Doug Yates: Engine Builder

Doug Yates, head of the engine building operation for Robert Yates Racing and son of the Quality Care Srevice/Ford Credit and Texaco Havoline Taurus teams owner, spoke to the media this morning at the Winston Breakfast Club.

DOUG YATES--QUALITY CARE/FORD CREDIT-- WE UNDERSTAND YOUR FATHER DROVE THE 88 TRANSPORTER PART OF THE WAY UP HERE. HOW DID THAT COME ABOUT? "Tommy Mullis, our regular driver had some back problems, and when we got back from Daytona he had to go the hospital and get an MRI and they're checking him out. Our test car driver didn't get home until 9:00 that morning, and had to turn around and leave at two. My dad loves driving trucks and doing all kinds of things so he jumped in the truck and drove all the way up here. He said he had to learn how shift gears there a little bit, but he got in and they got here about 1:00. That's the kind of guy he is. I told him, 'Now don't raise the bar too high for me because I'm going to have to go and truck driving lessons and all that stuff. Just take it easy on me.'"

I UNDERSTAND HE PERFORMED ANOTHER MENIAL TASK AT ONE OF THE SHOPS THE OTHER DAY. "Our new 28 shop is Ricky's (Rudd) old shop and it's up in Mooresville. I don't know the whole story, but I heard he was cleaning the restroom or something when Ricky was walking by. He stays on those guys pretty hard because we like to be clean and organized. But this is what we love to do. This is our lives. There is really nothing else. He may take a day off, but he'll be there on the Sunday of that weekend off, cleaning up."

DOES HE WISH HE COULD GET BACK TO WORKING ON THE CARS? "I think he is really struggling with that. But the teams are getting so big that he can't contribute as much as he wants to in every area. I'm sure the highlight of this weekend and the weeks to come is driving that truck up here."

HOW DIFFICULT IS IT ON YOU TO DO THINGS IN THE MANNER YOUR FATHER WANTS THEM DONE OR DO YOU SEE A DIFFERENT WAY TO DO IT? "I don't think it is as tough on me now as because I've become accustomed to it. Who it is tough on is the new breed of racers here who do not know how it used to be done. It was nothing for us to work an all-nighter and now it is not just racing, it is actually a profession and people want to go home and see their families and have some sort of life. And I end up pushing hard, and sometimes it's hard on our employees. But through the years I've tried to learn how to back that off and make it work for everybody. I think it's not so much hard on me, but it's hard on our people to live up to what we used to do 15 to 20 years ago, if that makes sense."

HOW MANY HOURS DOES IT TAKE TO PUT AN ENGINE TOGETHER? "We have a staff of 40 guys in our shop. Basically, our regular routine is we race the engine on Sunday. We come back and post chassis dyno it on Monday and we'll have it back on the dyno Wednesday morning testing it again and back on the truck to go to the race on Thursday. That may be four engines go through that same routine. It's really not that time consuming rebuilding engines. It's the initial build of the machine and the block and the heads and the things like that is what really takes the time. To rebuild an engine we could probably actually do it in eight hours from tear-down to completed and ready to go again."

WE'VE BEEN HEARING TALK ABOUT COMMON TEMPLATES AND AERO MATCHING. DO YOU EVER SEE THEM GOING TO COMMON ENGINES? "I think we all have to be careful to remember where we came from. There are a lot of fans in the stands that are Ford, Chevrolet and Dodge fans. If you start getting common cars it is going to drive some people away. I'm not a big history buff on engines, but there are guys out there that want to see a Ford valve cover or a Chevrolet valve cover or a Ford style engine or a Windsor or Cleveland. I think if we start going to those common rules it is really going to hurt our roots. I do think we need common templates on the engines just like we do the cars. If Chevrolet has a bore height of four inches then Ford needs a bore height of four inches because that is really the chase. If Ford has a limited bore center and you can only get a 4.25 bore engine out of a Ford and the Dodge can get a 4.250, then we need to set some boundaries there because, you know, for the competition side of it. As far as going to the common engine, I personally would not like to see that. NASCAR's wise and they got us here, I'm gonna trust them. But, I don't endorse that."

HAVE THEY TALKED ABOUT THAT AT ALL? "It's kind of been tossed around, but I think mainly the thing that we're fishing for is common templates on the engines -- common bore heights, common bore centers, common things like that."

