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by Ed Hinton
When the green flag drops on the 1997 NASCAR season, it should unleash the most interesting fleet of new and emerging drivers since 1979, the year Dale Earnhardt beat Terry Labonte for rookie of the year honors and Kyle Petty began what would be a career of falling short of the expectations set by his bloodline.
In fact, '97 should turn out to be even better than '79. Robby Gordon and Tony Stewart bring loads of talent into their rookie Winston Cup seasons. Both had their dazzling days in Indy Cars before giving up on the CART-IRL civil war and heading for the more attractive racing of the Winston Cup. And both are comfortable in the Winston Cup's "loose" cars (ones with less-than-precise handling) thanks to their experiences racing on dirt. Gordon won championships in off-road trucks, Stewart in United States Auto Club sprints, midgets and Silver Crown cars. The pair are both somewhat mouthier (but in pleasant, not irritating, ways) and flashier than Winston Cup's reigning prodigy, Jeff Gordon. The two newcomers should add some salsa picante to the milk-and-cookies atmosphere Gordon has created at the pinnacle of stock car racing.
Robby Gordon and Stewart may get runs for their money from Steve Park, a 29-year-old Long Islander who will spend a season in NASCAR's AAA league—the Busch Grand National Series—before moving up to the majors. Park might just be the best pure driving talent to hit NASCAR since Earnhardt himself.
The relationship to watch in '97 will be the one between Earnhardt and 39-year-old "rookie" Mike Skinner, who is being brought up from team owner Richard Childress's truck-racing operation to become Earnhardt's first full-time Winston Cup teammate. Skinner is as hard-nosed as Earnhardt and as ready to win. Two bulls in one pasture might not work, but if it does, Childress's team could regain its dominance of the sport.
This massive infusion of potential winners comes at precisely the right time for NASCAR, the popularity of which has been outgrowing its actual talent. It was Earnhardt versus all the rest in the early '90s, and then Jeff Gordon versus all the rest in the middle of the decade. That wouldn't have worked much longer with the fans. The rest of this millennium could become reminiscent of the 1970s, when Richard Petty, David Pearson, Bobby Allison, Cale Yarborough and the young and fiery Darrell Waltrip were all brawling it out on the tracks.
What follows is a ranking of 10 drivers—based on performance and potential as well as on our expectations for success in the upcoming season. Stay tuned.
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In 1996, Stewart drove like a young A.J. Foyt and carried himself like a young Mario Andretti. But that was in Indy Cars. In '97, Stewart will be gambling with his reputation more than any other newcomer to Winston Cup racing.
Ninety-nine percent of Stewart's racing experience is in open-wheel cars. He is the only driver in USAC history to win three titles—midget, sprint car and Silver Crown—in the same season. Not even Jeff Gordon had such a record. Stewart spent 1996 in the Indy Racing League and ran a few Busch races as a sideline, which some observers think isn't enough heavy-car experience. "To take a guy like that and throw him into Winston Cup isn't fair," says Ray Evernham, the crew chief who nurtured Gordon.
A premature jump like this would ruin the career of a merely excellent driver. But Stewart is too skilled to be ruined by anything. Nor is he one to hide his feelings, so he's sure to howl if the Ranier Walsh effort turns sour.
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Gordon is the best instinctive driver of the bunch and by far the fastest learner. He is at his best when he flies, free and easy. That's what made him so spectacular at racing trucks in the Baja desert, from whence he sprang.
Gordon has spent the last five years in Indy Cars, but he yearned to race more often than the CART schedule allows. So he's back—full time—in the Winston Cup, replacing Kyle Petty for owner Felix Sabates. (Petty left to start his own team.) Because Sabates is rebuilding his crew, it is likely that Gordon will not have a highly qualified crew chief to mentor him. But there's a glimmer of hope that the real Robby Gordon will prevail: "We're probably gonna crash a few cars," he says, "but we're gonna run up front, too." He's already delivered on part of that: In his first three '96 Winston Cup starts, Gordon wrecked three cars.
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Dale Earnhardt has a protégé? Earnhardt doesn't do protégés. Nor does he do compliments. But if that were to change, you'd figure somebody pretty spectacular had shown up in NASCAR. So hearken to Earnhardt's pronouncement: "Steve Park has the potential to do everything a Petty, an Earnhardt and a Gordon have done."
"In a sense, Steve grew up just like I did," Earnhardt says. "He and his dad built race cars together. When he told me stories about him and his daddy working in the shop, it made me think about me and my daddy [the late Ralph Earnhardt] and all the good times we had."
