Dale Jarrett and Todd Parrott, are atop the season standings.
Twelve races into the season, Dale Jarrett and crew chief Todd Parrott had the NASCAR Winston Cup Series points lead, but they were in no way happy about it.
Oh, they were thrilled to be out front. It was the way they had gotten there they didn't like.
They had just finished fifth for the third time in 12 races, the type of consistency that wins championships, but it was not top-5 finishes they were after. It was race wins, and they had just one, and that came on a short track. When it came to superspeedways, where Jarrett is often a favorite, the Robert Yates Racing team had been mediocre by its own high standards. "We took about a 20th-place car and finished in the top-5," Parrott said after the fifth-place finish at Charlotte. "I guess you can call us a bunch of magicians or something, because they can take (a piece of junk) and make a race car out of it by the end of the race."
It was at Charlotte that Parrott decided to do something about it. Though his team had taken the points lead with nine straight top-10 finishes -- eight in the top-5 -- he knew it was time to step things up, or else. "We were running like a bunch of monkeys trying to play football," he said. "We knew we were a better team than that and we had to turn things around. We had to get better if we were going to win the championship. We weren't going to win the championship just finishing like we were finishing. We had to win some races and lead some laps, and we weren't doing that."
Though Jarrett had finished second at both Rockingham and Texas, he was left racing for fourth at Atlanta, Darlington, California and Charlotte, downforce-type tracks where his No. 88 team typically excels. And in each of those instances, he had to rally at the end to crack the top-5.
With the team struggling at Charlotte, Parrott decided it was time to stir things up. "There were a lot of things that happened at Charlotte," he said. "We did have a team meeting that I think brought the guys closer together. And me and Dale had a meeting after the race and I told him how I felt and he told me how he felt and we got things together. We started working harder and communicating a little better. "We weren't upset with each other. I think we were both just upset with what was going on and how we were running. He was doing all he could do and I was doing all I could do. We just got together and talked about what we needed to fix, what needed to be better. Charlotte was the turning point."
"It took us a little while to get adjusted," Jarrett says. "I think there were some things at Charlotte during the 600 and at Dover the next week. It kind of started on us at Richmond, but we didn't get it incorporated until Charlotte about 300 or 400 miles into the race and we started making some major adjustments. That kind of carried us from there on."
"We just dug a little deeper," Parrott said. "We started working on our cars a little harder, working on the engines harder and we realized they weren't going to give it to us. We were going to have to earn it."
Though Jarrett finished fifth again the following week at Dover, he wore the field out June 13 at Michigan, leading 150 of 200 laps for his second win of the season. He did it with a car that he had struggled to finish fifth with at California a month earlier. But after the California race, Parrott and his crew cut the body off the car, hung a new one and made some much-needed chassis adjustments in the process. The result was a rocket that dominated on Michigan's 2-mile track. "That car still had a body on it from last year, so obviously, what worked last year don't work this year, so we had to change," Parrott said.
Jarrett led second-place Jeff Burton by just 66 points after his Michigan win. Since then, he has won at Daytona and Indy, finished second and third in two races at Pocono and had built a 314-point lead by the end of August.
Though his streak of 19 consecutive top-10 finishes ended with a crash at Bristol, Jarrett still led by 257 points entering the Oct. 3 NAPA AutoCare 500 at Martinsville.
Jarrett's performance this season, particularly lately, has left even Jeff Gordon in awe. "They've really got it together right now," said Gordon, who has won three of the past four championships. "I think they've got things clicking better than we had last year. It seems like they got it together sooner. They were just kind of biding their time early in the season, getting those top-5s and then when it all started to click they started winning races."
Gordon won last year's title by 364 points over runner-up Mark Martin and an astounding 709 points over third-place Jarrett. He did it with a modern-era record 13 victories and 20 straight top-10 finishes, 19 in the top-5. His overwhelming performance served as a rallying cry for Jarrett and others.
"It was pretty unbelievable," Jarrett said. "We did everything we could last year, it's just that those guys were the class of the field, by far. We just had to look at our program and decide what is going to help us to achieve similar results. That's what we did, and it's worked well for us."
Though Charlotte was the turning point, the groundwork for their turnaround was laid in March, when NASCAR took representatives of all three car makes to a wind tunnel for comparative aerodynamic tests. Parrott says the data they collected there gave them some of the secrets to Gordon's success. "We realized that Jeff Gordon has an awesome race car," Parrott said. "Their car had very little drag with a lot of downforce. Mark's car had a lot of downforce, but he had a whole lot of drag. Our car had adequate downforce and pretty decent drag, but it wasn't nothing like the 24 car (Gordon). "The 18 car (Bobby Labonte), he was OK, but he's made his cars a lot better, too. If you look at when they really made a turning point, after we all went to the wind tunnel, I think everybody got their stuff better.
