. Mike and the guys will make the decision. Which ever one they decide to take (Pocono Dodge Intrepid that's won two poles and two races in two starts).

"The road courses are difficult for a lot of reasons. Several teams bring in the so-called road racing gurus. They don't race with us week in and week out, most of them. Robby Gordon has done a good job on the road courses and he races with us week in and week out. That does help. Some of them guys are not far enough up in the points that it matters and they can make those big moves and take the chances. The rest of us have more to lose than those guys. On the flip side of that coin, we have caught up to a lot of tricks of the trade that they use, and I feel like we've all got better as road racers. My preference is it'd be nice if we could find those two races and go oval track racing. It would be more acclimated to the cars we run and stay more along the lines of what we do week in and week out.

"Other than just the experience of doing it (referring to 1985 season). Things have changed so much over the last number of years. The cars have changed, the people have
changed, the times have changed. It's just made it different. It's a lot more competitive. Back then we ran bias ply Goodyears and now we run radials. The seteups are so much different. Aerodynamics are so much different. We make more power than we made back then, so there's just so many things that dictate what we do.

"My deal has always been that I try to put things in perspective. I've said this a number of times. There's a time and place for everything. I don't try to go looking for attention. I'm the guy who likes to stay back hidden, out of the limelight so to speak. I've never been a secure enough person to go out and seek that kind of stuff, which some people thrive on it. I've just never been that kind of guy. It's just been an on-going learning process, and I try to take it a step at a time. As Ray said, if we run good enough on the race track, the rest of the stuff will take care of itself. That's what we're trying to do right now, take care of the racing and the rest of the stuff will take care of itself. There'll be a time for the media and there'll be a time for the fans and a personal time and a time to race. As long as you keep those things separated and keep your time at what you feel like you need to do, I think you've got a good handle on the day to day stuff.

"When he first started this deal, I told him (Evernham) a lot of things, what to look for, what not to look for, how hard it was for me. For each person it's different. Some things he listened to and some things he didn't listen to. You've got to make your own mistakes. I think he's made some mistakes and I said, 'yeah, I told you' but it's not as black and white as people make it out to be. That's the hardest part of this sport. You try to get a group of people together for a common goal and try to keep 'em together and keep everybody happy and try to use your resources in the best possible way. There's always a crossroads there, and there's always a number of roads to take. Two or three of them might lead you in the right direction, but the others might lead you in the totally opposite direction. That's the hardest part of it, to keep the stuff in perspective.

"You've got to look at it as a twofold deal. Maybe it (Indy) is not the most perfect place for a Winston Cup race as far as competition goes. You look at the facility itself and the history behind it and what it can do for the sport and what it can bring in and it's kind of a twofold deal. It's still for the most part puts on a great event. Maybe the racing can give or take a little, but there's still a lot going on. There's still gong to be points that race tracks are going to be good and bad, regardless of where you go. There's going to be good races and bad races. Whether it's good races from the aspect that maybe I win or bad races and ones that I don't win. I think overall what it weighs out, the facility and what it brings to our sport way outweighs the competitive side of the deal.

"No longer than we've been going there, I don't think it favors either one (young or old drivers). It favors the guy who gets his car worked out the best. He who has the best equipment for that particular day and/or uses the best strategy like Jeff did last year.

"I don't know if it's the most important. To me, they're all important. I'd like to have Indy on my resume, but it's not the end of the world if it doesn't happen. I've had some real good runs there. I've had some very, very good runs there. I'm proud of my record there. We'll just go there with an open mind knowing we had a very good weekend last weekend and we'll go there and try to make it again this weekend.

"I just know what I've seen and been told. Tony George and the guys at Indy seem like they're on the leading edge of whatever it takes. NASCAR has done a good job of giving us information as far as what we can better do for our cars. Even in the last safety meeting we had, when we first started in this deal about a year ago or a little better, everybody thought we needed to re-design the cars and we needed to do this and do that. In fact, we just needed to tweak around on what we've got. I think everything they do is better. It's going to be an on-going evolution. I feel like whatever we learn today and tomorrow is going to just help maybe not my generation but the next and the next generation. What I'm most impressed about is how far we've come in such a short period of time. Soft walls are going to be incorporated in, and I think the more we learn about it the better it's going to be for the generations to come.

