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Q&A: Evernham and Atwood
Posted: Friday May 26, 2000 06:22 PM
Ray Evernham hired young Busch upstart Casey Atwood to drive his No. 19 Dodges for the 2001 season. CNNSI.com caught up with the pair. CNNSI.com : The fact that Casey Atwood was going to be your second driver was one of the worst kept secrets going. Are you glad the announcement has finally been made? Ray Evernham : Absolutely. I am certainly proud and excited to talk about it, and Casey and I can start to work together out in the open, and so I am really excited and proud to get this behind us for Dodge and Dodge dealers and now we can start and go have some fun testing CNNSI.com : You could have had your pick of young drivers. Why Casey? Evernham : Well. I had watched Casey from his second ever Busch Grand National start and actually at that time he sat on the pole and finished second in the race and then I started to really pay attention to how he drove and he drove his race car with a lot more years of experience than he had age. He did not tear up a lot of stuff, he did not make any stupid moves, and he actually communicated very well with what the car needed. And that is very important to a crew chief and he had worked with (teammate) Bill (Elliott), tested with Bill, and he was one of Bill's first choices. So he was just a natural choice to come on the Evernham Motor Sports Dodge program. CNNSI.com : Casey, how excited are you to be working for Ray? Casey Atwood : Well it definitely helps, and you know I have been very excited about doing some testing with him. And he is helping our Busch stuff out a little bit. And you know, basically communicating well is who you are working with and the questions asked, and you know they got to ask you the right questions. And I feel like I am pretty good at what the car is doing. I do not know everything about how to fix one, but I can tell you what the car is doing, and if you have somebody that asks the right questions and knows what to do with car, it is a lot easier. CNNI.com : There will be a lot of comparisons between you, and another young driver Ray worked with, Jeff Gordon. Are you feeling any pressure trying to fill those shoes? Atwood : I hadn't felt any pressure yet. Maybe I will when it comes Time. But I think the only pressure will be the pressure I put on myself. You know every time I get on the racetrack, I do the best I can and I push the car to everything it's got. So if I keep doing that, I think everything will be fine. CNNSI.com : You will now try to make the transition from the Busch Series to the Winston Cup. How easy an adjustment do you think that will be? Atwood : Yeah, I think it's definitely going to be different. They definitely go a little bit faster than we go and they go to a few more tracks, so the experience that Bill and Ray have in racing is definitley going to help me out. And Bill Elliott can help a lot with the driving, you know because he has been to every track a ton of times. And there is some that I had never went to at all. So if I can get out there with him, he can show me a little bit of his line and where he is getting off and on for gas and just help me out with the tracks. I think we'll do pretty good. CNNSI.com : There were high expectations for you going into this season but you've struggled and are only 13th in the points standings. Does this announcement help with your confidence? Atwood : Well it has definitely made me feel better, you know. I know I am going to be in some good stuff next year, and I think that we are going to have a lot of success, but basically our bad luck this year has just been basically like I said bad luck. We've had pretty decent cars and we've been getting in other people's wrecks and things like that. But I think this is definitely going to turn my season around. You know we started to turn it around a couple of weeks ago with a couple of top 10's and then we finally get the announcement over with, and my spirits are high. So hopefully everybody else is too. CNNSI.com : Ray, how do you keep Casey from feeling the pressure of the inevitable comparisons to Jeff Gordon? Evernham: : Well, we're certainly not going to compare him to Jeff Gordon. I have never been a person to compare Jeff to Dale Earnhardt or Dale Earnhardt to Richard Petty. We're not going to create a lot of pressure for Casey and his team, the 19 team. We are going to set realistic goals. I think what creates pressure is when people set unrealistic goals. We know we are starting with a brand new car. We're starting with a brand new motor. We're starting with a brand new race team. Realistically, we want Casey to be in a competitive battle for rookie of the year, next year, and we want his team to get better every week. I'm not going to set up big numbers of wins and points and things like that. What we want to do is be challenging for wins and a championship sometime in the future and we are not going to put a date on that and create pressure. CNNSI.com : How much seat time are you going to try and get Casey over the next few months? Evernham : Well, we're actually planning on a pretty rigorous test schedule now. Whether it's all NASCAR, Winston Cup tracks or not, we're going to get Casey in some short tracks, do a lot of engine testing, we've got some engine mileage development things that we are going to do, and I'm going to get Casey in the car as much as I possibly can. CNNSI.com : Ray, you now have Bill Elliott, one of NASCAR's best drivers ever and a 19-year-old rookie in your garage. Why did you choose to go the veteran and young driver route? Evernham : Well, when you are in the NFL you always put a rookie quarterback with a seasoned quarterback. In major league baseball, they put a rookie pitcher with an experienced catcher. They make a good team. I felt like doing the same thing in NASCAR. Winston Cup racing would make a good team. Bill has plenty of things he can add and help bring Casey along. And Casey has enough respect for Bill where there won't be any conflict. We can build a veteran team around Bill, and we can build future young guys around Casey and I really believe it will be a good mix. We can learn from each other. CNNSI.com : You've mentioned the word communication quite a bit. As you are starting up the new Dodge program, that's really critical isn't it? Evernham : That is the key. That is the key to anything. Any successful sports team, any successful business, it is all about communication. And if you have people that have the same goal and the same desires, and you drop the egos, you can get that communication going and do a lot of great things. And that is another thing that I really enjoy spending time with Bill and with Casey, because we don't have those big ego problems. We're just all focused on getting the job done and winning races. CNNSI.com : Casey, you're only 19 years old and now find yourself working for Ray Evernham and preparing to move up next year. This has to be pretty cool for you. Atwood : Yeah, it really is, it's really a dream come true for me. I've waited on this day since I started racing. I'd dreamed about it a lot. I really never thought it would actually come true because I didn't have the famous last name or anything. Somebody was going to have to give me a shot, and I'm thankful that I got the shot in the Busch Series. But it was a great day, it's definitely a highlight of my life to drive for Ray Evernham and Dodge and all the Dodge dealers. I'm just really excited about getting some testing done and really excited about Daytona next year.
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