Federated Auto Parts 300 - Billy Parker Notes

RAYBESTOS® ROOKIE FEATURE: BILLY PARKER, RUSTY WALLACE AND BARRY DODSON.

RUSTY WALLACE, CAR OWNER, #66 DURAFLAME DODGE: WHY START THE BUSCH TEAM? "I had an opportunity financially to build RWI, my corporation. We had good sponsorship monies. I found a way to build the company and start my own team. I could have easily said no and let a lot of the opportunities I had go by the wayside but I wanted to build the corporation for my employees, for my son Stephen when he comes up and gets older, and I'm trying to develop Billy Parker. My dream would be to develop Billy Parker so that one of these days when I quit he could take over for me because I've got that much confidence in the kid. He's just a little bit lost out there right now, trying to figure it out and basically I've just got to give him seat time. I've seen the rest of these stars go through the same thing that he's going through. The bottom line is that everything is built, it's done: beautiful shop, beautiful trucks, and cars. Everything is done. There's not turning back now. I'm going to keep developing and try to keep the best people in place and hope that Billy does a really good job and develops at a rapid pace. We've got a lot of cool things going on over there at our company. We're doing all the show car business for Miller Lite. We've got many show cars running around the country now. We've got the Busch team going on. We've got a lot of cool things happening. The opportunity was right and it was the right time to do it so I seized the opportunity and went with it." WHY HIRE BILLY PARKER? "Because he was a good looking kid, knows a lot about the cars, energetic, exciting. I could have just put another person on there that's already been there that everybody knows and I wanted to take a chance. I took a little bit of a chance and if it don't work we'll do something. But it's not that big of a deal. I saw him win all the short track races in North Carolina in little short track cars. I took him to Vegas and he ran great there. We messed him up on a pit stop. That race right there proved to me that he can drive the car if we get the damn thing handling for him. He has just fought handling for the last four or five races right now and Blake [Bainbridge, crew chief] is a little confused because he's working with a rookie driver that has a tough time on feedback. We're all working our way through this. I don't want to be patient because I'm not too much of a patient guy but unfortunately I've got to be patient on this one. Hundred dollar bills are flying out the window while I'm being patient and Billy knows it. He's doing all he possibly can. He's a winner and he's really upset when he qualifies 20th, especially when we went to Vegas and he was number one [in practice] and then he was fastest at Texas and things happened. You can talk to anybody out there: we've got the nicest, most beautiful, well equipped Busch shop in the history of NASCAR." DO YOU WANT THIS TO BE A CUP TEAM AT SOME POINT? "No, not all. No way do I want it to be a Cup team. I already own 24 percent of everything at Penske Racing. I'm happy, that's where my bread and butter is. And we're wide open building our new shop over in Mooresville [North Carolina] right now, our new shop for Team Penske. This is just a small shop to take an opportunity available to us and go with it and try to win some races. Instead of having just a partial ownership in a Cup team now I've got full ownership in a Busch team, too. My wife is having fun with it, the kids are having fun with it, and that's it." HOW SPECIAL IS IT TO BE WORKING WITH BARRY DODSON? "It's very special to be back with Barry because Barry is one of my most trusted friends and helps me a ton. He's probably the one that keeps me the most patient." WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED AS AN OWNER? "That it costs cubic dollars to do this and you got to have patience that I don't have much of [laughs]."

