Taking a toll

Crew chiefs struggle to meet demands of job, family

Last week at Rockingham, lost amidst the points race and Robert Yates' ongoing travails were a few clues that top-shelf crew chiefs may be an endangered species.

Not the job, but the men who do it.

First up was Michael "Fatback" McSwain, who dominated half of the weekend's headlines with his leap off Yates' payroll and onto Joe Gibbs'. Set to quarterback Elliott Sadler on Yates' new No. 38 team next season, McSwain couldn't make himself don blinders a month ago when Bobby Labonte's crew chief, Jimmy Makar, announced that he would become team manager in 2003.

One thing led to another, McSwain negotiated out of the final two years of his five-year contract, and now he's tailing Makar for the rest of this year (he started last week at The Rock) to prepare for next season.

Say what you want, says McSwain -- that he's greedy, disloyal, etc. He's heard it all. In almost three seasons, he and Ricky Rudd produced two top-five finishes for Yates (fifth in 2000, fourth in 2001), and had a shot to finish top-10 this year (Rudd sits 10th heading into Phoenix).

They might've done better in 2002 had contract squabbles, internal unrest and Sadler's convoluted hiring not been a factor. The No. 28 and its longtime Robert Yates Racing sponsor, Havoline, move to Chip Ganassi Racing next season, but even without a familiar driver, sponsor or car number, McSwain wasn't going to be hurting in 2003. He enjoyed a good relationship with Yates, a reputation as one of Winston Cup's top young chiefs, and a fresh challenge with the enigmatic (on the track, anyway) and personable Sadler.

So what made him pull the switch?

"I'm 35," said McSwain. "I don't know how many more years I can do it at the rate I'm doing it. I figure I got five, maybe 10 left in me. So it's an opportunity to maybe put some rings on my fingers, put some more trophies in [the Joe Gibbs Racing shop]. I just couldn't make myself pass it up."

If you're thinking like a retiree at 35, what does it feel like to be 47?

"Been on the road for 25 [years]," said Mike Beam, who has two races remaining as Ricky Craven's crew chief. "I've been married 24 years. Got three kids. My wife raised our first two daughters by herself while I was gone. And we got Sara, an 8-year-old, and I just really want to spend time with her."

Before the 46-year-old Makar opted out, he and Labonte had the longest driver-crew chief relationship in the Cup garage (eight years). They'd won the 2000 championship and seemed tailored -- and tethered -- for many more years.

But the past two seasons' performance struggles exposed more than frustration. Makar had planned to make the team manager move in 2004. Yet with Labonte laboring in the bottom 10 of the top-20 points (currently 17th), new blood and the chance to re-acquaint with one's own hastened the transition.

"Still working on that whole process of what exactly I'm going to do in the shop," said Makar, who knows he'll still be trackside during the first part of 2003 to help McSwain. "I've got a lot of ideas, a lot of projects, a lot of things that I feel like I can handle that will help us enhance our program. Exactly how it's going to work out is a little up in the air right now."

Beam will fill a similar role for owner Cal Wells. Race engineer Roy McCauley, who's spent the past two seasons learning from Beam, will take the crew-chief reins in 2003. Beam says it's time he supported the younger man who supported him during the past two years at Wells' PPI Motorsports, and that he'll particularly miss Craven.

"I think that's been just a great relationship," said Beam. "And it's just been a wonderful time for me because we've just really had a lot of fun and gotten to know each other and he is really a great person."

Like Beam, Makar's decision was family-driven, and several years in the making. He and wife Patti are the parents of 8-year-old twins, Alex and Dillon, who still think dad's day job is cool, and who haven't learned how to groan at the news of another race weekend.

"They're at the age now where they love racing, they love coming to the races, they love what they do," Makar said. "But they're also developing lives of their own -- playing soccer, doing gymnastics, music, and I want to be there for that -- try to support them in everything they're doing in life."

Hit the brakes now, Beam advises, particularly with a 36-race schedule, a harsher, pressurized spotlight and a joke of an offseason.

"I was very blessed to have a great wife that understood," Beam said of his spouse, Nancy (their elder daughters are Erin and Emily). "But you can't ask them to do that forever. And I've missed so many soccer games and softball games, birthdays that I shouldn't have. But I was doing what I had to do to provide for my family. But I don't want to be 60 years and old and have missed everything."

No whining is allowed when you're living your dream. All three of these chiefs work in their chosen profession for very rewarding salaries (nowadays, anyway), and so they've put up with a certain amount of absenteeism, long-distance parenting and the heartburn of being a leader of men.

That doesn't mean that they like all of it.

"You just get tired," Beam said. "You get tired of waiting in these motels. You get tired of just fighting the traffic. Eventually there comes a time in your life where you realize your time's worth something. You need to do something else."

McSwain doesn't yet have family dilemmas (wife Deanna does travel with him), but he's not into raising drivers. He's spent nearly all of his six-year Cup career with veterans, not a planned characteristic, and although he doesn't think of the 27-year-old Sadler as inexperienced -- Sadler is completing his fourth Cup season -- working with a 38-year-old champion like Labonte means cutting directly to a points chase.

"When it comes down to it, and you're at Darlington, you're at Rockingham, and you know you gotta take care of your tires and you know you gotta be smart and keep the fenders on it, I'll take a veteran over a rookie any day," McSwain said.

"I want to be able enjoy my life and my family's life, and even though everybody says they can do that (while they're a crew chief), they really can't," Beam said. "Because you're so focused on what you gotta do, and it's not fair to them. My daughter Sara told me that she'd be glad whenever I could stay home some, so yeah, it made the decision pretty easy for me."

Denise N. Maloof covers NASCAR for CNNSI.com.

 

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