Q&A: Ray Evernham weighs in on Kyle Busch, Brad Keselowski, Jeff Gordon and Kevin Harvick

CHARLOTTE – Few people in the Sprint Cup garage know the sport of NASCAR better than Ray Evernham.

He won three Cup championships as a crew chief for Jeff Gordon at Hendrick Motorsports. He started his own Cup team and, with the backing Dodge, turned it into a winning operation before selling a majority interest to George Gillett. He owns his own race track and is an analyst for ESPN’s NASCAR coverage.

Evernham weighed in on several current topics with reporters Tuesday at the NASCAR Hall of Fame, where he took part in a program on the evolution of the pit stop.

Here are excerpts from some of Evernham’s comments:

Question: Going into the Chase, who is hot and who is cold?

There’s no way in the world you’re going to get me to come off that Jimmie [Johnson] is still the favorite because I think that team still has got a ton of depth. They have been through it so many times. Two weeks ago, we were wow, it’s going to be Kevin Harvick and Richard Childress. Kevin didn’t run good at Bristol this week, so everybody has forgotten about him already. This changes week-to-week.

I think Kevin and Childress will be a factor. I wouldn’t be surprised if this momentum [of winning at Bristol] helps Kyle [Busch] be a factor. I tell you, I’ve spent time with the kid, I’ve talked to him, I think he’s matured, I really do. This is a kid that is on a mission to prove that he’s one of the greatest in the sport.

I’m still going to say Johnson is the favorite, but he is going to get challenged from Harvick and possibly from Kyle Busch. And you can never, ever, ever count out Jeff Gordon because he can put consistency together. He has got to find a little more speed, but he can put those consistent runs together.

Q: Can you compare Jeff Gordon’s talent and Kyle Busch’s talent early in their careers?

I think Jeff had more of a focused talent, where Kyle is just so raw talented. It seems like he can drive anything. He just drives anything good. He tested an off-road truck, and I heard that in three laps he was as fast as anybody out there. Jeff was more of a focused talent. When he focused on the Nationwide car, he was learning and he tried really hard to figure that out. And when we came to Cup, we didn’t have it easy our first couple of years. We wrecked a lot of stuff.

Kyle knows and probably is a lot sharper with a car than Jeff was. Kyle knows his car. Think about what he did [last week], communication with three separate crew chiefs in three completely separate types of race vehicles. Wins all three races, and pulls all that information together and helps. You’re dealing with different personalities. That truck is a different animal than the Nationwide car and the Nationwide car is a different animal [than Cup], different wheelbases, different center of gravities, different horsepower. Kyle is really good technically where Jeff was more focused on the driving.

Q: What does it say that Kyle is only 25?

They’re going to get younger and younger. Rusty [Wallace] got mad at me the other night because he said something and I said, ‘Who would you hire?’ And he said, ‘I’d hire Tony Stewart.’ I said, ‘Tony is almost 40.’ [He said], ‘That don’t matter.’ And I said, ‘Yeah it does. Look at your own record.’

Regardless of what you want to say, guys’ careers, the majority of races are won before the guy is 40. That’s just the way it is. There is nothing wrong with that. I see guys every day racing these Sprint cars and things like that and I’m thinking to myself, ‘There’s no way in the world I would do that.’ ... I think that you’re going to see the evolution becoming younger and younger.

We were talking about Jeff Gordon, oh my God, he was 21 and then he was 24 when he won, and at that time he was the second-youngest guy to win. Bobby Hillin was a little bit younger. Now you’ve got [Joey] Logano, I could be wrong, but I think he still goes to intermediate school or something. Jeff was a kid at 24. I just think the sport is evolving to where you’re going to see younger and younger drivers coming in because you don’t have to have that book of setups anymore. Guys have got so good at setting these cars up and all the technology for helping you develop a car, you can put a driver in that can go fast.

Q: Jeff Gordon will be 40 next year, so does he realize the wins will be tougher to get?

I remind him of that all the time. Jeff thinks about it, sure. He’s a smart athlete. That doesn’t mean he can’t win. Maybe he can’t win as much as he was used to. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a championship in him. He has to go about it differently. He’s got to be a little bit more methodical making sure he gets everything he can from his car and his crew every week.