BILLY PARKER, #66 DURAFLAME DODGE: "I really haven't been surprised with anything, to be honest with you. Because I've been around it so long I kind of know what to expect. You never know how difficult it is until you get thrown in the middle of it. I've got to stay up to speed and feed back information to the guys where they can dial the car in. It's kind of a different deal. You're racing against 20 good cars instead of five or in all the short track racing I've done there's five or seven guys that you've got to outrun. In this deal there's 20-25 guys that you've got to outrun. There's more faster cars than I expected to be honest with you. A lot of guys have gotten better, too. I'm having fun with it. Everything is new. I haven't driven these type cars before. We've got a good aero program, we've got a good chassis program, we're just trying to get it all figured out and massage it to where it needs to be. It's been a long process but it's going to pay off." WHAT HAS IT BEEN LIKE DRIVING FOR RUSTY? "It's good. It beats driving for a pencil pusher. You've got a guy who is a racecar driver and he knows what it takes. He's been in there and wants the best and as a racer he knows that you have to have the best to be successful. If you race for somebody who's not a racer they think they can get by with what they can afford. It's not always more money go to the best but most of the time it is. He just wants to make sure that we've got all the equipment and the best stuff that we need to do good. No one wants to go into a boxing ring with handcuffs on. In a lot of situations a lot of people have to do that but in this case, we don't. We've got what we need we just have to make it work." HOW MUCH PRESSURE IS ON YOU? "I don't worry about what anybody else thinks. We're a close-knit group and honestly I don't worry too much about what anybody thinks. I put the pressure on myself. I've got a lot to prove to myself and that's where all the pressure comes from for me." DOES THE OWNER HELP YOU WITH HANDLING SITUATIONS ON AND OFF THE TRACK? "He does but although I'm a Raybestos Rookie, I'm not 19 years old. I'm 27 and I'm a man. I've grown up a lot. I know what to do, how to live and take things in stride. When we talk, we really talk about our racing program and not too much about pressures and off-track stuff. We're just trying to get our program turned around and that's where we put our focus at." WHAT ARE YOUR GOALS FOR THE REMAINDER OF THE SEASON? "My goal is to win every race that I get in. It will probably never change; it'll probably be like that forever. That's how hard we work and what our expectations are every time that we go to the racetrack. That's why Blake (Bainbridge, crew chief) and I get along so good. You could finish second and he'd be dancing beside the toolbox before he punched it because he was mad and that's what you've got to be. That's how you have to attack things. You've got to crawl before you walk so we've got to start being consistently competitive. We've got to get some top-10 finishes and we've got to have a good competitive car every week, week in and week out. We've just got to get to that point and then we can worry about winning races." WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE CUP GUYS COMING OVER AND RUNNING BUSCH RACES? "I don't mind it. They're good drivers and it makes you better. When I was a kid and first got in a racecar I was racing against guys that were racing for years and they won championships. I raced against Max Prestwood and Dexter Canipe and Greg Marlowe, guys that have won all these races and they've been racing for 20 years and here I am 16 years before and I'd never driven before and I've got to race against these guys. You get around those guys and you learn a lot. You don't get to win as many races because they win a large number of them but it make you better at the end." WHAT DO YOU LEARN FOLLOWING AN EXPERIENCED DRIVER? "You learn different things from different types of drivers. Like Matt Kenseth, he'll ply possum. He's get with a group of cars that he knows that he can work and he won't get in a hurray but he'll pass cars and he'll continually pass cars but he won't make it where he's in a hurray. Greg Biffle can have his car on the edge. You get behind him and he has his car on the edge and he's flawless. He never makes a mistake and he runs a perfect line. You get behind him and you learn that. There are different drivers that you learn different things from."

BARRY DODSON, GENERAL MANAGER, #66 DURAFLAME DODGE: IS THIS ONE OF THE BETTER OPPORTUNITIES IN BARRY DODSON'S CAREER? "It's certainly one of the better if not the best. Rusty and I have always been best friends. I knew when the time was right I wanted to work for Rusty and Patty and not just a group of hundreds to try to manage, get it more on a personal level. That's what we have here: we don't have a big core of guys but they are all hand picked. They are young, youthful, hungry and it's just a lot of fun. I'm more in the coaching mode. I like the managerial position. Rusty trusts me. I try to look after his money. I've never had an owner other than Mr. Sabates to give us every tool that we needed to be competitive. That puts a lot of responsibility on all of us, Blake [Bainbridge, crew chief], Billy and myself without being said and we're smart enough to know that we have the tools to be competitive. We've had some struggles yet we've had some good runs. Our first run at Las Vegas, could we have gotten out of the pits, we could have won that race. That would have been phenomenal in this era in any division in NASCAR. We just couldn't do it. Kevin Harvick won and we passed him three times that day. We passed every car on the racetrack. We just couldn't get out of the pits. Now we've had the luxury of inheriting Rusty's Cup crew. We've had some struggles. We've had some crashes. We haven't had a caution flag or a break go for us. In three races these guys have probably made three pit stops. We know that as we get the car better we're going to cash in with the tools that we have to work with. We've spent wind tunnel time, we've done a lot of testing with data acquisition to get what Billy can't tell us and Rusty is saying go run, run, run. I don't care how much you go: run, run, run. He likes what he's got here. I think he's got total confidence in it. I know I do. I talked to Billy thoroughly, especially since Lowe's. We're only running 18, possibility 19 or 20 and let's race the racetracks. Let's learn the tracks and then let's cash in and be a contender at the end of