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2000 Schedule and Results | 2000 Archive | Bill Elliott Wallpapers
Elliott Chicago Saturday Quotes BILL ELLIOTT (No. 9 Dodge Dealers Dodge Intrepid R/T) Comments from Saturday morning's Winston Breakfast Club. "Things are going pretty well so far. I really didn't know what to expect when this season started. When you look at these deals and say I'd like to be a little farther along than I am today, but I look at the whole program and Dodge has been out of it for quite a number of years and trying to build a program. You look back a couple of years ago when they started on a clean sheet of paper and put an engine together and everything they've accomplished to this point, I'd say we've come a long way. We've had some ups and downs, and that can come with building a team and getting everything organized. I think Ray has got a lot of things in the direction he wants and I think that's going to be the next step. I think Mike Ford (crew chief) and myself are starting to get a little better handle on the Dodge. We came up here and had a real good test, probably one of the best tests we've had all year. We came back and we ran good in all the practices and qualifying yesterday. We'll see how the race transpires, but from the standpoint of getting a good handle on this deal, and I think we're coming up on race tracks that I like real well -- Pocono, Indy, Michigan and some of those places -- we'll see if we can get things turned around. At least we've got a dialogue of where we're at and also not only are we throwing a different car at it this year, but Goodyear has come with a little different tire and I think that's made it difficult for some guys to get a handle on the tire. I think between the car and tire, it's given Mike and I a little fit to get things sorted out. The more we test and the more we understand it, the better it will be for us. All-in-all I'm looking forward to the second half. I feel like I do better in the second half of the season and with Mike Ford and myself and Ray getting the organization like he wants it, and getting started, I think we'll be in a lot better shape. "They did a real nice job with this facility. I had an opportunity to go to Kansas City and run that race track. Kansas City and here are very similar. It's a little higher banked here and the way you enter three because of the banked straightaway and the curve in it, you get a little better angle in three and you can run a little better speed here than at Kansas City. Kansas City reminds me a lot of Kentucky. I've just been to Kentucky once, but those two race tracks are pretty similar. They have done a good job at this place. We went to Vegas and didn't have any problems. Texas has probably been one of the worst we've been to and I think they just miscalculated some things when they built it. As the races transpire over the next weekend, we'll go into it... just like the first time we went in to Darlington. Darlington is a tough race track, but once you learn the things to do and not to do... I'm sure there'll be a learning curve for the guys today in the Busch race and tomorrow in the Cup race. Once we figure out what you can get away with and what you can't, there'll be a little bit of a learning curve, but other than that, it's a pretty straight forward facility. "We'll have to see what the Busch race does today. I think that'll dictate what happens tomorrow. When we get in practice in a little while, we'll learn more about the race track. I think a lot of the guys will be cautious. It is a high speed race track and you need to be cautious here for a bit and see what your car is capable of doing and see where you can make your passes and be a reasonable amount of safety in it as far as what you feel like you need to do. "Daytona has always been a handling race track. I don't care how fast or how slow you go. I think some part we missed the setup (for Pepsi 400), but on the other side of the coin, I think with the current roof blade height, it takes the air off our rear spoiler and lets the car qualify well but don't let the car race well. After Daytona in February, Casey (teammate Atwood) ran my car at Talladega and we ran a different car. Then he ran that car again at Daytona. He ran pretty much what I ran in February, and I was pretty decent in February. He was so loose he couldn't go anywhere either Saturday night.. There's something that's happened there, and I don't know what it is. You can get away with a looser car at Talladega, but you can't at Daytona. The corners are too tight. It's just too hard to run. You can't run wide open. "I think the pressure is a given on the team and the driver. The driver is a part of the team and vice versa. You come to these places and yeah, it is a big market area for us. You look at this from the Dodge standpoint being in Chicago. For us, I think you come to these facilities and say we'll unload and see how things transpire. One good thing is we did have a good test up here, and I was very confident once we came back what we needed to do. We did more race runs when we were here. We didn't do any qualifying runs. We decided we'd do that when we came back because we were coming back a day early. "It's getting tougher. I'm not getting any younger, either. It's harder physically on people today than it was five years ago. Somebody asked a question to Ray about being out of the garage for a short period of time. I've been in the garage and I can't believe how much things have changed in a short period of time. From what I ran setup wise a year ago to two years ago, you virtually throw it away. It's a different ballgame today, and I don't understand what's dictating it all, whether it's the tire or the aero or whatever. As this sport continues to grow, you look at it from the standpoint of what is the