By Mike Mulhren
Winston Salem News Journal,January 16

Frankie Stoddard and Jeff Burton were great teammates during their years together. As crew chief and driver, they won 14 races - Charlotte's 600 twice, at Las Vegas twice, the Southern 500, four at New Hampshire, Daytona's Pepsi 400, at Richmond, another at Darlington.

Together they were a top-five team.

Until 2002.

Their last win together was in the fall of 2001 at Phoenix. They split late the next season, and since going their separate ways, they're both winless.

Boris Said has certainly earned this shot

Burton is on a promising new career path, with car owner Richard Childress.

Stoddard, meanwhile, is trying to get back on his feet with a new team, working now with teammates Joe Nemechek and Ryan Pemberton, and Scott Riggs and Doug Randolph - and with a new driver, the irrepressible Boris Said, road racer extraordinaire and oval-track hopeful, who is embarking on an 11-race venture this season.

It's a big step forward for Said, who is highly personable, witty and determined, and an odd challenge for Stoddard. Said clearly has a lot to learn, because he has driven in only three NASCAR oval races, so there shouldn't be much pressure on the two, for a while at least.

For Stoddard, after working with Bill Davis' one-team operation, becoming part of Rick Hendrick's multi-car empire presents numerous luxuries, and he is almost like a kid in a candy store.

During the opening round of Daytona 500 testing, Stoddard and Said looked impressive. But then they realize they'll need a fast car in qualifying, to make the 500 if they run into problems during the 150-milers that set most of the field.

Said is a quite different personality from Scott Wimmer, the quiet, mild-mannered rookie with whom Stoddard worked last year. Said is boisterous and outgoing, ebullient, even zany.

"It should be fun. Boris is certainly ambitious and wants to do it, and that's a big part of it," Stoddard said. "He made the race at California last year and ran well, and made the race at Homestead, qualified well. If those were his first two ovals, obviously that's pretty good.

"At Daytona it's all about the car, getting in the show. We've got two road courses, and we should be in good shape, as long as we don't get rain. And with Joe as our teammate and Hendrick motors, everything is in our favor to qualify and run in the top-20 or top-25.

"Obviously I'm a man who has a great deal of passion about winning, and realistically I think we have a chance to win three or four races. Anybody can win at Daytona these days, if you have a good car, good strategy and good pit stops. (Stoddard and Wimmer came close to an upset win here last season.) The odds aren't in our favor, of course, but they weren't in our favor last year either, but we had good pit stops and made good strategy and there we were at the end of the day.

"We'll be at a deficit only running 10 races. And the days of Jeff Gordon getting beat by road- racing specialists are gone; Jeff and Tony Stewart are the best there - but Boris is right there."

Good will

Said has been building good "political capital" among other drivers over the past few years, offering them key bits and pieces from his wealth of road-racing knowledge. Now, Said figures, it's time for them to repay the favors. Said has been very fast in testing, for which he credits his new teammates.

Said has certainly earned this shot.

"I've been working so hard at it," he said. "It's going to be a learning year, and I've got to have realistic goals. If I can make the 500 and run in the top 20, it would be like a win.

"All I've been asking for is a shot, and now I've got first-class equipment, and I'm looking forward hopefully to showing the world what I can do."

Dale Earnhardt Jr. says he hopes that Said makes it. "Boris is a great guy. We have a good friendship. He's a lot of fun to be around, and he's really genuine. I didn't know how much talent he had, but when I started watching the American Le Mans Series and other types of racing, I watched him do so well.

"He's told me stories about other cars he's driven overseas. And he's the kind of guy that can get in just about anything and find the limit, constantly. When he drove in the Busch series with (Jimmy) Spencer's car, he was very over-the-top once in a while, and he's worked that out. With the Cup cars being a lot heavier than what he's used to, when you overshoot the corner you can't just slow down and stop - these things are probably going to slide off the racetrack. Once he got that figured out, he started finishing races like he has over the past couple of years."

Can Said make it? Is he trying to answer a personal question, or is he confident?

"All race drivers are a little cocky. If you're not, you're in the wrong business," Said said. "But I'm not going to come out here and win a race. That's an unrealistic goal. But I think I will be in a position to win one of the two road races, better than I ever have. And if I can show over the year that I can run in the top-20, that would be a realistic goal for my first year.

"I finished 10th in the Shootout last year. I just wanted to see if I could run with the pack and look like I belonged, and not cause a wreck, and earn some respect. I accomplished that. It will be more of the same this year, patience, give-and-take. Those 60 or 70 laps are all the experience I have. I just need to learn quick.

"Last year I picked Joe's brain so much on everything I think he got tired of talking to me. And Dale Jr. has obviously helped me a lot.

"I've helped a lot of these guys with their road racing, and I think they're paying me back by giving me good advice," he said. "Plus, when you're on a superspeedway, it's in their best interests - because if I wreck it could take out half the field. I've been overwhelmed by the amount of support they've given me, and I really appreciate that.

Frankie Stoddard and Jeff Burton were great teammates during their years together

"I've watched other people come into the sport and bump heads. That's just not my style."

After the 500, Said and Stoddard will be off until the Texas race in April.

"Frank is going to build some bigger cars that I can fit into," said Said, who is 6-5. "These are Joe's cars, and they're pretty small for me."

Working with GM

At Davis' operation, Stoddard and Wimmer were handicapped by not being on a manufacturer's roster (given the split with Dodge). Now Stoddard has GM phone numbers. The difference?

"It's huge," Stoddard said. "The last three or four years anyone trying to compete on this tour without factory support and without a teammate, you're at a big disadvantage, particularly with all the rules changes and tire changes. And this year we're all running with an inch less rear spoiler.