HOW MANY OTHER TEAMS DO YOU BUILD ENGINES FOR? "We build for Cal Wells, Travis Carter's two teams, the 75 and Robby Gordon on a limited schedule. So, on any given weekend we could have seven cars."

IT COULD BE TOO EARLY TO TELL, BUT HOW MUCH OF A THREAT IS DODGE TO ALL OF THIS? THEY'VE HAD THE WHOLE SEASON TO GET READY FOR THIS. "Everybody fears the unknown, for sure, and we all sit around and we could build it up to be as big as we want. They're gonna be good, and they're going to be a force. The best scenario is if a Ford finishes first, Chevrolet second, Pontiac and a Dodge -- you know, that would be best for us. NASCAR's going to make them competitive, but also it takes a long time to develop these engines. I mean, if you wanted to change something -- say, go to a totally different head -- it'll take us a year to get going, so they got a tall order. It may be a year before they really get going good, but they've got a really good team put together -- Ray Evernham and his program. So, they'll be competitive. But, it's just like anything else. We're not going to sit around and worry about it, we're going to go to work and make our stuff better. When they get here they're gonna have a moving target to hit."

WHAT ABOUT THE PROGRESS OF THE 28 CAR? "I tell you, we couldn't be more pleased with the 28, and the addition of Ricky and Mike McSwain. Fortunately and unfortunately I've had the opportunity to work with a lot of drivers in the 28 car, and, in my book, Ricky Rudd is right up there with Ernie Irvan, Davey Allison and Dale Jarrett because he is just a first-class guy. He can get job done on the track and he can probably give you more feedback than any racecar driver that I've ever worked with before. All those guys are different and good in their own ways, but as far as actually giving you feedback, Ricky is probably the best I've ever worked with. The 28 team is gonna take a while -- we have a veteran driver and we have young, upcoming crew chief and a team that has some old guys in there from the veteran 28 and some new guys so it is going to take a while. It will just take a little bit of time to get everything to gel. I was telling them yesterday, we're just that close to becoming a real good race team. We had a side window fall out at Michigan. We would have been top five. The first of the year we were a 10th to 15th place car, and now we are about a fifth or tenth place car. Hopefully, the second half of the year we're going to be a first to fifth place car. I think it's coming. I know you guys have heard this many times - before you can win, you've got to run top-five to have your shot."

WITH THE RIGHT STUFF AT SEARS POINT RICKY COULD WIN. "Yes, we went to a road course to test a few weeks ago. The first day was okay, and Ricky is such a racer a brought a shifter cart the next day. He got on the shifter cart that morning and got back in the racecar and ran a second and a half faster. We told him we were going to ask NASCAR if he could take the shifter cart out to Sears Point."

WHAT IS A SHIFTER CART? "It's a go-kart that actually has a gear shifter on it. That's the kind of things he does on his weekends off. There's a new place in Virginia that he goes up to and runs around. He's a neat guy."

THAT ROAD COURSE AT DANVILLE? "Right, like a country club road course."

DO YOU HAVE A SPECIAL CAR YOU'RE WORKING ON FOR SEARS POINT? "Actually, in the whole mix of things, when we bought Ricky's shop, we bought some of his cars. This car we're running here this weekend is one of Ricky's cars. We ran it at Martinsville and ran really well with it. The road-race car is one of Ricky's cars from last year, so he's real comfortable with it and they've worked on it. We're real proud of the progress. It's so hard to win these days. They have a lot of different winners, but it's still very, very competitive. To win you have to have everything go right the whole day. We're putting it all together, I think."

HOW EXCITED WAS THE TEAM WHEN RICKY CAME ABOARD? "Really excited. You have to have some knowns in the equation. There's the crew chief, the driver, the engine, and if you have an unknown in the driver than you won't ever know how good your teams is. And we know Ricky Rudd can win races. To me, if we don't win a race it's not Ricky's fault, it's our fault and we'll go back and work harder on it. That's the way we felt when we had Ernie Irvan. We knew we could win every single week and if we didn't get the job done, it was us, it was the equipment or the pit stops or whatever. What a great situation."

ISN'T IT IRONIC GOING TO CALIFORNIA WITH RICKY IN THE 28 AFTER WHAT HAPPENED BETWEEN RICKY AND DAVEY ALLISON WHEN HE WAS IN THE 28 (1991)? I remember that race very well. I was a lot younger and a lot more excitable back then. We were pretty hot about it. But NASCAR did the right thing for us."