future going to bring? I guess that's why I'm not a car owner anymore. I've not been able to go in all the directions it takes to keep up with all the changes in this sport. I think that's going to be the hardest thing for Ray or any other car owner in this sport to really look at and realize to say, 'what am I going to have to do to be better? What am I going to have to do to win races? What is it going to take to get to the next step? "Back to the physical side of this stuff. I think we need to look at this deal. You keep adding races, and I know it from a car owner's side. Well, it's just two more weekends, but I look at the faces on these guys in the garage each and every week. You get along about September or October in a year and you can cut the tension with a knife a lot of times, especially if things aren't going well or you're not running well or whatever. I can look at it from a car owner's side and say, we'll you add another race or two, but you understand what it takes on the families that encounter testing that encounters this or that or more travel. Even a number of years ago you look at the schedule and we went to North Wilkesboro and here and there. When North Wilkesboro went away we went to New Hampshire and Texas. That's another day out of the shop for the guys just from the traveling standpoint. Now we come to Chicago and California twice... The point I'm trying to get at, you can't add two or three people to try to make up the void to add two or three races. Now you're going to have a whole separate crew. Instead of hiring two people, you're going to have to hire 20 people to be able to keep up. If it gets to a point where you can't go any further with this group of people, we're going to have to train a whole new group of people and cycle them back and forth. Your cost doesn't rise a little bit. It doubles or triples. That's what you get from the car owner's side. Yeah, we can do it. We've done it to this point. They ran more races years ago, but they didn't change engines, they didn't go through the technology they're going through today and so many things were different than they are today. "As far as them (McDonald's) coming back to sponsor me or anything else there's been no dialogue, no conversation, no anything. That really surprises me. They chose to leave me. I don't know why they'd want to come back. Oh well, that's life. "When everybody came here and tested, I think they felt the race track had a lot of grip. Maybe the race track gets heat in it and loses a little grip. You heard people say after qualifying they didn't get into the race track like they felt like they could. I think heat is going to dictate that. Whether you're in a groove or out of a groove, you're still going to have to lay a groove of rubber down for it to be a fast place to run. That's where the car wants to run. If you run the car where it wants to run to make the fastest time. That's the groove around the race track. Typically on a new race track, the groove is usually on the bottom and it's usually a one groove deal. For whatever reason, just like Texas, California, the first surface it's always been tough to get hooked up on top. Atlanta has gotten better. They've gone to the top. This is the best I've seen 'em race at Texas. They've been able to get a little bit higher and run a little bit better. California, the first couple of races were totally on the bottom. The last couple of races they've gone up top. I see this being the same way. I think you're going to have to be on the bottom here and you're going to have to be cautious. I think it's a race track you're going to have to run your car freer than a lot of places. I'm talking about on the looser side, yet you get around it, aerowise it's really going to affect the car because you're running that extra speed. "I think it's going to be a good race. I think enough people run this particular race track well enough that can make a good race out of it. The key is if somebody gets a handle and gets hooked up, they're going to go. That's just the way it is. I think there's been enough rubber laid down on the track that we can get a pretty good assessment of what the race is going to be. I think if you went much later, it would get so late in the afternoon that what you learned wouldn't be accurate information. To me it's better to to it in the middle of the day. We've run here a day early and there's a lot of rubber on the track. "I feel like we (Dodge) need a little help in an area or two. I don't know all the technical side. They take these cars to the wind tunnel and they do this and that. "I think the race track will change more than we anticipate it changing. I think a lot of the guys think it's going to stay the same all day, and I think yesterday is a good example of how this race track is going to change. It's going to be the guy that's flexible enough that can change his car during the day or have enough adjustability in it to when the race track changes he can stay hooked up to it all day." RAY EVERNHAM (Car owner Evernham Motorsports Dodge Intrepid R/Ts) "From the Dodge technology and Dodge support side of things, I think everything we planned from Dodge Motorsports is right on track, bringing the motor along, the cars, the way the teams are working together. The technology support. With their scheduling, we actually hit all our targets with the 500-day countdown. From the Evernham Motorsports side of things, I probably underestimated the amount of work we had to do and the amount of time we had to do it. As Bill said, we're just now getting to the point where we've got some consistency in our cars, some consistency with the guys on our race team. I not only had to go to a new role, from a crew chief to a car owner, and not living with that car everyday. I had to learn a lot of new personalities, too. Bill and I had