With Toyota looming, rivals Robert Yates and Jack Roush unite on Ford engine development.
By BRANT JAMES
Published January 15, 2004
DAYTONA BEACH - It's an unlikely union. A mixed pair. A marriage of necessity, but one that could change the way NASCAR teams compete in the future.
It's something neither Robert Yates nor Jack Roush could have imagined a few years ago, when their rival engine-building shops vied for Ford Racing's attention and resources. But beginning this season, the teams will build their engines together in Yates' Mooresville, N.C., shop.
"We haven't had an engine change since 1991 and we're finding ourselves behind," said Yates, who fields Nextel Cup teams for Dale Jarrett and Elliott Sadler. "We found we need an improvement and the quickest way to get there is to get Ford involved. The best way to get Ford involved was to let them be partners with us and join together."
"Robert and I had been pretty much working against each other," said Roush, whose Nextel program includes reigning champion Matt Kenseth, Mark Martin, Kurt Busch and Jeff Burton. "Ford encouraged us to get together so we could ask for the same things. I guess we felt it was going to be required to stay in the game."
When Ford Racing officials urged the respected shops to, in essence, merge, the rationale was the creation of an information-sharing hedge against the incursion of foreign technology - specifically Toyota, which enters competition in the NASCAR truck series this year.
"Toyota is coming with a really good program," Roush said. "We know what they're up to. We've seen what they do when they come into a series. They raise the bar on technology and a lot of money will be spent."
General Motors program director Jim Covey knows that well. GM had won every Indy Racing League manufacturers title since the circuit's inception in 1996 before Toyota took it away in its first season in 2003.
"Chevy dominated the IRL," Covey said. "Toyota and Honda came in with 10 times the people and 10 times the resources and suddenly the resources we had weren't sufficient."
In its NASCAR program, Chevrolet publishes monthly bulletins of noncompetitive breakthroughs made by each racing team. Dodge teams also share a large amount of information.
"We Ford teams were in more disarray than, say, Dodge was," Roush said. "(Dodge team owners Ray) Evernham and (Roger) Penske may not be cooperating on a lot, but Dodge factory guys do a real nice job with the parts. They do more individual development than Ford had done. Robert had done some things and Ford had done some things and we weren't sharing, and we can spend the dollars a lot better by sharing."
Combining the power of a Yates engine and the fuel efficiency of a Roush product is the goal. Roush had planned to move his engine shop from Michigan to the Charlotte area eventually, and Yates' offer to buy into his operation expedited the process by 18 months.
The timing made sense for Roush, he said, "with the energy we have coming off a championship." Busch, Burton and Martin finished 11th, 12th and 17th, respectively. Yates had no such momentum after Sadler finished 22nd and Jarrett 26th.
Sadler is not sure whom he will run into at the soda machine on a given day, but he likes the new energy.
"It's cool, man," he said. "New guys are coming in every day. I thought I'd never see the things that are happening now. I came in for runs (Tuesday) and Jack and Robert are looking at the plugs together trying to get the motors the best we can."
The product cannot be judged until newly approved parts are applied to engines in late spring, but Martin used an engine assembled by both shops in testing last week at Daytona International Speedway. Synthesizing the operations certainly will spark some interesting discussions on the shop floor and in the front offices.
"Roush wants to do it this way, Yates wants to do it this way and Penske used to want to do it this way when he was with Ford and sometimes it didn't get done," Yates said. "Now we're all on the same page. We have to get it done."
