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Listen to Greg Zipadelli, crew chief for Tony Stewart, and
you quickly gain insight into why Stewart won't successfully defend his
Winston Cup title this season. A notoriously slow starter, the Home
Depot team came out of the blocks stronger than ever this season,
Zipadelli points out, and even stood second in points in the race at
Darlington in March. Then the season turned sour.Stewart
finished 25th or worse in six of seven races following Darlington,
including consecutive finishes of 41st, 41st, and 40th.
First, there was a disaster at Bristol in a race that began the team's
troubles. "Even after getting a fender torn off and bending a ball
joint we were still going to salvage what had been a bad day--which is
what you do when you're in the championship hunt," says Zipadelli.
"Then an oil line, because of one of the wrecks, got pinched and killed
the motor. We end up 30th." The hard luck
continued. "Then it was Texas (and a 34th)," continues
Zipadelli, "running eighth or ninth, and we lost a motor with
30 to go."
The predictable
struck at Talladega, where Stewart finished 25th. "We
were in a wreck and we had a very strong car," adds Zipadelli.
Martinsville's
sixth-place finish was the lone bright spot, before California
was the scene of an engine failure--and a finish of 41st.
Richmond brought a crash and another 41st. At Charlotte,
engine failure produced a finish of 40th.
Zipadelli lists
his team's misfortunes in the first half of the season with
the scripted nonchalance of a corporate CEO standing before a
board of directors and defending his company's sudden drop in
the stock market.
But there's no
script for the bad racing luck that has plagued the No. 20
Home Depot team this season. And this is not a crew
chief making excuses for rotten performance. This is one
of the top wrenches in the sport offering analysis on his
team's woes. Zipadelli's delivery is as unscripted as
one of the five engine failures his team experienced in the
first half of the season.
Yet Zipadelli
understands that trying to explain bad racing luck is as
hopeless as making up 717 points--the margin Stewart faced
from 11th to first after 23 races--in the final third of the
season.
"Now why is all
this happening?" he says. "Did we lose all of our racing
luck toward the end of last year, because we had a lot of good
fortune and had things go our way? It sure isn't because
of lack of effort or performance from our cars or especially
our driver.
"It's probably
more frustrating for me on the inside, not being able to give
you an answer for our problems, than is is for someone like
yourself trying to come up with something to explain to people
on the outside."
The
conclusion--if there is indeed a conclusive explanation--is
that a championship performance demands near perfection,
particularly with the parity that marks NASCAR's top division.
The run by
driver Matt Kenseth and crew chief Robbie Reiser provides the
current example, and most assuredly there'll be another next
season. Kenseth, with just one win in the season's first
22 races, has had few crippling performances in 2003.
Just when it appears disaster is ready to strike, Kenseth and
Reiser pull off another strong finish. Zipadelli can
relate. He and Stewart worked their way from dead last
in points, following the 2002 Daytona 500, to the title,
giving team owner Joe Gibbs another championship to go with
the one earned by Bobby Labonte in 2000.
Now Kenseth and
Reiser are poised to give team owner Jack Roush his first
Winston Cup title--barring disaster, something that appears
unlikely.
"They can't do
anything wrong," observes Zipadelli, turning his crew chief's
analytic eye from his team to another. "They've had
stuff happen to them and it turns around and the caution falls
right in their lap. I'm not talking bad or begrudging
them, but I'm jealous as hell. You know what I mean?
They're running well every week; they're doing what they've go
to do; and they're doing a great job." |
