Tuesday, July 08, 2008
Doug Yates, now that Jack Roush says sponsorships are no issue, is optimistic about 2009
Doug Yates (left) and new business partner Max Jones (Photo: Autostock)
By Mike Mulhern
Remember back when Robert and Doug Yates could strike terror in the hearts of their NASCAR rivals almost any given weekend, because they ran one of the stock car tour’s powerhouse operations?
Well, this once top-dog Ford operation is now struggling just to get off the racing shoals.
Underdogs?
Decidedly.
Which made David Gilliland’s run at Sonoma so impressive.
Now how long ago was it when the Yates – first with Davey Allison, then with Ernie Irvan, and then with Ricky Rudd – all but owned that California track?
Too long.
And how long ago was it when the Yates last found victory lane on the Cup trail?
Would you believe nearly three years now?
Little wonder that Doug Yates, now running the family business all by himself, has been depressed lately, and worried the company might not be able to make to the Daytona starting line next season.
Jack Roush (left) talks things over with crew chief Todd Parrott (right), while Travis Kvapil listens (Photo: Autostock)
But suddenly Jack Roush says all is fine for 2009 for Yates—that Yates will indeed not only have enough sponsorship money for his current two-car operation but enough to expand it to three.
Roush must be a magician, then, because just about everyone else in the sport is really feeling pinched.
Yates himself, in his first full season as owner (after helping his father Robert run an operation for some 20 years), has done rather admirably, considering. David Gilliland had a shot at winning Sonoma two weeks ago, and he’s 22nd in the standings (despite a 28th at Loudon and 40th at Daytona); and Travis Kvapil is 20th on the Sprint Cup tour.
Still, this Yates operation is nowhere near the powerhouse Robert once sent to the track.
Robert Yates cashed out last season after a full career, and left it all up to Doug to keep it going. Robert sold everything (the shop went to Richard Petty), and Doug has opened up the new program on the Roush ‘campus’ near the Concord airport.
Doug and Robert Yates once were feared every time they showed up at the track (Photo: Autostock)
Doug says new business partner Max Jones, who moved over from Roush Inc., where he’d worked for years, has been keeper of the flame of optimism.
“Max was coming from a real high, running Roush, while things have been pretty tough the past couple of years for Robert Yates Racing,” Doug Yates says. “We both thought about where we would be at this point, and he was a little more optimistic and I was probably a little bit more pessimistic. But we’re probably right in the middle of where we’d hoped we would be…and really pleasantly surprised, with starting two brand new teams in December and being where we are today.
“We’ve had some really fast cars. At Daytona we had really good cars; David drove all the way up to second, and Travis had a good, solid run before both of them were caught up in accidents. People knew we were there.
“As a team owner or competitor, the biggest thing you want is a chance to compete at a high level and a chance to win every week. And we’re starting to have that confidence when we walk into the garage.”
This was the powerhouse duo that won the 1999 championship, Doug Yates and Dale Jarrett (Photo: Autostock)
Just two weeks ago Yates was quite pessimistic about 2009, saying as many as six veteran Cup teams might not make the sponsorship cut for another season. Just a few days later Chip Ganassi pulled the plug on one of his three teams.
And Yates still doesn’t have firm sponsorship. That, plus the retirement of long-time Ford boss Dan Davis, didn’t seem to bode well for Yates, Gilliland and Kvapil.
“When we started this team, we knew it was an uphill climb,” Yates admits. “But we felt if we could get the performance back, we could go out and get companies believing in our team…and we’re starting to do that.
“It’s a tough environment. The economy is hard right now for a lot of people. But we’ve had some really good meetings, and we feel things are coming together.
“We want people to believe in what we’re doing—and we’re starting to get that feeling.
“But things aren’t done until they’re signed and sealed.”
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Doug Yates is now more optimistic about his future on the tour, thanks to Jack Roush (Photo: Autostock)
Kvapil, a solid driver but not very flashy, hasn’t had much to hang his hat on this season: a sixth at Talladega, eighths at Las Vegas and Darlington….
