Friday, April 25, 2008
If Tony Stewart Does Leave Gibbs, What About Crew Chief Greg Zipadelli and his Guys?
Ira Jo Hussey celebrates busting off a great pit stop for Tony Stewart
(Photo credit: Toyota Motorsports)
By Mike Mulhern
TALLADEGA, Ala.
Odd, very odd. After some 10 years together, two NASCAR championships, and 32 tour victories, a driver suddenly tells his guys he’s got several intriguing offers from rival teams that he’s considering…and that he may well leave his team at the end of the season.
And everyone is all smiles, still friendly and all?
Maybe Tony Stewart has some oceanfront property for sale in Phoenix, Arizona too.
Now Greg Zipadelli has been Tony Stewart’s closest friend, and crew chief, in NASCAR for so many years that it’s impossible to think about them splitting up.
In fact virtually all the top guys on the Stewart-Zipadelli crew have been together almost from the start.
So splitting up this team seems remarkably far-fetched.
Except that Stewart has been a staunchly loyal GM guy for so many years, and this Toyota thing – though he’s running just as strong, if not stronger than ever this season – has been less than a thrill for him.
And high-ranking General Motors executives have made it clear ever since the Toyota story broke last summer that they want him back in a Chevrolet as soon as they can get him back.
Crew chief Greg Zipadelli (left) and Tony Stewart: At a crossroads in their careers?
(Photo credit: Toyota Motorsports)
It appears that GM officials have offered to put together any type of deal Stewart might want; that what Stewart wants, they will make happen.
So is Stewart’s apparent desire to negotiate a new driving contract sometime this season – either with current team owners Joe and J.D. Gibbs, or with the Joe Custer-Gene Haas affiliate of Hendrick Motorsports, or with Richard Childress, or with Jack Roush, or with a Dodge team engineered by old Home Depot buddy Bob Nardelli – may have legs after all, as strange as it might seem.
Of course there is the sense that this Stewart story might have erupted at this particular moment as some type of marketing reaction to all the hoopla surrounding Danica Patrick’s historic Indy-car win.
Stewart not only spent more than half an hour calmly discussing things with the media here Thursday afternoon, he spent another good part of Friday afternoon filling in the rest of the media too.
Stewart is not only not hiding back up in his hauler or motorcoach but he’s actually putting on a textbook display of good PR work.
This is the same Tony Stewart who just a few weeks ago ripped Goodyear so harshly for tough tires at Atlanta? The same Tony Stewart so notorious for temper tantrums?
Well, actually Stewart has been in a remarkably good mood all season.
And while some NASCAR crew chiefs might try to hide from the media during something as potentially upsetting as this whole deal, Zipadelli sat patiently for nearly 30 minutes Friday discussing the situation and his feelings.
“But, hey, now, the weekend is still young,” Zipadelli said with a grin. “I could still start screaming.
“But what good would it do for me to knock that recorder out of your hands and tell you to get lost?
“There’s nothing to be upset about; it’s part of a life. Is it disappointing we have to sit here and have this conversation? Absolutely.
“Do we know where it’s going? No.
“So why get worked up about it?”
J. D. Gibbs runs the Gibbs’ three-car team for his father...can he keep Tony Stewart in the fold?
(Photo credit: Toyota Motorsports)
Still, not only is the Stewart-departure story rather unusual, so are the attitudes of the central characters.
“We’ve been with Tony through punched photographers and getting people run over….and if it wasn’t for him, you’d still be using a tape recorder with tape in it,” Zipadelli said, laughing. “It is what it is.”
Splitting up this team seems absurd on the face of it.
So if Stewart goes anywhere, it would have to be as part of a package? “No comment,” Zipadelli says.
“Here’s the deal, and it’s really simple: Home Depot, 20 car, Tony Stewart, Greg Zipadelli, all here through 2009.
“We’ve all had opportunities to do things. I’ve had opportunities, he’s had opportunities. And we’ve worked through them.
“He’s got another opportunity, which sounds great for him and his future. And nothing is forever.
“But I’m not getting caught up in this. We’ve got a great team and we have a great opportunity to run good here and try to win.”
Talladega is one of only four tracks Stewart and Zipadelli have not won at, along with Las Vegas, Darlington and California.
“What happens in 2010 is long, long way away,” Zipadelli says.
But Stewart says it might be the end of the season.
“From everything I’ve seen and been told, it’s really not an option,” Zipadelli insists. “We have obligations. And our guys believe strongly in finishing what you signed up for.
“This is no different than the other 53 times the last 10 years you have been out here wanting to know what’s going on.
“In this sport we’ve been together for so long, and been through so much, there is obviously a comfort level. It works.
“When you look at it that way, well, you haven’t been on the other side of the fence in so long that you don’t know what it’s like. There’s no comfort level.”
So it would seem obvious that before Stewart makes any decision, he would ask for Zipadelli’s okay?
“I like where I’m at. I like these people. They’ve treated me well. I hope all this irons itself out and we’re all here another 10 years,” Zipadelli says.
Zipadelli has a contract of his own, which runs past Stewart’s. But Zipadelli says clauses in both contracts would effectively offer each an out if the other were to leave.
So maybe one of Stewart’s options would be to follow Dale Earnhardt Sr.’s footsteps – driving another year for Gibbs, while at the same time building a new team of his own?
“There are way too many opportunities, and it’s way too early even to be speculating,” Zipadelli said. “Right now we’re racing for the next two years right here with this car and this sponsor and these guys.
“There is so much more than just ‘I’ve got a great opportunity, so I want to leave early…..’
“You can’t just leave. You’ve got obligations.
“If everybody eventually says ‘This is the best thing,’ then it works out. But if people don’t think it is – and right now I don’t think people think it is – it won’t.
“I like where I’m at. I work for really good people, who care about me as a person. I’ve been here 10 years and they’ve never said ‘no.’ If we feel we need to do something, we can go out and try. You couldn’t work for better people in this sport.
“The kid still has five to eight good, hard years of racing….he’ll be the Red Farmer of this. He’ll do this as long as he wants to, and it won’t matter how old he is.”
Lee White, Toyota’s NASCAR field boss, says Tony Stewart has been great to work with
(Photo credit: Toyota Motorsports)
Is this simply GM versus Toyota?
“I don’t want to get into that,” Zipadelli says slowly. “I’m sure there’s some of that.
“But it’s puzzling—that we were there and it didn’t seem like that big a deal and now we aren’t there and it is….to them.
“We didn’t start this, trust me. I don’t want to have to deal with this crap,” Zipadelli says. “I’d rather have a nice quiet weekend.”
If Rick Hendrick’s hands are in this, then that might be quite ironic, since one reason the Gibbs left GM was because they felt they were always just a rung below Hendrick in the Chevy pecking order.
And what might NASCAR executives think about the possibility of Hendrick adding Stewart to an already impressive fold that includes Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson and Dale Earnhardt Jr.?
“To me, I don’t see how that could be good…..” Zipadelli says.
“I do know they do want everybody to stop bitching about this car-of-tomorrow.”
Engine man Mark Cronquist (left) has long been the man with the power for Tony Stewart and crew chief Greg Zipadelli (right)
(Photo credit: Toyota Motorsports)
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