Stepping up to the plate: hard work, exhaustive testing and the skills of drivers Michael Waltrip and Dale Earnhardt Jr. have helped Dale Earnhardt, Inc. seize control of restrictor-plate racing

Sporting News, The, July 8, 2002 by Mark McCarter

The heat is on. Tony Eury has a solemn look on his leathery face. He is making meticulous preparations.

He is making hamburgers.

He is standing by the gas grill outside the hauler for Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s Chevrolet after a morning practice session. Eury has plopped a couple of patties on the grill, and as they sizzle, he reaches to pluck various ingredients from a tray, sprinkling them liberally on the burgers.

There is metaphor in meat.

Dale Earnhardt, Inc., which employs Eury as crew chief for Junior's team, has been the dominant force in Winston Cup restrictor-plate races the last two years, and it has been because of meticulous preparation and myriad ingredients.

DEI has won four of the last six races at the restrictor-plate tracks, Daytona and Talladega. In three of them, its top two drivers, Earnhardt Jr. and Michael Waltrip, finished one-two. Waltrip won the 2001 Daytona 500, then was second to Junior in the Pepsi 400 last July at Daytona and the Aaron's 499 in April at Talladega. Their next opportunity is Saturday night at Daytona.

"I don't think it's no secret," Eury says. "We just work hard on our restrictor-plate stuff. We probably dedicate the whole winter to trying to win the Daytona 500."

Then, in an instant, all that winter, all that work, all that planning can go up in smoke. Last February at Daytona, a small piece came off Waltrip's car. Earnhardt was right behind Waltrip. He ran over the piece. It shredded a tire, which, in turn, transformed his front fender into a piece of mangled modern art.

Around the garage area, there is some whining, some grudging admiration and some jealousy over the DEI success. And there are reminders from such folks as Ganassi Racing team manager Tony Glover, who helped make Morgan-McClure Racing a restrictor-plate power in the early and mid-1990s.

"Right now, they've got the total package," Glover says. "They have everything figured out. The plate deal seems to go in cycles. If you look at it over the course of the last 10 years, one particular group will hit on it. They'll do well for two or three years, then another group will hit on it."

Eury knows that. That's why he has more notes for Daytona and Talladega than any other track. It's why he "takes two or three times as long to prepare a car to go those places as compared to another race." It's why three days after finishing one-two at Talladega, DEI had those cars in a wind tunnel for testing.

"Everybody wants to beat DEI at restrictor-plate racing," Eury says. "If we stay the same, they're going to catch us."

Are there secrets? "I don't know. But when you find out what they are, will you tell me?" says Mark Cronquist, engine builder at Joe Gibbs Racing.

If so, DEI people would not reveal them. So, we must settle for the explanation that hard work is the key, along with three obvious ingredients in the recipe.

Machines

NASCAR's continuing effort to slow the cars at the two fastest tracks has resulted in the restrictor plates, which reduce air flow into the carburetor, and aerodynamic changes. Various blades, railings and trimmings have been tried on the car. As a result, Earnhardt says, "It looked like a bunch of taxicabs running around there."

But DEI's deep pockets and large staff have afforded an advantage in aerodynamics. Costly wind tunnel tests or hiring people to work solely on the superspeedway cars is merely a part of doing business.

"If we can tunnel them or find different ways to test them, whatever we do, we're going to make our bodies better," says Ty Norris, DEI's executive vice president.

Waltrip says: "They can science everything out. There's not a whole lot of guesswork at DEI.... They leave nothing to chance."

As sleek and impeccable as the bodies might be, they are merely pretty shells without the ...

The check that bounced the competition

Even now, almost a year and a half after his death, Dale Earnhardt remains the driving force of Dale Earnhardt, Inc.

He set standards as a brilliant restrictor-plate racer. He demanded excellence of the organization that bore his name. He provided the financial wherewithal for that organization to improve, as DEI executive vice president Ty Norris describes it, from being "an embarrassment to our company to now, where people are (wondering) how to beat these guys at a superspeedway race."

Earnhardt won 13 restrictor-plate races, but after he created DB in 1997, his drivers struggled on those backs.

"Restrictor-plate races were our worst places," Norris says. "We were terrible. We got lapped at Daytona, and we got lapped at Talledega, and we didn't have a problem. That's how bad we were."

DEI was leasing engines from Richard Childress and working with a small team. Finally, after the 1999 Daytona 500, in which DEI driver Steve Park finished 34th, Norris met with Earnhardt.

"I went to Dale and said, `We will never come to these places again and have to rely on somebody else for motors,' "Norris says." `We're a big enough company. We've got to do our own thing.'"

Earnhardt agreed. He pulled out the checkbook.