Gordon motivated to make changes work
Associated Press
CONCORD, N.C. -- For Jeff Gordon's team, there are more
questions than answers heading into the 2000 season.
Longtime mentor and adviser Ray Evernham is gone, heading his own team and developing Dodge's new Intrepid for Winston Cup competition in 2001.
Five of the seven crewmen who made the Rainbow Warriors over-the-wall gang the best in the business have switched to the No. 88 of reigning champion Dale Jarrett.
Jeff Gordon enters a new era in his Winston Cup career.
Brian Whitesell, who took over as crew chief after Evernham resigned in September, has given up that job to Robbie Loomis, who will share the work of directing the No. 24 team.
If that isn't enough, Gordon, now 28 and coming off a sixth-place finish in the standings, is not among the favorites going into a season for the first time since he won the first of his three titles in 1995.
Yet, with all that uncertainly, Gordon -- who now owns a piece of his Hendrick Motorsports team -- said, "I haven't felt this good about starting a season in a long time."
"I feel pretty good about the things we've put in place, and I hope people are underestimating us because I think we're going to be pretty strong."
Loomis, 35, who was a crew chief at Petty Enterprises for nine years, will be a big part of whatever happens to the team in the near future.
"He's awesome," Gordon said. "I really underestimated him. I had no idea of the knowledge he can bring. He fit right in with this team."
Although the Petty team hasn't been among the big winners recently, Loomis' name has come up whenever a team has begun looking for a new crew chief.
"I have talked with people the last couple of years," Loomis said. "Every time a deal's come up, I've asked myself, 'What's it going to take for me to do it?' It wasn't anything from the monetary side, just what would it take to make me comfortable?
"When this deal came up, I could see they are looking five years down the road, too. The tools are all here."
As for replacing Evernham, who guided Gordon to 47 of his 49 victories and all three of his championships, Loomis said, "Everybody talks about Ray's ghost with this team, but I'm just excited about coming in here, and seeing what he was working on and what we can do."
Whitesell won two straight races with Gordon after taking over for Evernham. That gave Gordon seven wins for the season. But things slipped after that, with nothing better than a 10th-place finish over the final five races of 1999.
"There was a lot of upheaval going on, a lot of changes and people pulling in a number of directions," Whitesell said. "But everybody is going in the same direction now."
The lost crewmen have been replaced, all but one from within the Hendrick organization.
"We did get one guy from the 31 (Mike Skinner's car), but he just wanted a change," Whitesell said. "The rest of the guys are from the 24 team. We wanted pit crew members to want to be part of the team, and these guys do."
Whitesell and Loomis appear to have a clear idea of how they will share the job of directing Gordon's team.
"I'm loving working for Brian," Loomis said. "We're kind of 75-25. He's the 75 in the management area and I'm the 75 with the car. I might miss something on the car and Brian will pick it up, and I might pick up something Brian misses in other areas.
"Having Brian here will give me more opportunity to be with the car and the guys who are working on the car. That should make a big difference."
Despite all the internal changes and the fact that Chevrolet is introducing a new and unproven Monte Carlo in 2000, Gordon loves what he is seeing and hearing at the sprawling Hendrick shops.
The defending Daytona 500 champion is very confident as the team prepares for the Feb. 20 season opener in Daytona Beach, Fla.
"It might take us a year or two to figure out this new Monte Carlo on the superspeedways," Gordon said. "But the other racetracks, I'm very excited about. So if we can get through the speedways and be competitive, I think that we will be a factor at a lot of places and, hopefully, if we don't fall out of many races
like we did this past year we'll be a factor in the points."