“We knew we were up against a lot when we started the season,” Kvapil says. “As a group we felt we were capable of being a top-20 team. But until you go out there and do it — and keep yourself out of trouble, and survive, without having a full-time sponsor – it’s tough.
“But we’ve been able to do that. We’ve pieced a lot of great deals together throughout the season, and we’ve been nice and steady and consistent.
“I’m just really proud of where we are.
“We definitely need to improve…but so far so good.
“I feel we’re staffed at a minimum. We could have a few more people to help out with our engineering or our shock program. And we have not tested Kentucky or Milwaukee. If we had some money, we could spend a little more time track testing.
“But my race cars are top-notch, my crew is top-notch. And we’re pretty proud of what we’ve accomplished so far.”
David Gilliland (left) and teammate Travis Kvapil (Photo: Autostock)
So where did the Yates go wrong? They expanded to a two-car team in 1996, won the title in 1999 with Dale Jarrett, had a good run going toward another title with Ricky Rudd in 2001. But the operation began to fizzle in 2003; Jarrett won at Rockingham that spring, but he went 2-1/2 years until winning again, at Talladega. After a winless 2006, Jarrett left the Ford team to join Toyota, and teammate Elliott Sadler didn’t even wait till the end of that season before jumping over to Ray Evernham’s Dodge team.
That left the Yates scrambling. They picked up Gilliland just days after his breakthrough NASCAR win in the Busch series and paired with Rudd, out of brief retirement.
But nothing clicked. When Jarrett left, he bemoaned the lack of solid engineering support, surprising considering Doug Yates is an engineer himself.
David Gilliland, heir to the Davey Allison, Ernie Ervin, Dale Jarrett, Ricky Rudd empire with Doug Yates? (Photo: Autostock)
Last summer Davis brokered an interesting deal pairing the Yates with Paul Newman and Carl Haas, who have run a highly successful Indy-car operation for Ford for years. That deal, announced with considerable pomp at Indianapolis, lasted only a few weeks before it fell apart. Then Robert Yates abruptly announced his retirement, just after long-time sponsor Mars’ M&Ms announced it was jumping to Joe Gibbs’ Toyota camp.
So Doug has had to start building a new operation, and without sponsorship.
Can a two-car, sponsorless team really make it in NASCAR?
“There’s no doubt it’s tough, and the big teams have the momentum right now, and most of them are getting positioned to have four cars,” Doug Yates says. “It is an uphill battle for us.
“But we knew when we started what we were up against…and we’ve got to remain positive—by knowing what we have and where we’re heading.
“Just being frustrated about competing against the bigger teams is not going to bear any fruit for us.
“We just have to keep our heads down and be proud of what we’re doing.
“Hopefully we can get back to where one day people are talking about Yates Racing in the same sentence as Roush and Hendrick.”
Marcose Ambrose, at New Hampshire, where he missed the field, after nearly winning at Sonoma (Photo: Autostock)
THE NASCAR NOTEBOOK
The NASCAR driver-sponsorship game is wide open this week, with team owners frantic to mix-and-match:
—UPS, searching for a young driver the company hang a long-term marketing campaign around, as it did for eight years with Dale Jarrett, had been expected to jump in with Tony Stewart last week...but apparently UPS has had second thoughts about that, and now it looks like Richard Childress will indeed wind up with UPS—as was widely expected a couple months ago, before Childress signed big-buck sponsors Caterpillar and General Mills. But who would UPS put its colors on? Childress has been looking at Jeff Burton. But it’s looking like it could be Clint Bowyer instead. Where would that leave Bowyer’s current sponsor Jack Daniels? Looking. And Jack could move to the Stewart camp to sponsor Ryan Newman, expected to be Stewart’s new teammate on the team currently owned by Gene Haas and Joe Custer.