only worked together a little bit in IROC and things like that. Mike Ford and Sammy Johns coming along with the 19 car has settled that team down quite a bit. I feel like now we're to the point where we pick the car and copying it. The 9 and 19 are consistently being built the same way with the same body package and we can just now start to repeat. We're looking forward to going into the second half of the season with some of the information we have. I feel like we're now turning the corner where we can field top 10 competitive cars week to week. "I don't know if you lose the information by not being in the garage, but I used to be hands on with the car. I had to learn what it takes to be a good car owner. To be a good car owner, I've got to make sure that I'm letting my crew chiefs have the same space it took to do my job. The personal Ray Evernham touch is not on either race car, but I've got enough confidence in the two guys I have. We share a lot of the same philosophies. I feel like I've taught them some things, but I feel like they've taught me some things, too. Sometimes when you take a step back, it can be better in the long run. The hardest thing I think we've had to deal with is that we couldn't get what we wanted as quick. I really feel like we've turned the corner now. The same philosophy and the same way I did things is starting to take shape, maybe with a little different twist on it. Mike Ford and Sammy Johns are both very smart guys. I was running around the world for 10 years and you just get a little tired of doing that. If you can just take a few of the things I learned and I think Mike's 30 and Sammy is 33 or 34, those guys could bring it to a new level and maybe I could spend a little more time on the bus. "We really didn't have a baseline to go from (with new Goodyear tires). We started on this new tire with the Dodge. We run a Ronnie Hopkins chassis, it's pretty much a stock Hopkins chassis. We are gearing up to build our own chassis someday. That's something that's coming in the future. We are preparing to build right now a 42,000 square foot facility right next to the one we have. Construction on that will probably start in the next 60 to 90 days. We really didn't have anything to base our changes against other than Bill's notes from last year. The Ford and Dodge body are a lot alike, of course the motors are different and the combinations are different. The changes to the actual chassis have been minor because Bill ran some Hopkins cars last year, but the changes to the chassis setups have been pretty major compared to what they ran last year. "I feel like anything that's got to do with safety, they need to make a rule change as soon as they need to make it. I agree with that part of it. I believe if you're given a set of rules at the beginning of the year and you build your cars and motors and set your schedules up around that, you need to stick with 'em. Racing is racing, and I don't always agree with the sanctioning body makes it a level playing field. Sports are sports. If one football team or baseball team started to win all the games, they wouldn't have to play with one less man or give the other team something. I've been beat by better equipment and hopefully some day we'll win again with better equipment, but I don't agree with changing the rules. The one thing I don't agree with sometimes is that when we make a rule change we don't do the proper diligence to find what it's going to affect. That rule change we made on the blades of those cars absolutely killed us at Daytona handling. Casey drove Bill's car from February with the same setup in it. Now Bill drove a new car and we experimented with some things, so you might have an explanation there, but Casey's car was almost the same way Bill ran it in February and he couldn't even hang on to it. I've got the man sitting next to me (Elliott) who has been around Daytona at 210 mph. You've got a car running around there 180 mph sideways, so I imagine no matter what setup in it, he could have gotten around there. We were so aero loose at Daytona that the rear wheels were off the ground in traffic, as I think most of the other Dodges were, too. "Pressure is pressure. You're looking at a race team now that's doing the best they can to run good no matter where we go. It's nice to come to a nice facility like this where Dodge is so involved, but no matter where we are our focus is on running better every week, everywhere. "It's hard to pace yourself when you're a competitive person. You do whatever it takes to win. I'm fortunate to have some good guys on both teams that really don't care about how much they're working. They just want to win. That's my challenge. I've got to find a way to force those guys to take some time off. I keep telling Mike and Sammy and some of the young guys they're going to burn themselves out if we don't get a handle on this. I know a lot of teams have gone to giving everybody two days off a week. Right now, just about everybody except some of my key people like crew chiefs and key chassis people and some key fabricators are getting a day off. Car owners don't get many days off. I've got to find a way to get enough people so my guys can do this successfully and have a life, too. I think the way that's going to be done is to have some inhouse training programs to bring some young guys in and set up actual educational or internships to where you can get some good smart young people and teach them. You're going to have to have a road crew and shop crew, but there's going to have to be some overlaps so the road crew guys communicate with the shop guys. As the schedule does increase, you're not going to keep the good people in this business. It comes a point when they do reach a level of success, they win a lot of races and they win championships and it's not a lot of fun