Here's a story I found that some of you may like. What the author
doesn't mention is how far the Dodge Rams have come in the truck series.
It wasn't too easy at first and now they're making it look too easy.
Richard in San Antonio
DODGE'S RETURN TO
WINSTON CUP: Tough going
Can't get on track: Dodge's 10
teams
are off to a slow start in its
return to
top-level stock car racing.
Rick Minter - Staff
Wednesday, June 20, 2001
Dodge's return to Winston Cup
racing after a 16-year
hiatus has been accompanied by
an ad campaign
emphasizing that Dodge is
different.
But after 15 races, the 10
Intrepid teams are winless
and suffering from the same
shortcomings that kept
them from winning when they
were involved with
Chevrolets, Pontiacs and
Fords.
Dodge teams are saying bad
racing luck, chassis
setup problems and growing
pains are the reasons
for their lackluster
performances so far this season.
Sterling Marlin has been the
bright spot. Marlin, in
his Chip Ganassi-owned Dodge,
has come close to
winning several times and is
fourth in points with five
top-five and nine top-10
finishes. He credit Ganassi's
organizational skills and
Ernie Elliott's engines for
his strong start.
"Chip came in and hired a
bunch of good people,"
Marlin said. "All the guys
doing the motors have
done a great job. I've got
some good horsepower.
We're just well-prepared and
well-organized."
Ironically, Dodge's best
finish, a second at Bristol, was by John Andretti, who
drives for Petty Enterprises,
which has had problems just getting its three
drivers qualified for races.
The Petty Dodges were dominant
in the early 1970s, but on nine occasions
this season, a Petty car has
failed to make the starting field.
Before the start of the
season, many people thought Bill Elliott and his car
owner, Ray Evernham, would
lead the Dodge charge. But except for winning
the pole for the Daytona 500,
Elliott hasn't spent much time at the front of the
pack.
Elliott says the make of car
isn't the reason he hasn't won.
"We're just not hitting on all
eight cylinders yet," Elliott said. "It seems like
we've got a lot of things
coming together, but we can't get them all together at
one time."
One of the main stumbling
blocks is that Evernham, a former crew chief whose
cars won 47 races and three
championships with Jeff Gordon behind the
wheel, has been spread thin.
Evernham has been concentrating on getting
Elliott's and Casey Atwood's
teams up and running and hasn't had time to
personally work his magic on
the cars.
Evernham said he and his
employees are having a hard time figuring out how
to get their cars tuned for
maximum performance with the new tire that
Goodyear introduced this year.
"We've been missing on the
chassis setup, and that's what we've got to get
right," Evernham said.
If things don't improve, the
remainder of the season could become a drag for
someone like Elliott, who has
40 career victories but none since 1994.
"If you were running pretty
decent, it would be pretty enjoyable," he said. "But
it's starting to turn the
corner where it's a long season. From here on, it's going
to be a rough go."
On top of that, Elliott said,
Jeff Gordon's No. 24 Chevrolet team is about to
make it a long season for all
race teams.
"If Gordon and those guys keep
running like they're running, you don't have a
snowball's chance (of
winning)," he said.
Some Dodge teams are talking
about asking NASCAR for a rule modification,
possibly to allow a lighter
engine. Elliott would welcome a change if it would
make his car run faster, but
he knows that isn't a cure-all.
"We need to be better within
our own organization," he said.
Mike Brown, team manager for
the Bill Davis Racing team which fields the
Intrepids driven by Ward
Burton and Dave Blaney, said he's pleased with the
Dodge program. But he also
thinks his team needs to look internally for
improvements.
Burton, the only Dodge driver
who won a race last year, is 23rd in points with
one top-5 finish. Blaney is
26th, with three top-10s.
"Things are going as good as
we realistically expected them to go," Brown
said. "Our circumstances are
more related to bad racing luck than to Dodge.
We've had about four races
this year where we were running in the top-5 with
10 or 15 laps to go and wound
up finishing an average of 33rd. It's frustrating to
not be able to finish the good
runs we've had going."
Brown and Evernham expect to
run better as they return to tracks for the
second time this season.
"It's been a 13- or 14-race
effort just to gain enough data to know what to take
back to these tracks as we go
forward," Brown said. "We didn't have time to
do a lot of testing that we
needed over the winter."
During the short offseason,
all Dodge teams concentrated on preparing for
Daytona and Talladega, tracks
which require restricted engines and totally
different chassis setups than
other venues. Brown said it was the only realistic
choice they had.
"Obviously, we wanted to make
a good impression (at Daytona), but part of it
was that the availability of
parts and pieces forced us to concentrate more on
Daytona because a lot of our
open motor development didn't get into full swing
until December and January."
But Elliott and Brown say that
the strong start by Marlin shows that Dodge is
capable of returning to its
former glory on the speedways of NASCAR.
"I don't have anything bad to
say," Brown said. "We're looking at ourselves to
make our program more
consistent, because Sterling has proven that Dodge
has a good piece."
THE MANUFACTURERS RACE
Car...............Points....Wins
Chevrolet.... 109......... 7
Ford.............105.........
7
Pontiac..........61......... 1
Dodge...........55......... 0
DODGE DRIVERS' RESULTS
How 10 Dodge drivers have
fared this season through 15 of 36 NASCAR Winston Cup races:
............................Pts..... Top...... Avg......Avg.
Driver...................Pos..... finish....Start... Finish
Sterling
Marlin.......4th......3rd...... 14.7.....12.6
Bill
Elliott..............17th......5th..... .14.1.....20.7
Ward Burton.......
23rd......5th...... 20.6.....22.6
Dave Blaney.......
26th......6th...... 22.0.....23.1
John Andretti.......
30th......2nd..... 25.9.....26.0
Stacy Compton.... 32nd....
10th..... 26.7.....27.5
Casey Atwood.......34th....
12th..... 22.0.....27.0
Jason Leffler........ 35th....
13th..... 26.1.....26.7
Buckshot Jones....40th....
16th..... 26.7.....31.1
Kyle
Petty..............44th.... 16th..... 21.2.....30.6
Source: NASCAR.com
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