Jeff has really stepped up to be a good team leader. I hear him on the radio trying to cheer those guys on and I hear him on the radio trying to fire them up whether he wants to go punch somebody else or whatever. He defends his team with the media and things like that and when something goes wrong, he stands up and takes the responsibility, even though some days it’s really not his responsibility. He sees that he can lead that team to a championship but he’s not going to do it outdriving Kyle.

Q: Are you surprised Jeff has gone so long without winning?

I’m surprised because they ran so good. I’m more surprised at the mistakes that have cost them the wins. This new double-file restart really makes you hustle up. I’ve seen Jeff get in the middle of stuff that I really didn’t expect him to get in the middle of. Missing pit road at Darlington or kind of messing up on a restart. That might be him trying to carry a little bit too much of everything on his back. So as good as they’ve run, I am surprised they haven’t won because they have been fast enough to win.

Q: Is Kevin Harvick more ready to win a championship?

Kevin has matured a lot. Kevin is another guy that could always drive a race car. One of the things that helped Kevin mature was owning his own cars. … He’s definitely matured. I don’t want to say I’m surprised, when you look at the run that Jimmie’s had, that Kevin hasn’t won a championship yet. But if not this year, that is a guy that will be in the championship battle for a good bit. A lot of that maturity comes from his owning his own stuff.

Q: He has a bigger voice in the garage?

No different than Tony Stewart. As you go through that, you start to understand a little bit more about everybody else’s world. Like me, I’m a hell of a lot nicer to you guys [in the media] than I used to be because I understand what it’s like to be over there now and I’m like, ‘Wait a minute. Why was I such an ass when I was a crew chief?’ I didn’t really understand the whole picture. The longer you’re in the sport, the more of the picture you understand, the better you become. That immaturity goes out when they start to understand there’s a lot more to this than they thought it was.

Q: As an owner, what is your take on Brad Keselowski last weekend?

As an owner, I would try to be a friend. As an owner, I would say, ‘Don’t do it again. It’s not doing us any good.’ I think Brad Keselowski is extremely talented, I really do. But I think that he is making things difficult on himself because he is being a little bit inflexible the way he races people. The guy has got to learn. People will respect him for his talent but to have that attitude like, ‘I’m never going to back off,’ in the end that is never going to work for you if you want to win championships.

That kid is good. I’ve been a supporter of his. I don’t think that what he did on the PA system the other night [at Bristol] was right or classy or helped his brand at all. … He is a young man, new into this sport, and I think he has got enough talent that he deserves the time that Roger Penske or maybe some other drivers will spend with him and say, ‘Look, kid, you probably have got to be a little more flexible with your driving. You didn’t like the slide-job that Kyle [Busch] put on you, but Kyle did race you clean for 20 laps before that and you could have easily turned the car left and then raced him down in the corner and shoved him up and took the win back.’ Instead, he wanted to prove a point, ‘I’m not backing off.’ He didn’t back off, and he ended up losing the race because of it, because Kyle got mad and spun him.

This is a conversation I had with Jeff Gordon years ago because at that time there was no sense in screwing with [Dale] Earnhardt. Race him clean and don’t make him mad, because in the end, whether you’re right or wrong, you’re going to come out on the short end. Brad Keselowski has got a lot of wins and championships in his future, but he’s got to be a little bit more flexible with his driving. And doing stuff like he did on the PA, it made people laugh for a few minutes, but in the end, it’s not going to help people think that he’s a good guy. It just wasn’t a classy thing to do.

Q: How will that play out with other drivers?

He’s still got time to fix his relationship with other drivers. He said that about Kyle and whatever, but Kyle Busch is a pretty damn good race driver. And if you’re going to make fun of him, you better be able to at least do what he can do. Brad said that and then Kyle lapped him. That, to me, I would find that pretty embarrassing. I would be riding out there, ‘He’s an ass but I just went a lap down.’ Duh.

People know that Brad is young, they do respect his talent and other drivers [will respect him] if he goes back and calms down a little bit and says, ‘Yeah, I was probably over the edge’ like we all have had to do. I wish I could stand here and take a lot of things back that I said. All you can do is make sure that you don’t say them again. That kid can easily make it on his talent. He’s got to be a little bit more aware of where he’s at in the sport right now.