"I was among the group that went there (IMS) for a Goodyear test back in 1992. I hadn't heard much about it prior to that. When we got invited to come to that test, I was driving for Junior (Johnson) at that time. Tim Brewer was my crew chief and we went over there and it was a lot of fun. I think we impressed the guys about how well we got around that race track. We're kind of the hillbillies of racing so to speak, but I think all in all for a stock car to go to Indy we impressed them pretty well, and I think we were able to hold our own as times have progressed.

"I thought it was a great deal. We've been a lot of different places. It just goes back to the history of Indy. I think that was kind of put cold chills down your back because it has so much history behind it. It has been around for so many years. It's always the event that everybody was comparing to, the Indy 500. For us to go in there and be able to compete on the same race track was I think something that I'll always remember.

"I drove one (Indy car) back in Michigan, I think back in 1990. I drove one of (Chip) Ganassi's cars just a little bit. I ran 210 at Michigan in it. It'd be neat to do it. Somebody asked me why I didn't go do that. I said, 'by biggest deal is we run 30 some odd Winston Cup races a year. It's hard to go back and forth. If you do what you do to the best of your ability you need to totally focus on it.' I'm not as young as them boys that have been trying to do both.

"I think I'm going to take that a step at a time. I've really made no concrete decisions about the point I want to go to. Basically, I've got another year on my contract with another two-year option after that. I'm just going to take it a step at a time. Depending on how I feel next year, will depend on what I do from there on. Right now, I want to focus on the rest of this season on a race by race deal and get this year out of the way and see how I feel next year. Your health is probably the most important part of this deal. You've got to stay healthy and have enough stamina to keep these things going all day long. I admit, Sunday I was used up. We drove the wheels off that thing almost all day long. It's a part of the sport. You can't expect to do it forever, and that's just part of evolution and the evolution is younger kids are going to come along and they can attract the deals and sponsors. Everybody is always looking for the next Jeff Gordon or Ryan Newman or Kurt Busch or whoever else is coming along, Jimmie Johnson.

"From my standpoint, I was probably staring it (retirement) right in the face. Had a good enough deal not come along, I wasn't having any luck getting sponsorship for my own deal. Owner/drivers in the sponsorship world was not a viable deal. Now, here I was. I had had several lean years. You look at the people and who was going to look at you to come drive a race car. You could have probably found a lot of undesirable deals, yet when Ray came along I about fell over. I didn't know why he wanted me or if he had gone totally crazy. Ray has done a lot for me. He's really supported me, and I think that's done more for me than anything in the world.

"It crosses your mind. You're at the point in time whether it's two years down the road or five years down the road, you're on a short end of the stick. For the people who go much over their early 50s, I don't see it. Who knows? Gant went on to win when he was in his earlier 50s, but still, there comes a point where you're going to have to lay it down, whether you're a pro golfer, race car driver, basketball player, football player, baseball player, there comes a time when you're going to have to cross that bridge. What I do from that point, I've been thinking about it and I have no idea."


RAY EVERNHAM (Car owner Evernham Motorsports Dodge Intrepid R/Ts)
"That 9 team has been getting better and better, and they've been showing a lot of strength. We knew sooner or later they were going to be able to put it all together. They certainly did that Sunday.

"The same kind of deal it takes just about everywhere you go anymore, you've got to a decent starting position because track position is going to be critical there (IMS). Aerodynamically that car has got to be right. You want to be in clean air. You saw it at Michigan, Chicago and then again on Sunday at Pocono. If you can get out in clean air, the car is going to be a lot faster than when you're behind someone. When we go to Indy, we hope we can get our cars starting up front and keep them up there in clean air.

"I didn't know what to plan on. I didn't know what to expect. It certainly has been different (crew chief and car owner). It's been difficult, but it's been good. I tell everybody I'm not enjoying it and not having any fun, but I am. Days like Sunday, it makes it worthwhile. What I've had to really pay attention to more are things that are intangible, things you can't touch. When you're a crew chief and you go work on a car, you change a spring and change a shock. Now it's a lot of planning and it's a lot of people and it's a lot of mental preparation. You don't really feel like you're doing anything that makes a difference. That's the hardest thing for me. Since I'm not hands-on, you don't feel like you're contributing.