The only question now is whether Earnhardt, as a car owner, will turn loose some of those many millions of dollars he has earned to give Park truly competitive equipment. If so, expect a knockout.
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Of all the drivers on the rise, Burton has the most important ingredient for quick success: a wily veteran crew chief to guide him. As for the crew chief, the last time Buddy Parrott worked with a driver in whom he saw such budding stardom was 1977; the guy's name was Darrell Waltrip.
In 1990, when then-unknown Derrike Cope flew out of nowhere to win the Daytona 500, it was Parrott who prepared the car and coached Cope through every lap. Now Parrott has the enormous technological resources of the three-car Jack Roush team. And he has a driver who, though winless through his first two full Winston Cup seasons (1994 and '95), got stronger as the '96 season progressed. "Jeff is definitely going to be a contender for championships," says Parrott. "I've told Jack that we're going to win a lot of races with this guy."
And the winning could start on any Sunday. "It's beginning to click," says Parrott. "Anytime you run in the top five, you can win a race. All you've got to have is a few breaks."
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The last time Richard Childress signed a driver to a full-time Winston Cup ride, pundits said the guy was too old and just might be washed up. The year was 1984, and the driver was Dale Earnhardt.
Childress has long called his team "the Oakland Raiders of stock car racing," and he has a little of Al Davis's knack for rejuvenating key players who appear to be over the hill. "Tony Stewart and Robby Gordon are super young drivers," Childress says of the two defectors from open-wheel racing. "They're gonna be good. Damn good. But I don't want to take some 24- or 25-year-old guy and put three or four years into him. I want 'em to be able to run big, heavy cars when I get 'em." So they can just win, baby.
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Craven, who takes over Ken Schrader's ride in the upcoming season, has the megadose of intensity needed to make a consistent winner of what has been the weakest of the three Hendrick Motorsports teams.
Says Craven, "It's a bonus that one of my teammates is a good friend. Now, though we'll still be competing, it will be easier for us to communicate and share information."
The mix of three bundles of intensity—Gordon, Craven and team manager Ray Evernham—is potentially volatile. They're all great pals for now, but when the going gets hot and heavy at Hendrick in '97, well, they're all too smart to air it out in public, but it sure would be fun to eavesdrop.
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It's just a matter of time before Michael Kranefuss becomes a winning car owner, and Mayfield has arrived as the right guy at the right time to go along for the ride. He wasn't especially impressive driving for Cale Yarborough, but Kranefuss thought he saw something there.
Like Elliott, Mayfield is a noncrasher, a welcome relief to his new boss, whose stable of cars was badly depleted by the recurrent mishaps of John Andretti before Kranefuss and Yarborough swapped drivers for the last eight races of the '96 season. The popular and flamboyant Kranefuss was a magnet for Mayfield. "I had a lot of offers from other teams," Mayfield says. "My major reason for coming here was Michael Kranefuss."
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We know, we know. You have been watching him for the past two seasons, watching him crash and take some top contenders with him. But we're not yet ready to give up on such raw ability, and neither are some pretty savvy Winston Cup operators.
He may have found one in three-time Winston Cup champ Cale Yarborough, owner of Andretti's new team. Yarborough doesn't have a very impressive record as an owner, despite his 83 victories as a driver. But he may have a big enough name—and a rich enough background—that Andretti will listen to him. Says Kranefuss, "The name Andretti and his status in Indy Car racing doesn't mean s--- here. He's got to have a realistic sense of where he stands."
Andretti will either improve or continue to cause some of the darnedest wrecks you've ever seen. And it may be just a matter of time before some payback-oriented veterans go hunting for him. All in all, he'll truly be a driver to watch—and watch out for.
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Forgive Benson his mediocre '96, for he was not just a rookie but a rookie driving a Pontiac—the nearest thing to a crucible that the finest minds of Detroit and NASCAR could come up with.
But it's still a Pontiac, racing in a system whose rules were set up to accommodate the aerodynamics of the Ford Thunderbird and the Chevrolet Monte Carlo. "Obviously we think the car can win races," he says, "but I don't think it's going to win a majority of them." Still, Benson's experience—and success—in other racing series makes him worthy of attention next season. He was the American Speed Association's top rookie in 1990 and its champion in '93; he was NASCAR Busch Series rookie of the year in '94 and its champion in '95. So will he be a Winston Cup champion? Not until he climbs into something other than a Pontiac.
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Green is joining the Winston Cup tour too late in life to rack up a lot of career wins, but he could develop into a front-runner who causes some midrace excitement. He was Busch Series champion in 1994 and came down the stretch of the '96 season in a neck-and-neck battle with Randy LaJoie for the Busch title.
