Sixth sense

Car owner Ganassi now taking Winston Cup by storm

Chip Ganassi divides his time between six racing teams in three series. AP

BROOKLYN, Mich. (AP) -- Sterling Marlin remembers the day two years ago when he thought he'd be out of work. Car owner Felix Sabates was losing tons of money and there was talk the team would fold.

Just when he thought he needed to look for a new job, Chip Ganassi rescued the fledgling organization -- and Marlin's career.

"I was talking to Felix and his wife was on him about spending all his money on his race team and he thought he was probably going to have to sell everything off and I was going to have to start looking for another ride," Marlin remembered. "Two weeks later, Chip was in town and was buying into the team, and we've been capable of winning races every single week since."

It's hard to believe a change of ownership could reverse fortune so quickly, but the ultra-successful Ganassi -- he's won four championships as a car owner in the CART series -- has made it happen in one of auto racing's toughest divisions in a relatively short period of time.

Marlin heads into the Sirius Satellite Radio 400 at Michigan International Speedway leading the Winston Cup points race. He's got two wins this season and four overall for Ganassi after going winless in three seasons with Sabates as the sole owner.

In the first year under Ganassi, Marlin came out of the gates strong by winning a non-points race during activities surrounding the season-opening Daytona 500. He secured his first points victory at Michigan in August, giving Dodge its first win in its return to NASCAR.

That was a banner day for Ganassi, who pulled off a double when Bruno Junqueria won the CART race to help Ganassi join Roger Penske as the only car owners to win races in NASCAR and CART on the same day.

Marlin, who had finished 19th in the series standings in Sabates' final year as sole team owner, wound up third in the points last season with two victories, proving Ganassi could find the formula to succeed in any series.

"To say that I had a timetable to make things work in NASCAR, I don't think that I did," Ganassi said. "I look at race teams every single day, seven days a week, with a goal of just trying to improve every day.

"Other than that, I don't look at us in terms of surpassing anybody or anything. Our biggest accomplishment to date is we finished third in the points last year, that's a goal post that everyone's familiar with, and until we get in sight of the end zone again, that's all we've done."

Well, that's more than anyone outside of the Ganassi organization expected them to do in the car owner's first foray into stock car racing.

Critics acknowledged that Ganassi was successful in the open-wheel series but were certain he'd struggle in the vastly different, often clubby world of NASCAR.

For starters, he's based in Pittsburgh, far away from his NASCAR shop outside of Charlotte, N.C.

He's dividing his time between all six of his racing teams. Aside from Marlin and Jimmy Spencer in NASCAR, he also owns cars driven by Junqueira, Kenny Brack and Scott Dixon in CART and has a first-year team in the Indy Racing League with Jeff Ward driving for him -- creating a possibility that Ganassi could actually win titles this year in all three of the top series.

But the real obstacle was turning around the NASCAR organization, which was considered somewhat of a joke in Winston Cup circles under Sabates.

The two car operation was never overly successful -- Marlin had just three top-five finishes in three years there and Kenny Irwin, the second driver on that team, was killed in a 2000 accident.

"A lot of people didn't take Felix too serious," Marlin said. "They thought he was just playing around with this racing thing. And he has a big heart, so a lot of people took advantage of that. People could get Felix to spend $250,000 on a part that we'd use three times and then it would sit in the corner the rest of the year."

Ganassi, a shrewd businessman, quickly cleaned things up. Then he delegated power, hiring top-notch people to run his NASCAR teams. He brought in Andy Graves, who cut his teeth at Hendrick Motorsports, to be a team manager alongside Tony Glover, a holdover from Sabates' reign.

It set up a system of checks and balances that has Ganassi assured everything is running smoothly in his absence and allows Sabates to concentrate on non-racing issues.

And Sabates' status in the sport has helped ease Ganassi's introduction to the new series.

"Say what you want about Felix, maybe he's not the greatest race-mind, but the business of racing, I'll stack him up against anybody," Ganassi said. "It makes it nice combination and he has certainly greased the tracks for my entry, and I will forever be indebted to him."

The only hard part for Ganassi is figuring out what race he needs to attend. It's not unusual for him to jet between two events if there's time, but it's created a hectic schedule that has him hopping all over the world almost every week to take care of business and, most importantly, watch his teams win.

"Someone recently said to me, 'When are you going to have some fun?' and my answer just rolled out of my mouth," Ganassi said. "I'm having more fun than ever. Racing is racing, and I just love it."

 

Related information

Multimedia

Visit Video Plus for the latest audio and video