Evernham begins new career with clean sheet

Mike Harris

Thursday, Oct. 21, 1999 | 7:24 a.m.

The return of Dodge to NASCAR's top series is being billed as "Something Different."

That's certainly true for Ray Evernham, the man who will build and supervise the factory team for Dodge.

The 42-year-old Evernham spent the past seven years guiding Jeff Gordon as his crew chief and mentor. As they combined to win 47 races and three championships, the pair became one in the minds of many.

That's why there was so much shock when Evernham resigned last month from Hendrick Motorsports to form his own team.

But Evernham, who has 17 months in which to fashion a two-car team before fielding the new Intrepids in the season-opening Daytona 500 in 2001, is exhilarated by the new challenge.

Evernham is known for his organizational skills, and he admits he almost organized himself out of a job with the Hendrick team.

"The last couple of years have been really hectic," he said. "I had a lot of problems to deal with, a lot of business to deal with and not much racing.

"The bigger we got, the less I got to do. I just sat there at that big desk."

Now, he faces a huge challenge.

"It's make it or break it. That would scare a lot of guys to death, and I'm a little scared of it," he said.

It wasn't the money that prompted him to make the change, although Evernham admits his deal with Dodge is a good one.

"All I'll say about my contract is that Dodge has committed to this program for a long time," he said. "But the most important thing is that I have a clean sheet of paper."

Right now, Evernham has three employees and is working out of the race shop he shares with Gordon, who remains his partner in a Busch Series team that fields Chevrolets for Gordon and Ricky Hendrick, the son of Evernham's former boss.

The first thing Evernham will have to work on is putting some facilities together. Eventually, we'll have about 60 employees.

Those first three employees, including Gordon's former chief mechanic Ed Guzzo, came from the Hendrick team. But Evernham resisted the temptation to take even more people from one of the most successful operations in NASCAR history.

"I didn't spend all that time building the 24 team to tear it apart," he said.

Lou Patane, vice president of Dodge Motorsports, was the catalyst in making Evernham the point man for the return of the DaimlerChyrsler brand to Winston Cup racing.

"Ray is clearly in the top rank of his sport," Patane said. "I'm convinced his team will help us win as quickly as possible."

Those are the kind of expectations that will put Evernham in a pressure cooker for at least the next few years. But Gordon said there's nobody better equipped to handle it.

"Ray doesn't let pressure change the way he does things," Gordon said. "He has his way of doing it, and he sticks to that. It's a system that works, and Ray is going to have a lot more success."

Evernham, who has a wife and an 8-year-old son, vividly remembers a time before he combined with Gordon to move to the top of the NASCAR ladder.

The New Jersey native, who had been working for the IROC series, came to Charlotte, N.C., as just another mechanic.

"When I first came down here, I was living in a $350-a-month, one-room apartment with a bed that folded out of the wall," he said with a grin. "If I don't do this right, I'll be living there again."

Not much chance of that.

Beyond having a long, lucrative contract, Evernham is a proud, determined man with some lofty new goals.

"I want to spend the next seven years doing what I did the last seven years and having something with my name on it at the end," he said.