Perfect match

Blend of youth, experience working for Havoline team

They wear headphones instead of rings. Exchange data rather than vows. No racing union matters more than the one between a driver and a crew chief, but -- surprise -- the most common marriage and best-friend parallels don't always apply.

"I think it's more of a dad-son than it is a best friend," rookie Jamie McMurray said of his relationship with his crew chief, Donnie Wingo. "I don't know. It's just different. I don't joke around with Donnie a lot about girls or things like that. Pretty much what we talk about is all racing."

That doesn't mean Wingo and McMurray don't click. They do. They're just not likely to frequent comedy clubs together or ride personal watercraft on North Carolina's Lake Norman during warm weather off hours. What they do together is race, and, apparently, they do it well.

After two events in the 2003 Winston Cup season, McMurray sits 18th in the points standings. Technically, he's a rookie despite sitting in for the injured Sterling Marlin during the end of last season, and he's still learning. Especially about Wingo.

"Old men know more than anyone," McMurray said. "I mean, they always know more than anyone."

That's a compliment, by the way. Insincerity probably never occurs to McMurray except on Halloween and April Fool's Day, and that may also be the reason he's so insightful about Wingo, someone else who's not full of himself.

A generation gap definitely exists between the two -- McMurray turns 27 in June, while Wingo just celebrated his 43rd birthday. Their first meeting occurred during McMurray's six-week relief of Marlin. McMurray barely remembers more than "Hello, nice to meet you," but he does remember trusting the Chip Ganassi Racing brain trust.

"I felt like if they assembled Sterling's team from scratch, that they'd probably do a pretty good job for me," McMurray said.

Wingo, who plays a marvelous straight man, has been a chief since 1989. He spent most of his career with owner Travis Carter until Ganassi Racing team managers Tony Glover and Andy Graves finally hounded him into accepting their position last fall.

Ganassi was building a third team around McMurray and the newly acquired Havoline sponsorship, and Glover, who'd tried to hire Wingo for three seasons, said Wingo's loyalty to Carter always won out.

"We didn't even make a short list," Glover said. "Donnie Wingo was the guy that we said was going to be the crew chief of the 42 car next year. Luckily for us, he accepted the position, and we're tickled to death."

So is McMurray, whose nervousness melted in the face of Wingo's easily dispensed knowledge. Together, they finished 31st in the rain-shortened Daytona 500, but last week at Rockingham, where rookies go for Winston Cup basic training and where McMurray had won last fall in the Busch series, he and Wingo combined for a fifth-place finish.

"He's changed things on the car that I'm not used to changing, and it worked," McMurray said. "I liked the way it felt. I felt like at Rockingham that when I said, 'I need just a little bit,' or, 'I need quite a bit,' he was able to tell what that is, and I think that that's the real trick, knowing what a little bit is."

"The biggest thing that I've noticed about him is when he goes out and does a long run and the car's doing something different, he still gets maximum speed out of it for the maximum amount of laps," Wingo said. "He just adapts well to whatever the situation put in."

Wingo calls McMurray "a ball of fire." Wingo says he's having fun and that all their off-the-cuff, offseason lunches will pay off.

"He's pretty much wide open," Wingo said. "He says what he says, and does what he does."

So does Wingo, who cites 1989 -- his first season as a Cup chief -- as the last time he worked with a young driver (Brett Bodine). His resume includes Morgan Shepherd, Geoffrey Bodine, Lake Speed, Dick Trickle and six consecutive seasons with Jimmy Spencer from 1996-2001.

Wingo spent last season juggling drivers and paychecks. The year was full of financial challenge for Carter, who shrunk from two teams to one after primary sponsor Kmart went bankrupt. But having Carter's blessing made it easier for Wingo to accept the Ganassi offer.

"I don't know all there is to know about these things," said Wingo, who always sets a preseason goal to learn something new. "I felt like in this situation, when I went down and talked to them and saw what all was going on, I went back and told my wife, 'Look, this an opportunity that I think I can really learn a lot.' I think when you get to the point when you're not learning, that's when you get stale."

"If Donnie wasn't open-minded, then it would've been bad," McMurray said. "But Donnie's all about trying some new stuff and not stuck on what he did in 1980 with Bud Moore. That doesn't come up."

True to his preseason goal, Wingo has embraced Ganassi Racing's technical and engineering resources. McMurray remembers suggesting a chassis change during a February test at Las Vegas, and Wingo walked over to check laptop data before returning to tell McMurray they'd try the change, but he didn't think it would work.

"I said, 'Why do you think it's not going to work?'" McMurray said. "He explained it to me and I thought, 'Pretty cool. The old guy walked over and looked at the laptop.' But what was neat was we tried it and it didn't work, and I felt like it didn't work because of what he said."

Denise N. Maloof covers NASCAR for SI.com.

 

Related information

Stories

Previous Denise N. Maloof Columns

Multimedia

Visit Video Plus for the latest audio and video