"What do I like most about it? The fact that we've been able to put together a program that did put Dodge in the winner's circle, that did put Bill Elliott back in the winner's circle and has given some guys like Mike Ford and some of the 9 team an opportunity to be a part of a winning team and step up. I feel proud knowing that some of my experience has helped those guys get in a position to accomplish some of the things I used to accomplish on their own.

"I was working at IROC (in 1985), so I was actually working with Bill a little bit. I thought he was great then, Awesome Bill. I think that might have been the first year I got to work with him, but I was an IROC mechanic at that time.

"We were just a good mix for one another. He was a perfect guy for me at that time, and I was the perfect guy for him. He had a race team that didn't have a sponsor, and I had a sponsor that was trying to build a race team and we were trying to hire an experienced driver. I knew that under those layers of the years he'd been beaten up and the injury at Talladega and the other injuries I believe he got at California, and just under the stress of having to do all these things and losing sponsors, there was a great race driver. Bill and I talk a lot. We've always remained friends, and we used to talk a lot. Actually Jeff Gordon and I had conversations about Bill Elliott and Jeff would tell me, 'that guy's pretty good.' I knew that when I went to him, he said, 'I've got my deal. Buy my deal and we can work together.' It was the perfect situation, and I knew as soon as we put him in equipment and he got to feeling healthy again, he could start winning races. Now we're giving him cars that can get the job done. He's healthy and he's confident and right now, today, Bill Elliott is as good as anybody on the race track.

"He gives 100 percent of what he has every week, and that's why he's running good. When he gets out of that car at the end of the day, there's nothing left. If you watched the last few laps of that race, what Bill is really good at, he'll move that car around to find out where it's going to go the fastest. That's what separates the good drivers from the great drivers. He wanted to win that race really bad and he kept moving that car around. He had one shot at making that pass and he got it done.

"Jeff Gordon has been a threat to win several races. He's still the biggest threat I think to win the championship this year. We actually talk more now than we have in several years. I love that guy like a brother. I still consider him a part of my family. I think he considers me part of his. We talk. He's running good. They just haven't clicked to win. He's been in position to win several races. There's way too many races left to count Jeff Gordon out of this championship, but sure, I'm concerned about him. It's certainly a tough time he's going through, and I do take the time to probably talk to him more now than I have. He's still a great friend, and I consider him a part of my family.

"There's certainly not as many confiscated parts sitting up in the NASCAR trailer. I think all the guys are going through inspection a little high. I think it sent a message. Certainly it does around here. I told my guys they really need to be paying attention to this stuff. I don't want to be losing points, and we don't need to be getting fined on things we could have avoided. What you saw with the height thing, that really wasn't intentional. That was just because of the soft springs we're running nowadays. The car bottoms those springs out, it settles and they lose an eighth or three sixteenths of an inch. We need to start with the roofs a little bit higher. The stuff you're seeing there wasn't like Dale Jarrett or Mark Martin or any of the guys who have come through a little low didn't say, 'let's get the car an eighth low.' I just think they're going to pay attention to being a little bit high before the race starts.

"I could afford Michael Schumacher. Bill was the guy. I knew before I started this deal what drivers were available. I would love to have Jeff. Anybody in this sport who owns a race team that tells you they wouldn't want Jeff Gordon is either lying or they're an idiot. I can't sit here and say I wouldn't want Jeff. I definitely would, but Bill has been the perfect guy for me. In reality, this team is not ready for Jeff Gordon. We were far from ready when we started. Bill Elliott has been the guy who's been the backbone of this organization. It's really great. I want to make sure he can reap some more rewards of where this thing is headed, so it couldn't have been more perfect timing.

"They were really good. They certainly were excited because of Bill's past. He was the leading Ford driver at one time, so that was big from the manufacturers side, but they were very, very supportive. Dodge has been a great partner. They want to be involved, but they really don't question a lot of the decisions I make.