anymore, they're going to go do something else. I want to make sure when I can get my guys to that level, they're having a good time, too. "When Joe Montana was quarterback of the 49ers, he won Super Bowls. He left and then Steve Young won Super Bowls with the 49ers. Does that mean Joe Montana wasn't a good quarterback or the 49ers weren't a good football team? I did my job good. Jeff (Gordon) did his job great. I think I was a good crew chief. I was a part of that, but I was only a part of it, just like everybody else over there. Jeff is the biggest part of it, and sometimes he doesn't give himself enough credit. I did my job, and I feel proud of that. Now, I've got to make sure I do my job as a car owner. Sometimes the media runs out a little bit and doesn't look at the whole picture. Why did it have to be one or the other? Couldn't it just have been a good team. I like to think that's what it was. Jeff is the best race car driver that's come along in a long time, and people don't give him enough credit. On the other hand, there's a lot of good people on that team. The more I become a car owner, and the more things I have to do to make my teams successful, I realize how good Rick Hendrick is at what he does, just keeping his people together. That's 75 percent of your responsibility as a car owner, keeping your people together, giving them what they need to do their jobs. Jeff and Rick and Ray and the rest of the team is just a great team, and they're certainly on their way to doing that again. "Probably I've made the mistake of meddling sometimes when I shouldn't have, and it's hard. The first thing you want to do when you're not running where you think you should be running is jump back in to where you had a comfort level, and that's not really the right thing to do. To be a good crew chief, you've got to be 100 percent with that car. Period. You can't jump in and out. When I made my mind up that I wasn't going to do that any more, I need to stand back and put as much effort into being a car owner as I did in becoming a crew chief. I had to work very hard to become a good crew chief. At that time I had a lot of support to help me learn. What I've got to do now, is concentrate on the things that are going to make me a good car owner and hang out with the people... I used to hang out with the Jimmy Fennigs and Tony Glovers and Andy Petrees, those are the people who helped me become a good crew chief. Now I need to start hanging out with the Richard Childresses and Rick Hendrickses and people like that and figure out how to become a good car owner. "I think my situation is unique. I guess Andy Petree's deal is close.. Everybody wants to see me, and I still actually manage the race teams. I'm at the shop everyday and bounce between the engine shop and deal with all my employees. I can't keep doing all the things I'm doing. That won't work." BOB WILDBERGER (Senior Manager, NASCAR Operations -- Dodge Motorsports) "The truth of the matter is, going back to the beginning of the program, when we made the agreements and presentations to our dealers, it began in March 1999. We proposed having two red Dodges, we didn't know who the owner would be, and several other Dodges that would be supported by other primary sponsors. The dealers and the corporation joined together to fund the program and support the program and they adopted that presentation and properly funded everything. I can't be more proud of how jointly we've supported the entire program and we'll continue to. I can assure you that all of the programs we have going with our Dodge teams are long term, multi-year agreements that our dealers and corporation have mutually signed up to. We're very proud to have the two red Dodges, and they're here to stay. But, if McDonald's or someone wants to support another Dodge, they'd be welcome. They'd be a good partner. "It would be nice to have other teams change over to Dodge. That's the ultimate compliment on the type of job our current teams have done and the type of job we've done. If our report card in eyes of other sponsors and team owners is good enough that they'll change over to a Dodge, that'd be great. We'd love to see that field change over to Dodge. That's the mark of success. Quite frankly, it gives us a way to work with other new partners as we're working with current partners and leverage the program. Everyone reaps the benefits of that when we can partner with other sponsors. "I won't pretend there hasn't been questions raised. We've got a big job to do right now. We've got a big elephant here, and we need to take a bite at a time. We need to focus on that win as opposed to other areas right now, but other sponsors and team owners, it would be a compliment if they would change. "The rule changes seem to have done something to the Dodge. If you're not in clean air, you can't run up there like you'd like to or should be able to. We need to do some more work and figure that out. We're not satisfied with it by any means. We don't have the exact answer right now. The team owners and drivers all came back and told us what they felt in traffic. We need to make a change there somewhere. "It's exciting. This is a huge program. Anyone who thinks any manufacturer is going to jump in this thing and I think it was hopeful to be competitive out of the box. We were and still are. To think we were going to start winning right out of the box with a new motor, new car, new teams, new manufacturer, new engineering organization behind it would be silly. You can't ask for more than to be competitive. Now that we're about at the midway point, I can tell you the pressure is on to get that first win. The moment we get that, the pressure will be on to get the second win. That's racing. We're doing everything we can to secure that first win right now."
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