Catchfence

Darrell Waltrip felt he could do it, so he left a powerhouse team. Eight years later, he was ruined.

Ricky Rudd felt he could do it, so he left a powerhouse team. Six years later, he shut it down and went to another powerhouse team.

Geoff Bodine felt he could do it, so he left a team with which he’d won races. Five years later, he was reduced to a low-rent driver-for-hire with no prospect of ever winning again.

Brett Bodine felt he could do it, so he bought out the team for which he was driving. Somehow he survived, but was ruined financially and after eight fruitless seasons he shut down a team he should have shut down years earlier.

Robby Gordon felt he could do it – and he’s on his second stab at it, with no more success than the first time.

————————————–Those are drivers who thought they could own their own Winston Cup racecars. Waltrip, Rudd, and Geoff Bodine actually won races as owner-drivers, but the sport ultimately refused to let them succeed further. Waltrip won five times 1991-2, then the well dried up, his money dried up, and the team was sold to Tim Beverly before it was merged into the Reed Morton outfit that eventually morphed into Robert Ginn Racing – before that outfit was bought out by Teresa Earnhardt. Rudd won six times 1994-8 before the ability to keep going stopped and he merged the team into Robert Yates’ organization. Geoff Bodine won four times 1994-6, but the Hoosier Tire deal he had in 1994 disappeared after one year and the team was sold to Jim Mattei, then Jim Smith, before drying up altogether.

Of course the surpreme irony – and tragedy – of the Bodine team was it was the team Alan Kulwicki had formed in 1986. Kulwicki, sporting an engineering degree, understood the changing technology of the racecars before a lot of veteran racers in NASCAR did, and he parlayed that knowledge into a strong raceteam, and eventually to champion in 1992.

This is the history lesson Tony Stewart would seem to understand as he proceeds away from Joe Gibbs Racing toward becoming an owner-driver. That Gene Haas still has 50% ownership in the team indicates Stewart understands what the sport has evolved to as far as ownership goes; certainly, in keeping the two-car team going and reasonably competitive against the odds being faced, Haas understands enough to handle the business end. For his part, Stewart has indicated he won’t get involved in decision-making with his team until he finishes out his 2008 season with the Joe Gibbs outfit.

There will be plenty of decisions to make once Stewart is able to commit to the “new” team, especially given its status. For Stewart will enter 2009 as a driver/part-owner of a team that does not have control of its engines or racecars. For all the talk heard about economy of scale and how it is supposedly better that the team operates in alliance with a larger outfit like Hendrick Motorsports, the facts remain that the teams that have won virtually all of the races from 1990 onward at the Winston Cup level have been teams that built their own engines and racecars and controlled their own engineering.

Derrike Cope won twice in 1990; Waltrip five times in 1991-2; Joe Gibbs won five times 1993-5; Ricky Rudd won six times 1994-8; Elliott Sadler won once in 2001; Ricky Craven won once in 2001; Joe Nemechek won once in 2004 — what do all of these drivers have in common? They are the only winners of Winston Cup races from February 1990 onward driving for teams that DID NOT control their engines or racecars; every one of these races involved winners whose engines were built by someone else, either Hendrick Motorsports, Roush, Robert Yates, or ProMotor Engineering.

We can talk about Tony Stewart, how he’s owned race teams and the Eldora Speedway and so forth, but for his new team to succeed, he has to wrest control of its engines, racecars, and engineering away from Hendrick – they need their own engine shop, fab shop, engineering effort, the works. Chevrolet needs to step up and provide them the help they need to build their own engines etc. because Chevy needs that much more competitive depth with a burgeoning Toyota presence – and don’t overlook that the one Toyota team winning so far (JGR) is the one controlling its own engines – and because the engine lease effort for other teams has gone nowhere.

Stewart is taking a risk with this new venture. No matter how smart he is, one can’t deny that this isn’t a risk on his part.