Shorten Short Track Races
The Parrotts leave Robert Yates racing, 2003 pole winners, tether improvement, and the Virginia 500 from Martinsville, Virginia.
Jarrett Dumps His Parrotts...........
The tight competition in the Winston Cup Series doesn't leave any room for slackers or second guessers. According to reports from Robert Yates Racing, the No. 88 UPS team lacked confident direction. Reports also indicate that a recent win this season for Dale Jarrett in the No. 88 can be attributed to the notes of crew chief Raymond Fox and car chief Shawn Parker for the setup that they were using on teammate Elliott Sadler's No. 38 M & M's Ford. The two wins last season were attributed to a setup contrived by Michael "Fatback" McSwain, former crew chief for Jarrett's former teammate Ricky Rudd who drove the No. 28 Havoline Ford for Robert Yates Racing up until the 2003 season.
It appears that the Yates organization has a hard time getting a handle on crew chiefs. It also appears that the organization is really hard on crew chiefs and constantly has people there to second guess them and pick their brains. It's hard for a crew chief to assume a leadership role and be confident in his decisions if he has to explain his every move to the people around him, whether they be his superiors or not.
The fact that Robert Yates Racing is looking for a crew chief to work with the No. 88 team for the fourth time in two years leads one to believe that they need to set themselves down and rethink their objectives. It appears that they would rather have a committee type of leadership for the No. 88 team than the traditional crew chief that normally makes the final pre-race setup decisions and strategy calls for the team during a race.
This committee type of leadership was at one time being experimented with at Ray Evernham Motorsports. Both of the current drivers in Evernham's teams are listed with crew chiefs, so maybe the committee deal didn't work out.
If I remember correctly, the reasoning behind the committee approach to team leadership stemmed from the highly technological advances in Cup racing. It is believed by many that it takes engineers to understand the technology well enough for a team to succeed. Jeff Burton made that statement recently in his assessment of the crew chiefs and driver's changing duties on a race team. Burton decided to rely on engineers instead of his crew chief, but apparently he either needs better engineers or the time to work them into his system, because he hasn't been setting the track on fire this season. What ever happened to the good old days of just racing?
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