Dale Jr. Download: Working with Young Jeff Gordon

you mentioned going to work for bill davis what did they what did they put you on as soon as you got there uh they you know that bill davis had a great program and i will tell you straight up that was the most fun i've ever had in my life working on a race team because it was only five or six of us and we did everything we had i think we had three cars but we only used two of them but um you know they immediately put me on trying to get the chassis sorted out they had a really good motor program they had a good body program they'd been sharing a shop with mark martin and the number 60 car the winn-dixie car and uh but jeff's cars were uh i guess they were um bsr cars billy has built them cars at that time and uh when i went there i said well where's this at where's that at and you know they were good carts but they hadn't really squared them up and hadn't really gone through the bump and and whatnot and i knew a little bit about that stuff how important it was from working at iraq and i just started to get the front ends right and i came up with a combination that jeff really liked and then we just worked on making both cars the same and you know the probably the biggest thing i learned at uh at bill davis though is no matter no matter how good your chassis is you still got to have a good motor and a good driver because you know you got those two things those other cars are a lot easier to pass when was the moment when you realized that jeff had the talent oh man you know jeff and i met in uh 1990 andy petry called me up and he said hey leo jackson son-in-law is going to run this deal run this guy i need you to come down here and help i don't have time to do it and i was like man i'm trying to race and i'll you know i said who's the kid he said jeff gordon and i had just seen jeff gordon like on thursday night thunder or whatever run smack over some guy like run smack over and go down to straightaway on two wheels and still win the race i was like man i gotta go see if this kid's legit so um jeff and i met at uh i guess at a hotel in charlotte right before this test deal and uh i really like them like i like you know from talking to all those guys like to talk about iraq like i think man this kid's 17 18 years old and he he really talks about the car like he should be and then we had uh we went to charlotte the next day for a grand national test and uh davey was there and and uh chuck bound a lot of good a lot of good guys and we had a buck baker school car and uh with a v6 chevy in it right so we didn't have a buick motor back then and jeff uh man jeff went out and i think we put chuck bound in it first shake it down make sure it was all right jeff goes out in it and i got to tell you the story i go up on top of the truck jeff gets in the car and he starts waving to me come down i'm like what what he's waving he didn't want to say it on the radio so he's wave he says hey uh how do i start this you know because he used to get in there and push him off right now i'm like wait no wait a minute he's like yeah what you know so went through i said now you do i said you you do you do drive up you do drive a clutch right he's like oh yeah yeah it's same as on the column but on the floor right i was like yeah yeah you're good man he went out there and i'm gonna tell you in uh three four laps he's just sailing i mean over the bumps down into one just just sailing like boom like right on the board you know like probably top five at that time and he comes off of three and four there he gets a little bit low maybe gets the apron gets that bump and man that thing just sideways sideways brings all the way up to the wall almost the wall you know down into the little quad oval there i hit the button on the radio i said hey man you all right he's like yeah why i'm like hey once you come in here let's talk i said hey look you know you can't do that that much with a stock car i guess your sprint car you can slide i said well you know you he'll turn that thing around he said oh wow i'm sorry man like i didn't realize i was that sideways that's awesome so you know you guys got together and and how does the move to to hendrick happen you get are you are you immediate how does that happen do you get a phone call um is jeff telling you what's going on well jeff got phone call um and see when we went our first win at uh atlanta you know the first few laps on tires we really lose and rick hendrick was uh watching it and he sees you know he sees this number one baby ruth cargo just smoking the right rear and passes mark martin he's like man who's that guy he's gonna wreck i'm gonna watch this we go on with the race and uh andy graves worked at the five car that at that time and and uh andy said rick had said something around the five car and he said well that guy lives with me and he doesn't really have a set contract for next year so they they called jeff and they talked to him and jeff said look you know rick hendrick called me and i was like man that's pretty big right there you know like those guys have got everything he said i want you to go over and look at that place and tell me if you think that you know we could win there and i'm gonna tell you i went off to that complex and uh there used to be a team manager there name his name was jimmy johnson too yeah jim johnson right so he showed me around and i looked at everything they had i went back to jeff i said look if we can't take the stuff that man has and win we can't win anywhere because they have everything they need i don't know why they're not winning but i'm telling you everything we need to win races and championships is there so jeff accepted that deal with uh with rick and he said hey look i want i want ray to come and i want ray to be my crew chief and i didn't want to be the crew chief i was like i don't have any experience to be a crew chief i'm the chassis guy i'll set the chassis up and rick you know rick hendrick is such a funny guy he said well nope jeff wants you to be the crew chief and that's the only job we got take it or leave it you're a crew chief oh my god so so jeff at this point in it just has so much trust in you and y'all's relationship that