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Posted: Tuesday September 28, 1999 04:56 PM

Breaking Up  

Jeff Gordon's crew chief is moving on to greener pastures

By Ed Hinton

Jeff Gordon has long known that one day he would lose Ray Evernham, the only crew chief he has had in eight seasons with the Hendrick Motorsports team and a man largely responsible for Gordon's three Winston Cup championships over the past four years. Gordon just never knew when Evernham would go or what would lure him away.

Evernham and Gordon have won 47 races and three titles. Chris O'Meara/AP

Though no official announcement about those particulars had been made at week's end, team owner Rick Hendrick spent Monday trying to resolve Evernham's contract, which runs through 2006. The crew chief reportedly was poised to join a NASCAR effort being planned by automotive giant DaimlerChrysler Corp. According to sources, Hendrick was considering granting Evernham his release with the stipulation that he not compete in NASCAR for a year and that he not hire any Hendrick employees.

Evernham is widely thought to have organizational and engineering talents far beyond his job description as a crew chief, which is why he might be chosen to help lead a NASCAR program at DaimlerChrysler Corp., the company born last year of the merger of Chrysler Corp. and Daimler-Benz, parent company of Mercedes-Benz. Sources within the company say that an announcement about DaimlerChrysler's NASCAR plans would be made in the next two months. The team would not begin to compete in Winston Cup before 2001. The Chrysler brands, Dodge and Plymouth, have been absent from NASCAR for 20 years. Chrysler enjoyed its last real success in NASCAR in the 1970s, when Richard Petty drove Chrysler cars to six Winston Cups.

If the deal materializes, there is a good chance that Evernham would have at his disposal the enormous technological resources of two British-based firms, Ilmor Engineering and Reynard, both of which have ties to DaimlerChrysler. Ilmor builds the engines that power the McLaren-Mercedes Formula One team, which features defending F/1 world champion Mika Hakkinen. Reynard builds the cars that have powered Target-Ganassi racing to three consecutive CART championships. Developing NASCAR engines would be "a complete departure from the direction we're going in at the moment," said Paul Ray, Ilmor's vice president of U.S. operations. But, he conceded, "It would be extremely interesting to take on a project like that."

Evernham apparently agrees.

Unser Jr. Back in the 500?  
Indianapolis Or Bust

Al Unser Jr. expects to race in next year's Indianapolis 500 for the first time in six years. Despite numerous reports that he was signed, sealed and delivered to the IRL, however, he still doesn't know whether he'll drive full time in the IRL or NASCAR in 2000. Unser, a 17-year CART veteran who hasn't won a race since '95, learned in August that Roger Penske would not retain his services next season, and the 37-year-old driver couldn't close a deal with any other CART owner. One of the IRL owners with whom Unser has negotiated is Rick Galles, a former CART owner whose car he drove to the first of his two Indy 500 victories, in 1992. Unser has also talked with CART's Cal Wells, who is expected to add a NASCAR team to his stable next season.

"NASCAR drivers are making a lot of money with their merchandising," says Unser, "and to race in front of that many people [Winston Cup attendance averages 191,000 per event] is something that appeals to me. My first love is single-seat, open-wheel race cars, and I'm leaning toward that. But if the best deal that comes along has fenders on it, so be it."

Unser has proved himself in stock cars. He has a record 11 victories in the International Race of Champions Series, the 26-year-old event that pits drivers from CART, the IRL and NASCAR in equally outfitted stock cars. Unser also ran well early in the 1993 Daytona 500, his only NASCAR appearance, before being wrecked by his friend Dale Earnhardt.

Should Unser end up in NASCAR, he says, he will insist that his contract allow him to race in the Indy 500, the crown jewel of the IRL's 11-race schedule. His father, Al Unser Sr., won the Indy 500 four times, and his uncle Bobby won it three times. Al Jr. won the race in his last appearance there, in 1994, but failed to qualify in 1995 and has sat out the past four years because of CART's ongoing feud with the IRL. "I've been away from it too long," Al Jr. says.

CART's Texaco Grand Prix:  
Houston, We Have a Problem

A funny thing happened to team owner Chip Ganassi in Sunday's Texaco Grand Prix of Houston. Just when he seemed to be on the brink of clinching a record fourth consecutive CART season championship, Ganassi neglected to tell his driver, Juan Pablo Montoya, where a wrecked car was sitting around one of the blind corners on the downtown street circuit. Montoya, leading on Lap 13 of a scheduled 100, plowed into the wreckage and damaged Ganassi's Reynard-Honda too badly to continue. Team Green's Dario Franchitti scrambled back from early handling problems to finish second to teammate Paul Tracy and cut Montoya's points lead from 29 to 13 -- easy shooting distance with two races remaining. (A driver can gain as many as 22 points on an opponent in one race.)

On serpentine street circuits, where high temporary walls limit vision, drivers depend heavily on spotters out on the track and TV monitors in the pits. "Maybe Chip was looking at his reflection in the monitor," cracked Tracy, who delighted in the debacle.

Montoya, 23, has been CART's dominant driver this year, with seven wins. He started the race on the pole, needing only 15 points to clinch another title for Ganassi, who had won in 1996 with Jimmy Vasser driving and in '97 and '98 with Alex Zanardi. Montoya's day was going fine as he led the first 12 laps, but Helio Castro-Neves spun out on the 10th corner of the circuit, bringing out a full-course caution. Ganassi says that in the ensuing radio conversation he told Montoya, "'Full yellow, full yellow!' Juan said, 'O.K.' We said, 'Slow down, stay out.' He said, 'O.K.' Then he said, 'F---! I just crashed.'"

Montoya called it miscommunication. "It's happened before, and it'll happen again," he said, blasting Ganassi. "Nobody told me anything was there. I saw a yellow flag, and they yelled, 'Full course yellow!' Chip told me to stay out. He didn't say, 'Watch the cars.' He didn't say anything else. I backed off, came around, and there was a car blocking the middle of the racetrack."

After Montoya fell out, Tracy dominated the race, leading all but three of the last 88 laps and winning by a comfortable 13.733-second margin over Franchitti.

Calling It Like It Is:  
Ned Jarrett's In a Tough Spot

Broadcaster Ned Jarrett, whose play-by-play account of his son Dale's first Daytona 500 win, in 1993, was one of the memorable moments in CBS's 20 years of telecasting the race, says he now faces a tougher assignment. He's scheduled to provide color commentary for three of the last seven Winston Cup races of the season, a stretch during which Dale could clinch his first Winston Cup title. Heading into this week's race at Martinsville, Va. -- one of the three Ned will call -- Dale holds a commanding 257-point lead over Mark Martin.

"If Dale goes into the final race and has to finish in a certain spot to lock up the championship, it's going to be nerve-racking," says Ned, who won NASCAR championships in 1961 and '65 and will be working that season finale at Atlanta on Nov. 21.

Issue date: October 4, 1999

 

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