He shocked many with his win, but not Penske president Don Miller.
By BRANT JAMES
Published April 24, 2004
TALLADEGA, Ala. - Don Miller leaned backward, placing his hands against the roof of a Ryan Newman race car for support. Crossing his legs, he pondered the question for a moment and expressed a point he had given thought to long before this preseason soiree at Penske Racing South's Charlotte race shop.
"Rusty Wallace has not forgotten how to drive a race car," the team president said. "That is an absolute fact."
A month before the season began, Miller was one of the few championing that point. Wallace had just finished his worst season in 12 years, ditched a crew chief, shuffled his pit crew numerous times and looked to be a veteran being passed by his sport.
Miller had been around Wallace long enough to assert his point with confidence, however. It was Miller who watched the brash young Missourian race at age 17 and hooked him and business partner Roger Penske up for a two-race deal and his Winston Cup debut in 1980. Wallace rewarded Miller's confidence by starting seventh and finishing second to Dale Earnhardt in Atlanta in his first race. It was Miller who brought Wallace, by then the 1989 Winston Cup champion, back together with Penske to form a full-time NASCAR team in 1991 when Wallace's team disbanded.
Even as Wallace struggled through a career-worst 105-race winless streak, Miller remained confident the 47-year-old would find the form that had produced 54 victories and 193 top fives in 24-plus seasons.
Wallace's victory Sunday at the Advance Auto Parts 500 in Martinsville, Va., therefore, was not regarded around the Penske operation as an indication the veteran is back.
Miller, for one, never thought he had left. Even before this season began and Wallace produced five top 10s, three top fives (including a second-place finish at Bristol) and a win, he insisted that Wallace's contributions demanded loyalty and patience.
"Let's face facts," Miller said. "Rusty Wallace got us where we are. He had a bad (2003), but you look back, and he's not the first guy who had a bad year. People forget the abuse Dale Earnhardt Jr. got when he went 21/2 years without a win. "He's a has-been' and so forth.
"They abused Dale, and they abused Bill Elliott for the same reason."
Wallace abused himself plenty, also. He admits his confidence eroded when he finished 14th in points last season, out of the top 10 for the first time since 1992.
"I questioned myself a little bit," Wallace said after winning at Martinsville. "I said, "Man, this schedule is wearing me out.' I felt like I was driving as hard as I could, and I thought if we could get this right or that right we'd get back in Victory Lane, but you know I'm not a quitter. I've never quit. If anything I just keep moving things around to complement what I've got to have."
Although his public front remained strong, his constant bickering and tinkering with his pit crew was sometimes construed as alibi-making.
"I was getting known as a hard guy to work for," Wallace said after the victory. "I really wasn't a hard guy to work for. We've got to get the job done."
One of the things Wallace needed was a crew chief who could mesh personally and professionally, similar to his longtime partner, Buddy Parrott. Larry Carter, the strong, silent type, has provided that fit.
Ricky Rudd, who perhaps signaled a renaissance of the old guard by winning the pole for Sunday's Talladega race, admitted he pulled for Wallace last weekend.
"Rusty and I weren't always the best of competitors on the track," he said, laughing, "but I'll admit that at Martinsville I was rooting for him. That's how bad it's gotten."
Wallace is an old-school racer, able to discern a problem or formulate a plan by feel and instinct. But that innate ability has been become less important in a sport increasingly dependent on technology. Wallace still makes suggestions to team engineer Roy McCauley about car setups but tries to avoid the need to be involved with all aspects of the car.
"I got really sick of hearing, "Why aren't you winning?' " Wallace said. "But it made me look at the pit crew, myself, my driving style. It made me look at a lot of things. With all the crew changes and everything we did, and I adjusted. Sometimes I'd make a suggestion about the shocks, and they'd punch me."
Miller said selling Wallace on the fact he needed to be more receptive to new methods was not easy, even though a resourceful team such as Penske has a vast amount of technical wizardry available. Watching 26-year-old teammate Ryan Newman, the 2002 rookie of the year, lead the series with eight wins and 11 poles last season helped convince Wallace, Miller said.
"We talked about it. We labored over it," Miller said of a preseason chat. "The two of us, one day, almost three hours we talked about it. I want him to have the things he needs to. He knows that everybody here is behind him."
