Detail oriented

Sweat, skill make McSwain successful crew chief

Ricky Rudd (left) and Michael "Fatback" McSwain have worked together since 1999. Jonathan Ferrey/Getty Images

By Denise N. Maloof, CNNSI.com

POCONO, Pa. -- Silly season usually circulates around drivers and car owners, not the guys who tend their machines.

But the future of one crew chief is being debated almost as vigorously as that of his driver, or the one rumored to unseat him.

Michael McSwain, better known as Fatback, is Ricky Rudd's crew chief, and apparently one of the variables in the Robert Yates Racing soap opera.

Among the questions: Will Rudd return to his familiar No. 28, or a third Yates team? Will Yates part with Rudd and install Elliott Sadler in the No. 28, as rumored, sticking with two teams? If Rudd stays, will he be allowed to keep his current crew, McSwain included?

And on and on and on.

Rudd expects a resolution by next week, when the Winston Cup series visits Indianapolis. McSwain knows what he'll be doing next season, but won't say. Yates isn't saying anything as his teams prepare for Sunday's Pennsylvania 500 at Pocono Raceway.

"I'd say things are probably going to be quite a bit different next year," offered Rudd. "Regardless, we still got this year to try to take advantage of it, to try to win the championship."

The Rudd-McSwain pairing dates to 1999, the last season Rudd owned his own team. Driver and crew chief came together when Yates hired Rudd to replace Kenny Irwin in 2000. Blessed with RYR's equipment, manpower and resources, the duo has flourished.

Rudd finished fifth in the 2000 Cup standings. He finished fourth in 2001 after chasing champion Jeff Gordon for much of the season. Expected to contend again this year, the No. 28 team has had to rebound from a horrid start, but Rudd sits sixth in the standings, 218 points behind leader Sterling Marlin. He starts second on Sunday.

"We kind of try to raise our bar every year," McSwain said. "The racing gods haven't always smiled on us, but I think we've run better every year. I think we're one of the most consistent teams out here right now."

All involved say McSwain is a factor. The 35-year-old North Carolina native is in his fifth year as a crew chief, and admits he worked his way from the sport's outback, to its pinnacle. A former high-school football player, he got interested in racing through dirt-track trips with friends. He and his father also owned a demolition derby car, and eventually graduated to grass-roots stock-car events.

"Never really could do it right," said McSwain of finances. "So along the way, to help subsidize our expenses, I'd work on other people's race cars. I just seemed to have a knack for working on race cars, figuring out stuff."

One gig led to another and by 1996, McSwain got his first Cup taste, as the shop foreman for owner Richard Jackson and driver Rick Mast. The crew chief was Kevin Hamlin -- now Robby Gordon's crew chief -- who remembers McSwain's attention to detail.

"All I had to do was tell him how I wanted things, and he wanted it that way or nicer yet," said Hamlin.

McSwain inherited Hamlin's job in 1997, after Jackson lost his sponsor and Hamlin went to Richard Childress Racing. He hooked up with Rudd in 1999 for the final 24 races after running the first 10 races with another team, a move convenient for both men; Rudd needed a crew chief, and McSwain needed a job.

"He was a guy that was ready for the win column, but just didn't have any under his title yet," said Rudd, who had noted the progress of other teams under McSwain's hand. "I wasn't the only one to recognize it at the time, but I knew the talent."

"I'm big on details," McSwain said. "I'm real particular about what I do. I think that's the reason I've been somewhat successful."

Success has replaced necessity; the two share a wavelength that's been fractured at times, yet always seems flawlessly in tune inside the garage. According to McSwain, time, families and other pressures have changed a relationship that was once best-of-friends, but he and Rudd still care about each other.

"When we walk in the garage area every week, we put everything else behind and concentrate on what we both want to accomplish," said McSwain.

"He's dedicated, he wants to win races," said Rudd. "He's motivated by running good, he's motivated by performance. He's got that desire that it takes to be a good crew chief. Obviously you've got to have some people around you. The best way to put it is he knows how to make a car handle. Forget everything else. He knows how to make a race car work."

"It's like, he is cool," Yates said of McSwain. "And he's got a good organization. He's got a lot of energy going."

A lot of emotion, too. TV viewers may remember McSwain pounding a tool box at Dover after a loose wheel cost Rudd a possible win in the final moments. He was almost as expressive the following week during the Cup series' first stop at Pocono when a flat tire in the closing laps eliminated another shot at a win.

"It's hard for me to hide me," said McSwain. "Why? I would rather people know what to expect when they see me than to be expecting one thing and then get something else."

But he's thoughtful, too, with a palpable sense of humor; the instigator and focus of many garage tales.

McSwain was the guy who volunteered to assemble the display Soap Box Derby car when NASCAR announced its partnership with the longtime racing venture in early July. He says he's intrigued by anything new, and he didn't have to beg wife Deanna to test-drive the car through the Cup motor coach lot that night.

"She's just like me," McSwain said. "She's fun. She enjoys different things."

Tommy Baldwin, Ward Burton's crew chief, is one garage-mate who can tell a few Fatback tales. The latest hails from last week in New Hampshire; specifically Friday evening, after Baldwin's wife had hand-cracked and extracted the meat from 20 fresh lobsters in preparation for another meal.

That was before McSwain came grazing.

"Him and [Dale Jarrett's crew chief] Todd Parrott came over and ate that whole Tupperware thing," said Baldwin. "Ate some corn and lobster and got up and left. Thanks!"

Baldwin has more memories of a Jamaican getaway when he and his wife ran into the McSwains.

"We had a good time," said Baldwin, recalling beach visits, parties, and movie-esque belly flops worthy of, "Knocking kids off the pool and into the trees."

But ask him about a fellow competitor, and Baldwin turns serious.

"He's a good people person and he's good at what he does," Baldwin said of McSwain. "There's a lot of other teams that need somebody like that for their situation, but Fatback, he puts his whole life into this sport. He's fun. He likes it. And he treats it like fun. And that's very hard to do."

Ever honest, McSwain -- who says he was nicknamed "Fatback" by hometown friends -- also knows he occupies a catbird's seat.

"There's probably 40 crew chiefs out there who would get in line for my job if they thought it was available," he said.

But it's not.

"I love working with him," said Yates. "I enjoy it, because I've got somebody I can argue with, constructively. He's a great racer and I love doing that."

McSwain says he hasn't forgotten all the work he had to do to earn that respect.

"I care about people," said McSwain. "I want people to learn. Most of my guys, we've had very, very little turnover because I got where I am because people taught me stuff. There's a lot of situations out here where they don't want people to learn. They just want them to do what they hired them to do."

One more story: In December, 2000, Rudd visited his sponsor's offices in upstate New York before driving into New York City for the NASCAR awards banquet. He and McSwain, among others, had been rewarded with a stretch limousine for the ride south, to celebrate their first year at RYR and that fifth-place points finish.

"We had the sun roof down," said Rudd. "And Fatback kind of standing up looking around and saying, 'Yep, Rooster, we've arrived in the big city now. We're going there to get our check.'"

Rudd paused to grin.

"I'll probably remember that one."

 

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