Ray Evernham continues to view sport from different perspective
Kenny Bruce
Kenny Bruce is a three-time winner of the National Motorsports Press Association's George Cunningham Writer of the Year Award. He joined Street & Smith's Sports Group in 2001.
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Ray Evernham walks through the garage and notices the little things, small things that most fans might not see, or perhaps understand.
“I miss it,” the former championship-winning crew chief says. “I’m fortunate enough to get to do the [TV] stuff that lets me see everybody. I do think my ‘mechanical’ mind misses it. I was going through the garage looking at things … who has the track bar where, who has it somewhere else. What teams are doing differently, what’s changed. That kind of stuff never leaves you.”
Evernham, 52, is on the other side of the fence, working with television, and leaving the race-day decisions and assorted minutiae to others. The pressure of competing has subsided, but the sport still holds his undivided attention.
“I love the sport,” Evernham, who won three championships in four years with Jeff Gordon and the Hendrick Motorsports No. 24 team, says. “I love to race. Whether that’s going to my little East Lincoln [N.C.] Speedway on Saturday night or going to a World of Outlaws race with Kasey [Kahne] or [wife] Erin.”
He’s not closer, however, to taking up residence once again inside the garage area. He remains to be a minority owner – his ties with George Gillett haven’t been totally severed – and the depth of his involvement in the sport won’t likely change until that particular issue is settled.
“That goes day by day,” he says. “I’m letting other people handle that right now and I’m just trying to stay out of it. We’re having conversations back and forth, but we haven’t been able to come up with anything that either of us are happy with.
“I want to be clear, I want to say that I’m not pissed off at George and he’s not pissed off at me. We just have to figure out how we can kind of go our separate ways.”
Once that issue is resolved, could he come back? Would he come back?
“If I had the opportunity to do something in the sport that I didn’t have to do full time,” Evernham says. “It would have to be a hell of an opportunity for me to come back and do 38 weekends a year again.
“Plus, who wants to race [crew chief] Chad [Knaus] and Jimmie [Johnson]?”
But doesn’t someone have to take the team that’s won four consecutive NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championships, and is favored for a fifth this year, down a notch?
“Sure, I’d love to beat them,” he says. “But everybody in the garage would, too. The question is could you beat them?”