"Mike has decided to take his Pocono car to Indy. They went to shift work last night and when it comes in it'll get stripped. All of the suspension will come off and the motor will come out and the transmission, rear end gear. A lot of the hard suspension components will come off and be magnafluxed like the upper control arms, lower control arms, spindles, trailing arms and things like that. The car will get fresh ball joints and tie rods and the wheel bearings will get replaced or repacked. Brakes pads will come out, a lot of the consumable stuff, but the basic frame, body and heavy suspension parts of that car will be the same. Obviously it will have a new motor, fresh transmission and a fresh rear end gear, but the basic parts of that car, the frame and suspension, will be the same race car.

"That's a tough call. You need a team leader, and a lot of it comes down to who's available. We're actually going to start looking at some driver development. One of the hardest things, obviously you know that Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Kurt Busch and Matt Kenseth, there's some good young guys. You know they're good, but nobody could have expected Jimmie Johnson to be do what he's done. You hope that somewhere out there there's a guys like that. We want to try to find him. Bill and I don't talk a lot about retirement. Bill Elliott can drive that car for me as long as he wants to drive it. If he doesn't want to drive it, he knows he's welcomed to be a part of my organization for as long as he chooses to be. Ultimately, as he said, time is not on his side. We are thinking about that. Is Casey going to be able to keep coming up? Is Jeremy going to be able to fit in and step up and where are the next drivers coming from. That's an issue we've thought about a lot. I wish I had an answer for you on what I would do, but I just don't right now. Right now, I'm going to keep feeding Bill those special milk shakes that he's drinking and hope he stays for awhile.

"When you talk to a guy, and that guy is really calculating and he understands what's going on in racing. I call it a high racing IQ. A lot of guys can drive a car fast. Driving a car fast is not what's always going to win you races. The guys that calculate things and they know what they feel and they can slow down time in their mind to communicate back to the crew on how to set that car up, those things are critical. A guy that is smart like that figures out how to win and figures out how to take a car that's a fifth-place car and win a race with it or take a 10th-place car and make it into a fifth-place car.

"Ultimately as the race goes on, it comes down to one moment, but there's probably several moments in a race, it could even be with 200 miles to go, when there's a definitive pass that you either make or don't make that gets you in position to win a race. I do see that in Bill, and I see Bill calculating that all the time. I think now he's got the confidence. When we first started this program he had to think about how he could get race cars to the end of the race and get a top 15 finish. How can I keep Ray's cars up front? Now he can calculate, he and Mike both. Mike had to change how he calls his pit strategy. He used to have to call for a top 10 car. Now he's got a car capable of winning races, so he's got to call his pit strategy different. Bill's got to be thinking going into the race, 'OK, where do I have to be and what strategies do I have to have because I can win this race.'

"We just don't have that chemistry yet (on 19 team). The 9 team has actually been together since 2000 and they've got a very experienced driver and they've got a crew chief, even though he's young he's been in racing for a long time. In fairness to the 19 guys, they're working their butts off but they've been through a driver change, they've been through two crew chief changes and we've just not been able to hit that chemistry and get that communication flowing.

"I had really followed Indy cars before I followed stock cars, so Indianapolis was hollowed ground to me. I can remember the day of the race we pushed the 24 car out there to the starting grid and I just got chills. I couldn't believe we were there. When we won that race, it took me two or three days to figure out what we actually had done. It was a big, big day in my life and career, and I knew obviously what it meant to Jeff and the rest of the team. Even now, when we look back on it, I don't think any of us really realized what we had done that day.

"It's satisfying in different ways. Certainly I had some really satisfying wins as a crew chief. When you're a crew chief, you're hands on. It's very difficult to explain from your personal side if you were a baseball or football player and you actually played in the game and hit a home run to help the team win the race. When you retire from playing and go to the front office to run the team and put it together, It's really two different feelings. It's very gratifying. Sunday was a very gratifying day for me because those guys have worked hard. At the end of last year we started hitting some consistency and they were getting good. I feel in the last four or five weeks, that 9 car has been a threat to win just about everywhere they've been, and Sunday they proved that. It's very gratifying.

"I do and every time I do it (say stand aside and let me do it), I screw them up, so I've been smart enough to learn. No matter how good you think you were, time passes you by. The best thing I can do with my guys is give them good advice, give them the resources to get their job done and stay out of their way."


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