"If you can't at least call up Detroit and say 'Here are my wind tunnel figures, how do they stack up?' you're taking a dull knife to a gun fight - if you've even got a knife in your hand.

"Joe was strong all last year, and I talked with Ryan during the season, and they had a top-five car on the 11/2 mile and two-mile tracks probably 95 percent of the time. And Hendrick motors are strong, and the GM aero program is strong, and the guys here at MB2 have a strong program and we know where we're at. All the stuff is in place for us to be competitive."

Stoddard's split with Davis and Wimmer, in the final weeks of a downhill season, was not entirely unexpected. After nearly winning at Daytona, the team lost traction. It was similar to what happened to Davis, Ward Burton and Tommy Baldwin after winning the 2002 Daytona 500, Stoddard says.

"The bottom line last year - we didn't run like we needed to run," Stoddard said. "But there's no question we were the best single-car team out there.

"You get what you put into it these days, and, if you don't have the tools and resources, you're not going to run in the top 10. When you're trying to run two teams with one budget, and when that budget is missing $5 million or $6 million off what the top budgets are....

"Bill and Gail Davis have been trying awfully hard, and I give them credit. But when I started we had Dodge support and what I thought was a three-year deal with Kenny Wallace as teammate. But there was that Toyota deal going on behind the scenes, and you had a feeling that was going to blow up, unfortunately. Then Wallace's sponsor decided to go back to Busch.

"It was just a tough deal. They've got three truck programs but didn't win a race. So it was just tough, and probably time for them to do something else. I don't blame them."

ORIGINAL STORY-Winston Salem News Journal

Family bonded racing crews in past
by Rick Minter
Atlanta Journal-Constitution,January 16

Until their sudden breakup last month, the pairing of Dale Earnhardt Jr. with his uncle and cousin as his crew chief and car chief had all the makings of a NASCAR dynasty.

Driving Chevrolets prepared by Tony Eury Sr. and Tony Eury Jr., Earnhardt won Busch Series titles in 1998 and 1999, the only years they ran the circuit full-time. And in five full seasons on the Cup circuit, they won 15 races, six last year.

Tony Eury Sr. said that he wanted to win more consistently, but he was satisfied with the working relationship.

But the Nextel Cup championship eluded them. The team stayed in contention until the final race last season but finished fifth. That prompted the leadership at Dale Earnhardt Inc. to make a major change.

Earnhardt and his teammate, Michael Waltrip, switched crews and cars, which put Earnhardt behind the wheel of the Chevys Waltrip had been driving and under the leadership of crew chief Pete Rondeau, a longtime mechanic who has been a crew chief for only a handful of races.

Waltrip inherited Earnhardt's cars and the Eurys.

As race teams returned to Daytona last week to begin testing for a new season, the NASCAR world was still trying to adjust to the change.

Benny Parsons, the former Cup champion and NBC commentator, said it was hard to understand how DEI could make such a drastic change.

"I'm shocked," Parsons said. "They did run well together last year."

Parsons said the change is evidence of the intense pressures to win in the "new" NASCAR, where the premium is on winning now.

"It makes it tougher than it once was, just like money situations make marriages much tougher today than they used to be," Parsons said.

Earnhardt Jr., who embraces the change -- even if he didn't initiate it -- cited the difficulty of working with family members. He said he didn't act like a professional in some situations, including radio communication with his crew.

"I could say anything I wanted to [Eury Jr.] because I knew the next day that we were still cousins," Earnhardt said. "I put myself in this situation to try to be a better person and become a little bit more of a professional."

Throughout NASCAR's 57-year history, some of the most powerful, enduring teams have been comprised of close kin. Petty Enterprises, which has a series-leading 268 Cup victories, got most of them with Richard Petty as the driver, his brother, Maurice, building engines, cousin Dale Inman as crew chief and his father, Lee Petty, as car owner.

Tony Eury Sr. sporting his new NAPA colors last week at Daytona.

"Family's what made it work," Richard Petty said. "Some teams have a different driver or a different sponsor every two or three years. We were able to put some people together in '59 or '60, and they went for 20 years."

Petty said there were occasional squabbles, but nothing that couldn't be overcome.

"We argued, fussed and fought, but when it came to getting down there and getting the job done, we all got in there and did the same thing," he said. "We were together long enough that if you talked to Dale and asked him a question, I'd back him up and [Maurice] would back him up. We backed each other right or wrong.

"The family part made us do that, and that made it work."

Rick Hendrick also built his organization around family members, and the Wood Brothers won 96 Cup races with brothers working with brothers and sisters and uncles and other relatives.

The change at Dale Earnhardt Inc. apparently was originated by the team's managers, and one of the main factors was the connection between the Eurys and Earnhardt. DEI has not commented on who made the final decision.

Tony Eury Sr. said that he wanted to win more consistently, but he was satisfied with the working relationship.

"I didn't see a problem with it," he said. "Some people in our company did, but I really didn't see a problem with it."

The big winner seems to be Michael Waltrip, who is in the last year of his driving contract. Now, he is paired with proven winners.

"As I go into 2005, I'm the most optimistic I could be, considering that I'm teaming with guys who just raced for a championship," he said. "I'm thankful I have that opportunity."

And he predicts Earnhardt will find success with his new crew.

"Junior's a great race car driver and he's very smart," Waltrip said. "He will elevate the team. Those guys need to feel like winners. When they walk out to the starting line, he's going to walk out there with them, and the guys will feel like winners."

ORIGINAL STORY-Atlanta Journal Constitution