Shelmerdine and Earnhardt used to love to back their car right off the trailer at a track and turn a lightning lap immediately, just to stun the competition and grab the pole. Green, too, was a prolific pole winner in the Busch Series, with a whopping nine in 1994 and four in a 1995 season in which no one else won more than one pole.
So from the talking TV heads, count on the following Friday-night openings: "The big surprise in today's qualifying at [fill in the track] was rookie David Green, who...."
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Stewart is loaded with talent, but he may be plunging too quickly into a series whose cars are far different—twice as heavy and much more cumbersome—than what he's used to. That wouldn't be so bad if he were coming in with an experienced team. But he has signed a three-year deal with a new outfit called Ranier Walsh Racing.
The term may be overused, but Gordon truly is a racing prodigy. In 1990 he won his class in the 24 Hours of Daytona; it was the first time he had ever raced on a paved course. The first time he drove on an oval track, also in '90, he put a car on the pole at Atlanta and would have won the race had he not spun in some Oil-Dri. And in just his third competitive Winston Cup start, in 1993, he was running in the top five at Talladega when he was forced into a wild crash.
Earnhardt means business. Rather than tossing Park directly into the meat grinder of the Winston Cup, he will place him in a Dale Earnhardt Racing-owned Busch Grand National car for '97. "If you had a young heavyweight that you were certain could be world champion," says Ray Evernham, Jeff Gordon's New Jersey-born crew chief, who spotted Park on the modified race tracks of Long Island and Connecticut, "would you put him in the ring with Mike Tyson for his first fight?"
"Darrell was a chassis man," says Parrott, whose son Todd is now a highly respected crew chief for Dale Jarrett. "If the tow was off a little bit, he could feel it. Jeff's that kind of guy. He can diagnose problems and relate them. He's also a Cale Yarborough-class charger. But he's smart about it."
Skinner spent 18 years hard-knocking around short tracks before Childress hired him to drive in NASCAR's inaugural Craftsman Truck Series in 1995. Skinner responded by winning the first race—and the season championship. In '97 he'll become Earnhardt's teammate as Childress becomes a two-car team. "Mike is as hungry as a 20-year-old, but with 19 years more experience," Childress says. "He's one of the most aggressive drivers I've watched. You'd have to classify Mike as an Earnhardt-style driver. He doesn't back off for anything."
Beneath Craven's finely polished surface lies a hard driver with zero tolerance for slack or inept crewmen. That's the sort of focus that won him Winston Cup rookie of the year honors in '95 and got him several top-five finishes in '96. "I'm excited that he's coming to Hendrick Motorsports," says Jeff Gordon, a close friend of Craven's. "He's very focused, he knows what he needs in a race car setup, and he knows how to drive it. He's a smart driver." Adds John Bickford, Gordon's stepfather and mentor, "Ricky's the hardest-working guy in the garage area."
"I've watched Jeremy since last year," says Kranefuss, who left his job as Ford's director of racing operations in 1994 to start a team with CART mogul (and Paul Newman's racing partner) Carl Haas. "There were moments when I didn't think he was in a particularly good car. Still, he managed to do O.K. He's not being hailed as the next Jeff Gordon, but I think he could develop into a mixture of Bill Elliott and Rusty Wallace. He's got a very fluid driving style, but he can also be very, very aggressive."
"I'm absolutely certain that John is a much better driver than we were able to make him look, and we're a better team than he made us look," says Michael Kranefuss, owner of the team that Andretti left in mid-'96. Adds Ray Evernham, Jeff Gordon's crew chief, "I really believe John has a lot of talent. It's just that nobody has been able to harness it yet. He needs to find a mentor."
Before the season opener at Daytona, Benson had turned only about 10 laps in a Winston Cup car. He soon caught on and by midseason went on a run of four top-10 finishes in six races. Although '96 "was an up-and-down year, we all expected it going in," he says. "Now we've got a year under our belt, and [crew chief] Doug Hewitt has a year of working with me and with the Grand Prix."
Green's Busch team, which belongs to successful Sports Car Club of America team owner Buz McCall, will move up to the Winston Cup in '97. With it goes a secret weapon not seen at a racetrack in six years: Kirk Shelmerdine, the crew chief who directed Dale Earnhardt's glorious 11-win 1987 championship season. Shelmerdine retired in 1991 but has been hanging around the Green-McCall pits, referring to himself as a "consultant," which he still plans to call himself in '97.