you're sort of the you're you're the guy that's scouting this out yeah he sent me there to uh sent me there to to really look he you know jeff uh jeff step dad john bickford yep really gave jeff you know a lot of confidence and jeff's got a lot of confidence in john and john always had a lot of confidence in me and i think that that helped ease jeff's mind of whether or not we were trying to do the right thing or whatever and you i don't have to tell you you get with certain people that you're just you know you're okay apart but the two of you are like make a whole better like stronger than you both could be and jeff and i have always been like that and we're still like that on the projects that we are today there's just something that you know we we've got the pieces that fit and uh when when i said man we can do this he never questioned it or whatever you know and he put himself out there and and uh you know he took a lot of uh you know bad press and you know people complaining he was leaving forward and all that but the truth be told he did not really have a contract for the next year with uh with ford and we actually went and saw some uh some ford teams and uh the ford team said no they didn't that you didn't one of the ford teams told them look you don't choose your crew chief we choose you we'll take you but we're not taking him and i was man i was okay with that because jeff was the star i'd just stayed at bills you know um but uh jeff said no no i'm you know right right raised with me and now to this day i believe that's one of the reasons he chose uh to walk away from ford and and to go to hendricks because rick hendrick welcomed me with open arms wow so in the first year all right so you aren't even a crew chief and you get hired to go be the crew chief for jeff gordon um in that first year i kept i don't know why i retained this stat and it may be incorrect but i think jeff bent 22 clips or something it's about that yeah it was we killed two or three cars completely and uh i i can't remember but i think it's about that number front and rear you know we uh we um maybe it was ball joints maybe it wasn't expensive maybe it wasn't clips maybe it was ball joints but i'm not sure but oh no it was clips it was snaps and rear clips so going through that first year you know we even today i think um whether it in any sport um we really want to see that rookie uh star you know produce right away right and in racing look at like joe logano is a great example guy come in everybody put so much heap so much praise on him rightly so very talented but it took the right combination it took took a while for things to happen i feel the same thing has happened with the guys like william byron um i think william is a true talent it's just gonna be a while before he really can produce what he's so young you know look at the guys that are winning in a series now in their 30s and 40s so um when you're when you're going through that experience with jeff you obviously know what jeff can do but maybe you're only one of the few people in the building um and yes there's good runs and success and you're seeing the glimpse of the future but with the with the um was there any a point i guess in the season when anyone was sort of like going man is he gonna is he gonna get this thing where he can you know keep the wheels on it i think you know it's a little bit of a different world um back then so in some ways we've probably had it a little bit easier on us than maybe william byron or or some of these you know um younger guys have now because the expectation was a little bit different a lot of guys like you said oh the guys winning now in their 30s and 40s well back then the guys that were winning were in their 40s and 50s and everybody kind of knew you had to build up that 20-year notebook before you could be a a top driver and i think that people could see the talent that he had and knew that sooner or later he was going to get a notebook on the tracks and he was going to figure this out and more importantly i was going to figure it out because you had a you had a rookie driver but you also had a really rookie crew chief right you know i i only been working on a car with fenders for a little while and uh i i felt personally like our everything worked out good in the end because i think us both starting so young when we learned together but had jeff had a more experienced crew chief he might have won earlier oh come on you know no we did we even though we did win the first race for rick uh i think our first race at daytona but uh you know i there were some mistakes i made as well bill likewise like what kind of mistake i think that i wasn't um sharp enough with aerodynamics at first it took me really a year or so to understand how that really how much effect that that really had i think some of my race strategy stuff um uh i had to learn you because you know you know back then without all the computers and out all the this and simulation and that you know you had a notebook and it was like playing a multi-level chess game you know you're playing over here and there were times i got playing these two guys and darn if we didn't get beat by this guy over here because he had a different strategy so i i think that all of us growing together and about the time we hit our stride you know we we won the coke 600 we won that on a two-tire deal and that was great in 94 you know um but then we went to indy when the when the uh in the brickyard 494 the playing field was pretty level because nobody had a notebook and we went there and won that and then we were okay okay we can run with these guys and uh that built uh it built a lot of confidence but i i do feel like um you know jeff had had jeff had a more experienced crew chief he might have won earlier but i'm not sure he would won as much as we did later right [Music]

Channel: Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s Dirty Mo Media

Views: 201,052

Keywords: Dale Earnhardt Jr., Dale Jr., Ray Evernham, Jeff Gordon, Rainbow Warriors, Bill Davis, Hendrick Motorsports, Dale Jr. podcast, Dale Jr. Download, Dirty Mo Media, NASCAR

Id: tC6fZNzurO8

Length: 12min 16sec (736 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 23 2020