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Riches to rags Fortunes of No. 25 car have gone downhillPosted: Friday May 24, 2002 8:11 PMUpdated: Friday May 24, 2002 11:11 PM
By Denise N. Maloof, CNNSI.com CONCORD, N.C. -- Fielding a successful Winston Cup team is like concocting a good tomato sauce. If the seasonings and timing aren’t perfect, the results stink no matter how costly or fresh the ingredients. It is a similar situation at Hendrick Motorsports, where a bitter tastes exists in more than a few mouths associated with the No. 25 car. While the team experienced success with the late Tim Richmond in the driver's seat during the late 80's, none of the recipes tried since then have been quite right. The latest shakeup (Joe Nemechek in, Jerry Nadeau out) comes amid spoiled expectations; Nadeau, who parted ways with the team following the Pontiac Excitement 400, sits 28th in the points, with one top-10 finish in 11 events entering Sunday’s Coca-Cola Racing Family 600. He remains mystified by the lack of success in his two-plus seasons at Hendrick."I think it was the best for both of us, I really do," Nadeau said. "Cause I’ve just about lost it with really everything. I just didn't feel comfortable about going to the shop, and facing the sponsors because I was kind of embarrassed. Because we shouldn’t be like that. This team shouldn’t be like that.” The mix has also been disturbed by the departure of crew chief Tony Furr. Ken Howes, Hendrick’s director of competition, will sit on the pit box until a replacement is named. "Why do rock bands not stay together?" said Howes, only half-joking. Everyone associated with the team is shaking their heads. "We're going to hit that," Hendrick said of the elusive combination. "That deal will be fine because we’re just not going to give up trying to make it what it needs to be."
Job switches and rebuilding scenarios are nothing new for the No. 25. But there was so much promise when the team was started. In the 1986 season, Richmond won seven races, including the season finale at Riverside, Calif. He finished third in points behind Dale Earnhardt and Darrell Waltrip. Earnhardt's boss, Richard Childress, confided in Hendrick that he was more worried about Richmond in the future. "And then Tim got sick," Hendrick said. Richmond left the team in September 1987 and passed away two years later.
The full-time drivers that followed -- Benny Parsons, Kenny Schrader, Ricky Craven and Wally Dallenbach -- all enjoyed scattered moments during their tenures, but left few historical footnotes. Schrader had the seat from 1988 to 1996, during which he won four races. "And another damn half-dozen of them we could see the checkered flag and something always happened," Schrader said. "Why, I don’t know." Naivete might have been a factor, Hendrick said. His teams had the most power back then, he explained, but the mentality was that of sprint racers. "We would like to lead every lap," he said, "and I think we used our stuff up a lot." Schrader’s best season was 1994, when he finished fourth in the points race. His tenure ended after he digested one too many engine failures, the last at Watkins Glen in 1996. Craven succeeded Schrader, debuting as part of the Hendrick trifecta in the 1997 Daytona 500. Teammate Jeff Gordon won the race, then-defending Cup champion Terry Labonte finished second, and Craven took third (paired with another young talent in crew chief Andy Graves). The No. 25 team appeared primed, but hope of any long-term success ended with Craven’s crash, and concussion, at Texas a few months later. "It disrupted me personally; it disrupted me physically," Craven said. "But it also had a detrimental effect on the team." The crew has to adjust the car for Todd Bodine and Jack Sprague. It was "very disruptive," Craven said, adding that he thought the team recaptured some of momentum in the months after his return, but the bottom line was results. "And if you’re any type of competitor, you’re always reminding yourself of that," Craven said frankly. After finishing 19th in 1997, that self-described competitiveness, coupled with post-concussion syndrome, compelled Craven to resign eight races into the 1998 season. Randy LaJoie and Wally Dallenbach finished out the year, and Dallenbach and Furr became the full-time driver-crew chief combination in 1999. Dallenbach finished 18th in his only season at Hendrick (he logged one top-five and five top-10s). Then Nadeau arrived in 2000. "It got pretty good," Howes said. "Jerry and Tony had some success. Lots of ups and downs, but being that Jerry was at that time [was still new], we kept trying to rebuild the team with all the turmoil that we saw. Ultimately, Jerry won the race at the end of 2000 in Atlanta, and life was good. Everybody’s in love. And so you go into 2001 with great expectations, and it just never happened.”
"I don’t think he really got over it," Howes said. “I think the team made a mistake. We knew it, but to try and keep everything going, you’re always patching and having meetings and trying to get this thing that’s so close, because the team is obviously capable of winning races.” “I have never seen anybody that wants to win any more than Jerry Nadeau does,” Hendrick said. “Almost to the point that it hurts him, because your percentages are just not going to be that high to win. And Jerry’s hard on himself and he’s hard on people around him when it doesn’t happen.” “I don’t believe in gremlins,” Nadeau said. “I don’t believe in anything. I really believe it’s the team. It’s team, driver, it’s a little bit of everything.” As for rumors that only Gordon’s No. 24 receives Hendrick Motorsports’ best equipment, most of the No. 25 team principals, past and present, say, hogwash. “Everybody wants to make the 25 car a stepchild or a test car,” Schrader said. “It’s not. The nine years I was there, I sure never felt like that.” “It certainly wasn’t due to a lack of effort,” Craven said. "It’s a classic example of maybe just trying too hard and maybe all those circumstances. Because nothing else makes sense." Unless it’s supernatural. And with all the equipment failures, bad luck and chemistry difficulties over the years, why not blame a curse? “Maybe Tim Richmond’s ghost has got something to do with it, just watching over it,” Howes said. “Maybe they oughta change the number,” Nadeau said. “Who knows? Maybe Tim Richmond cursed that thing, that nobody would do better than him. And I tried my darndest, but it just didn’t work.” The number change has been tried before. In '98, the car was dubbed No. 50 to celebrate NASCAR's big anniversary. The car had its worst points finish ever. There’s another reason everyone connected with the No. 25 wants to win, and his name is Papa Joe. Located in Concord, N.C., the Hendrick Motorsports complex sits on Papa Joe Hendrick Boulevard, named for the official owner of the No. 25 team, Rick and company president John Hendrick’s father. “He rides down there every day,” Rick Hendrick said. “I mean, every single day he’s down there. And I can call him after a race, and if they’ve had a good race, he’s on his toes and real spirited and feeling good. And if the other teams won and they’ve had a rough day, he’s in a bad [mood].” "You want Papa Joe to have the success that he deserves,” Howes said. “So that’s disappointing that we’ve not been able to do that. So there’s a lot of reasons that you keep searching, and keep pushing. It’ll be a good day when the 25 gets back."
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