Jarrett says improved aerodynamics has been a key to his strong performances lately, particularly on superspeedways like Michigan and Indy. "What got us started was looking at our aero package and what we had there," he said. "Then we had to transfer some things over. Because of that, we had to make some changes in our chassis setups."
"We were able to just fine-tune everything," Parrott said. "You have to pay so much attention to close detail these days that you can't give an inch or you won't be running where we're running. "I think we made our whole package better, chassis, aero and engine. We haven't been to the wind tunnel since then. We've just been working really, really hard on our cars."
Even team owner Robert Yates, a master engine builder, knew the key to improving his team's chances was tinkering with their 2-year-old Taurus, not more horsepower. "The first of the year, (his son) Doug told me, 'Look, we've got to be more aggressive. We cannot run these lazy engines,'" Yates recalls. "We'd just get a good top-5 finish because they know the strategy and they know how to take care of the tires and get a lot out of the car, but our cars were not winning cars.
"I really had the hammer on Doug not to bring (an engine) that was a little risky. I didn't feel like we needed to pull it out. I said, 'Let the guys keep working on the cars.' I started telling them how bad the cars looked. I tell it like it is and they respect that. They finally got the cars a lot better, and we didn't have to pull everything out of the (engine) box to run."
Another factor that has played in Jarrett's favor is the new aerodynamic rules NASCAR implemented this year. NASCAR Winston Cup teams ran last season with five-inch spoilers and five inches of front ground clearance, both an inch less than the year before. The rule was designed to reduce speed by making the cars harder to drive through the turns. With its vast resources at Hendrick Motorsports, Gordon's team was able to adapt to the change quicker than most, which led to his phenomenal season.
Prior to this season, NASCAR scrapped the "five-and-five" rule, restoring an inch of rear spoiler and lowering the front air dams by an inch on all makes. Parrott says returning to the old rules favor Jarrett. "I think the rules fit Dale's driving style and the way he likes a car to feel," Parrott says. "We were good in '96 and '97 and we had good downforce. But everybody is that way. The races have been so much better because they are able to race now."
Gordon, meanwhile, has not been nearly as dominant as he was last season. Though his point deficit is due to DNFs, he has won just five races compared with nine at this point last year. "We're off balance a little bit this year because of the aerodynamic package," Gordon's former crew chief Ray Evernham said earlier this season. "Last year the cars had very little downforce. This year they have a great deal more, so we're having trouble finding our balance."
"For a guy to go out and win 13 races and do the things that he did, that should tell you how much of an aero advantage they really had last year," Parrott said. "With the rules the way they were, them having more downforce and less drag, played an even bigger role."
With the two teams on more even ground, Jarrett is now having a Gordon-like season. He won't match Gordon's 13 victories, but with seven races remaining, he is on pace to match the 26 top-5 and 28 top-10 finishes Gordon scored last year. And Jarrett will almost certainly surpass the numbers Gordon posted during his championship seasons in 1995 and '97.
"This year, they haven't had the racing luck," Parrott said of Gordon's team. "They are having a year like every other normal race team has. They are not having just an unbelievable year where everything goes perfect. We haven't had that kind of year, either. We've had a really good year, but in the first half, we had to fight for where we finished, and I think that has made us a better, stronger team."
"Last year, you kept thinking they were going to have a problem sometime and that would give us an opportunity to catch up some," Jarrett says. "We kept thinking something would happen and give us that chance and it never did. That's what we hope can happen this year, that we are not going to give them that opportunity to step in."
Jarrett says no one should be surprised that he is in position to win his first series championship. Indeed, he and Parrott have challenged for the title since they first joined forces in 1996. Since winning the '96 Daytona 500 in their very first race together, they have won 18 races and finished third, second and third in points. They trailed Gordon by just 14 points in 1997.
"Even though this is a great, great season, it's not like we came out of the blue and did this," Jarrett says. "For three years, we have won the second-most races of anybody and probably have the second-most top-5s of any team. It's not like all of this is just by accident. We've been working toward it. It's just a matter of keeping a team together and keeping everybody in their place. All of those kind of things happened and it's been able to come together in one year."
"They know how to win a championship," Gordon says. "They've been right there, second or third many times. He's very, very tough right now. They're championship caliber."
It reminds Parrott of his days with Rusty Wallace. He won the championship as a crewman for Wallace and Blue Max Racing in 1989 and then helped him win 18 races in two seasons with Penske Racing South in 1993 and '94. He sees a lot of similarities between those two teams and the group he has assembled at Robert Yates Racing.
"I look back to 1989 and '93, those two years with Rusty, and the things we did as a team," Parrott says. "Everybody knew what the other guy was doing. He knew what step he was going to make next. He knew what the crew chief was thinking. Everybody was in there together.
"It's really incredible right now how good things are and how good everybody is getting along. And that all comes with success. When you are running good and winning races, everything is great. When you are running bad and the pit stops suck, you hate each other. That's just the way it is."