the year going into '05 to make the championship run like some of these other Raybestos Rookies. He's as good as these other guys, the other Raybestos Rookies. We have to get the cars to accommodate how good he is. We seem to be able to that on the flat tracks like Vegas and Fontana. At Fontana we had an excellent run going there and miscued. We didn't come down pit road when we needed to. Then we get on the high-banked racetracks where our car goes through a lot of front-end motion, up and down, and same thing in the back. We have some issues there and that we need to improve and we're doing that with a lot of engineering work and help and we're getting there. But when you race once every three weeks and they are racing week, it's tough. We feel like right now we ought to be running more races but Rusty was smart enough when he started this program that he didn't want to run a full season. And that God he didn't because right now we would be in dire straights. We know that it's hurting us but in the long run heading into '05 we're certainly going to benefit from that by really being prepared. And don't get me wrong, when we're not racing we're working on cars to make them better or we're somewhere testing. Somewhere down the line, hopefully this year, we'll be a factor again." WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ABOUT RACING IN THE BUSCH SERIES? "I really don't have any issues that I'm concerned with about the series. I like the series. I like the fact that they limit our tires. That means that if you've got a better racecar the you're going to capitalize and I know in time that's what we're going to have with the guys that we've got. I wouldn't trade Blake, our crew chief, for any crew chief in the garage and there's a lot of good ones in here. He's a racer, he grew up with the Allisons and he's raced his whole life. He doesn't have any hobbies; he's a racer. Billy has grown up. Yeah he's the son of a man that's won the Bassmaster's Classic twice. Everybody thinks he's a rich kid. This kid has worked for everything that he's had. He's run his own racecars and won races with them. He's wrecked 'em and had to fix 'em and go back and win again with them and when we picked him up he was dominating everything that he was running in. And once we get him right here and find out exactly what he's looking for he'll get in that same mode and we'll be a factor every time that we pull in." WHAT DID BILLY PARKER DO TO GET YOUR ATTENTION? "A little bit of pressure was put on me there I believe. Rusty gave me a call and said 'I'm going to start a Busch team and I want you to look after my money' [smiles]. And he knows that I'm good at that because in our heyday we didn't have any money. We had to win. We had to go out and run good or win to by tires for next week. We did it with very few people and that's what we're doing here. He said 'Who would you put in that Busch car?' and I said 'I'd put Billy Parker.' He said why and I said because the kid is the total package. He looks good, he speaks well, he's worked on his own racecars and comes from a very reputable family, Christian family, and I think you and Patti would love him and the kid can drive. He's the real deal. He didn't mention anybody else that he was looking at or whatever and he said Stephen says this kid is good. He's kicking everybody's butt on the short tracks all over the country. I told Rusty to call Harold Holly, Ed Whitaker, people that the kid has raced for. Call the guys at ppc. He went to Chicago with a car they let him put together at night and he was third quickest overall. I gave him about six people and he called me about a week later and he said 'I had lunch with that kid. I really like him, Patti likes him, and I'm going to sign him up.' I asked him what the other people said about him and he said 'Hell, I didn't call anybody else.' I was very proud that he picked Billy because that would have been my pick. Here again, I felt a little bit of pressure until we had a good run and lo and behold we had that the first time out at Vegas. We were a factor. We were second quick in practice to the 25 car. We drew first to go out and qualify, that wasn't good, but we ended up 15th and we drove to the front and we couldn't get out of the pits. I feel like we cost that kid his first win his first time out and we've got to get back to that. We're getting there, it's just as we're hitting these racetracks for the first time. If you take any other Busch team in here and they have a notebook, then they've got twice the notebook that we've got. I remember that it took Davey Allison three years to get where he could qualify decent at Pocono. That's a very difficult place, just like a road course. I've seen these kids struggle as Raybestos Rookies that ended up being some of the best. I also see these kids right now that aren't struggling as rookies but they are wiping out six and eight racecars. I know Ryan tore up eight or 10. I've see Kyle Busch win this year. I've seen him win three or four poles; I've seen him totally destroy four cars. We haven't done that; we can't do that. It's whatever mode that you put your race team in and we're in a little bit of a different mode because we're looking at the end result and the big picture." WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO ACCOMPLISH THIS SEASON? "Last Tuesday Rusty and I were up in the mountains playing golf and talking about some things and I told him that we need to win a race this year. He looked at me like that was not necessary but it would be good. I said that we need to win a race this year and I believe that we can do it. If you don't set a goal I don't think you will ever reach it. You've got to set the bar high. I like setting goals and going for 'em. I like reaching for 'em. I've set a lot of 'em and I've reached a few of them and nothing feels better. I like where I'm at, working with these kids. Had I not raced I always wanted to be a basketball coach. The two parallels have so much in common because it's a people thing. If a basketball team gets beat, it finished second. We can finish anywhere from second to 43rd. The highs and lows of this sport is very, very dramatic but I think to be successful in time you have to ride over the highs and lows, just like a good set of shocks. I try to stay the same all the time even though deep inside I'm not but to demonstrate to our race team my leadership. Blake is a lot like me. I know how he's thinking, he knows how I'm thinking, we compliment each other and it's going to be damn good when it comes together."