—Detroit’s sponsorships of Truck and Nationwide teams may be cut, with car makers reeling this summer and those two NASCAR tours not nearly as hot as the Cup series. Detroit is already expected to cut back on those track sponsorships and pace car deals.
—Teresa Earnhardt’s plans for Dale Earnhardt Inc. appear rather confused. The Journal last week reported she was talking with investment businessmen about taking a financial stake in the company, as others like Richard Petty and Richard Childress and Michael Waltrip and Ray Evernham have done. How much she might want to sell has been unclear. One unconfirmed report is that she’s willing to sell it all....but then without Dale Earnhardt Jr. DEI is worth only a fraction of what it once was. Forbes analyzes DEI as valued at $109 million. However Regan Smith, the promising rookie who may not have any sponsorship next season at DEI, will apparently soon be sidelined; Mark Martin is leaving DEI at the end of the season to join Rick Hendrick; Martin Truex Jr. is trying to leave DEI at the end of the year, though that legal issue is still up in the air; and Paul Menard’s wealthy father John is reported talking with Ford’s Jack Roush apparently about moving his financial NASCAR stake there, presumably with Paul Menard driving a Roush-Yates Ford in 2009. That only leaves DEI with newcomer Aric Almirola. One report is that Teresa Earnhardt, if she were to bail out of DEI itself, would want to keep merchandising rights to the late Dale Earnhardt.
Jack Roush may be a miracle worker for Doug Yates, finding sponsorship for that two-car Ford team, in a dry, dry summer.
But on the other side of the Ford camp things aren’t looking so good – Len and Eddie Wood are really struggling this season to make a go of it.
At Sonoma, though, it appears the Woods had made a good find – with Aussie Marcos Ambrose, who ran strong enough to win, certainly strong enough for a top-three finish, until getting knocked out of the way in the final moments.
But then Ambrose couldn’t get the Woods’ Ford in the field at Loudon. The Woods tested last week at Nashville with Bill Elliott, and they took Jon Wood, the third-generation, to Daytona. The 26-year-old Wood made the field and finished 33rd.
However, if there’s any game plan here, it’s hard to discern.
Jon Wood, trying to make it in the family business in the Cup league (Photo: Autostock)
Ambrose himself is more than a bit miffed at blowing the good shot he had going into Loudon: “A classic example of going from hero to zero in five days.
“I felt like I had forgotten how to drive.
“But that’s just the way it is. It’s a tough sport. If you get confident for one second in this game, it’s finished. It’s going to bite you.
“This sport has a habit of nipping at your heels the whole time.
“If you get too far in front of yourself, you’ll get leveled-off pretty quickly.
“But that’s what I think I’ve been able to bring to the table—I don’t get too high, and I don’t get too low. I’m a pretty stable character.
“It’s important to have that approach in NASCAR.
Aussie Marcose Ambrose: Can he make it big on NASCAR’s Sprint Cup tour? (Photo: Autostock)
“I’m still learning to deal with the difficulties of the sport: the travel, the logistics, all that.
“We’re with the big boys…but we’re not playing with the big boys. We’re flying around on commercial flights, we’re struggling, we’re putting deals together that aren’t as flashy….so you short-change yourself here and there.
“I always feel like the underdog, even though we run strong a lot.
“The Sonoma deal was just fantastic. It was a real thrill to pass Jeff Gordon; it’s dream. Who gets a chance to rub fenders with Jeff and Jimmie Johnson and Smoke (Tony Stewart)?
“Racing against these guys is way cool, cooler than I ever could have imagined.
“At the same time I don’t quite feel worthy yet. It will take time.
“I’ve got question marks I can’t answer: is it me, is it the equipment, is it the team?
“I’ll be the first to put my hand up and say ‘It’s just not my deal.’
“But right now I can’t answer that question. I can’t tell you whether I’m the weak link, or whether I’m doing okay.”
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Eddie Wood and son Jon: can they make a go of it in NASCAR 2008? (Photo: Autostock)
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