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Fueled by friendship New-look RAD Program returns after dominating yearPosted: Thursday February 14, 2002 11:06 AMDAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) -- It started as an agreement between three loyal friends to save money while improving race cars. It turned into one of the most successful mergers in NASCAR history. The RAD (Richard, Andy and Dale) Program, an alignment among car owners Richard Childress, Andy Petree and the late Dale Earnhardt, returns to superspeedway racing Sunday in the Daytona 500 trying to defend its reputation of producing the best cars on the track. The program has soared since its launch three years ago, and proved its worth last season when RAD cars won the four races at Daytona and Talladega, the two longest and fastest ovals in NASCAR. But success wasn't enough -- the program has been overhauled despite proof it was working.
"You can't just sit back and be satisfied with what you have," Childress said. "You always have to be searching for more, trying to take things further and make things better." That's how the program was born. Unhappy with the way their cars were running on superspeedways, Childress and Earnhardt decided to pool money to learn how to make their Chevrolets better. They enlisted Petree, who had graduated from his days as Earnhardt's crew chief and was fielding his own teams, to help share the cost and the technology. The premise was simple. The three organizations shared all information about their race cars. If one team went to the wind tunnel, the other two got the information. Louis Duncan, a former engineer for Ford Motor Co., was hired to oversee the program and help the teams understand how to get better. It cost them at least $1 million a year and required a tremendous amount of trust. "A program like this just can't run with anybody," said Steve Hmiel, director of motorsports operations at Dale Earnhardt Inc. "It doesn't work unless you have three close friends who trust everyone is sharing everything." They did and the program was a success from the start. From the first time the RAD cars rolled off the truck in 1999, the owners have 15 victories.
Their biggest year came 2001 when DEI won three races -- Michael Waltrip taking the Daytona 500 and Dale Earnhardt Jr. winning in Daytona in July and in Talladega in October, and Bobby Hamilton winning at Talladega for Petree in April. "It was a tremendous year, as far as RAD results, it couldn't have been any better," Petree said. "But there were ways the program could still be improved." So it has a different look this year. Duncan, whose contract expired at the end of last season, is now with Joe Gibbs Racing and a team of hand-picked fabricators is now running RAD. Under the old system, one RAD car was built and spent a year at each of the three shops. Each team tried to send a fabricator to the car once a week to work on the program and study data with Duncan. Now, the entire operation is housed at DEI and run by the trio of fabricators. As always, all the information is shared, leading to eight almost-identical cars this week at Daytona. Waltrip, Earnhardt Jr., Kenny Wallace, Hamilton, Mike Wallace, Kevin Harvick, Robby Gordon and Jeff Green will be in RAD cars in Thursday's twin 125-mile qualifying races and again in Sunday's season-opening 500-miler. There will be pressure on them to continue the program's success and prove that tweaking RAD won't hurt it. "We feel confident that we have a good thing here," said Ty Norris, vice president at DEI. "There's no reason to believe the RAD cars won't be strong once again."
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