Now that the official start of the season has arrived, it's time to look ahead at what the 2006 NASCAR Nextel Cup Series season may hold for Robert Yates Racing (RYR), specifically Dale Jarrett and the #88 UPS Racing Team. As has been documented, the team is now working under the direction of new crew chief Slugger Labbe. Additionally, the team will be competing with the all-new Ford Fusion-a product in which all Ford teams have high hopes and expectations.
Dale Jarrett and the UPS Racing Team have put the UPS Ford Fusion through numerous tests, from activities at pre-season testing to the wind tunnel. While the results appear positive, all the answers will not be available until the car actually gets on the track during race weekend competition. That time is now.
"The Fusion answered our questions as far as what we saw from the wind tunnel, which is a little better balanced race car," Jarrett explained. "That means maybe we don't have to trick the car into thinking that it's something that it's not. We had to do that with the Taurus a lot, so it made us kind of get on that edge to where if you got it exactly right, the car was good. If you didn't, it wasn't so good. So now we have a car that we don't have to do that to. We can be a little bit more standard in what we do with it and it seems to react a lot better to change than what we've had because of that good balance, so we're pretty excited about it."
"I would have liked to have had one more day at Vegas to do a few more things, but, obviously, we'll have that opportunity at California and Vegas coming up shortly," Jarrett added.
While the Fusion certainly plays a large role in what RYR hopes to accomplish in 2006, so does the staff it has assembled during the off season. The eyes of the racing world will be on RYR to see if the two-car organization can live up to their own high expectations. Elliott Sadler, Jarrett's teammate that drives the #38 M&M'S® Chocolate Candies Fusion, is one individual who has set the expectation level high.
"My expectations are really high, probably higher than they've ever been," Sadler explained. "We made the Chase the first year and last year we just did miss it. We were in the Chase pretty much the whole year until right there at the end, so it's not like we've been in left field the last two years. We just need to be more consistent at certain tracks. We brought in a new crew chief (Tommy Baldwin) that has more fire than anybody I've ever been around in my life and he's got the crew working together and he's standing right beside them."
"I think we're going to surprise a lot of people this year and I think Tommy has brought a new light to our whole organization-he and Slugger (Labbe, #88 crew chief) both," Sadler added. "The way they work together, I think Dale and I are going to be better prepared and in a better situation than we've been in a long time."
While going to Daytona and running well is a great motivator after a long winter of hard work, it is only the tip of the iceberg for the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series teams. Down the stretch, it is the down force tracks where all of the rewards will be reaped. It is this area in which RYR has concentrated the bulk of its efforts in getting ready for the new season.
"We have a lot of unknowns because we made a lot of changes, but if you look at it on paper, we've installed a lot of good people in a lot of places that are very important for us," Jarrett said. "Tommy and Slugger work well together, and Elliott and I feel very strongly about our race teams right now. The thing that makes us go fast-good bodies, yeah-but Doug Yates and his people in the engine shop do a terrific job. There's just no substitute for that kind of horsepower, so we have a lot of optimism. Some of it may be guarded because we know that we have to prove it on the racetrack first to get everybody's attention."