DO YOU REMEMBER WHAT HAPPENED? RICKY WAS LEADING AND HE SPUN DAVEY OUT. THEN NASCAR GAVE HIM THE BLACK FLAG AND GAVE DAVEY THE CHECKERED FLAG? Yes, they sure did. It happened coming into 11."

AND ROBERT TOLD DAVEY NOT TO GO ALL THE WAY AROUND THE TRACK? "I don't remember that part. I just remember Davey was leading and we actually inherited the lead because Kyle (Petty) and some people who had run good all day had spun.

HAVE YOU AND RICKY TALKED ABOUT THAT AND LAUGHED ABOUT IT? "Yeah, we've talked about a lot of things and laughed about them. I think he’s (Ricky) matured a lot and his time as a car owner has really made him realize what we go through, and I think he’s enjoying life a lot more by now. I was asking him yesterday – we unloaded real fast – and he was smiling and I said, ‘Are we having fun yet?’ and he’s like, ‘Yeah, this is nice.’ Last year he was here (Pocono) and he was just struggling to make the race. We talk about old times – him and Davey, him and Earnhardt, a lot."

WHAT IS THE STATE OF ROAD RACING IN NASCAR RIGHT NOW? "I think the state of road-course racing is Jeff Gordon right now. If somebody figures out how to beat him, we’ll be good. It is some different things. We were talking last week, pretty much every week you have to leave your notebooks at home because things are changing so fast. And I’m sure you guys heard it, Rusty was talking about it, how his springs, and you saw Mark Martin, the he ran last week, and really got to get these cars on the ground, and guys are starting to realize that. The notes from two, three, fours years ago really aren’t applying, so the same thing is probably gonna happen when we go to Sears Point, you know, it’s gonna be a little bit different ballgame. The driver means so much out there. We did go test and we had a good test, and we’ll see."

WHAT DID THEY DO IN TURN 7? DO YOU KNOW? "No, I don’t. We went out there and tested two years ago … I’m not sure what they have now."

ON THROWING THE NOTEBOOK OUT THE WINDOW: HOW MUCH OF THAT HAS TO DO WITH THE NEW TIRE? "The tire is the basis for everything we do, and if the tires – I’m an engine guy so I may be speaking out of line – but the tires changed, and maybe the spring-rate of the tires change – the tire is basically a spring – and that made everybody adjust the car differently. I think if we all knew more about the tires then we could adjust faster and know more about it. It’s just the inconsistency of the tires is what really drives us crazy as a race team because you may g a good set and think that you’re really on to something, you may adjust one way, and then get a set of tires that’s the opposite way – tight to loose. That’s what the big unknown equation of the tire. We just don’t know enough about the tires. Now if Goodyear would come in and give you data on every set of tires you run maybe that’s what we need, or maybe we don’t, to make the races more competitive."

THEY WERE GOING TO DO THAT BUT NASCAR SAID NO. WHY WOULD NASCAR SAY NO? "I don’t know. Maybe if we all knew, the races wouldn’t be as good as they are now."

THE TIRES ARE INCONSISTENT? "It’s inconsistent. If you had the same thing every time, you can adjust your car to whatever the tires are doing. But if you get a set of tires that’s real tight one run, and loosen your car up, and the next set is loose, then you’re really in trouble."

SOME OF THE CREW CHIEFS HAVE ASKED NASCAR FOR THE DATA ON THIS (POCONO) RACE. HAVE YOU DONE THAT? "We did. And, we got the same response."

DID YOU GET A REASON WHY? "I actually was not in the conversation, but what I’ve heard is ‘we’re not going to release the data to anybody and we’re just going to keep the racing like that for now.’

WHY WOULD SOMEBODY PAY YOU TO BUILD MOTORS FOR THEM, AND THEN YOU GO OUT AND BEAT THEM ON THE RACETRACK? "I think the answer to that is, Why do those Indy-car guys buy engines from three manufacturers? Because there’s strength in numbers and technology. If we had $12 million to work with as the engine company, a guy who has a million and a half probably – if we do our homework and do our job right – cannot compete."

YOU’RE NOT GOING TO BEAT YOURSELF, ARE YOU? "I’ve got to look at it two ways. We own a race team, but it’s also a business for us. And good business says we give these guys good engines, and if they beat us on the racetrack than we need to go work on our racecars and race teams. So, it’s actually a good gauge for us. And, from time to time, we’ve had them beat us."

WHAT IS THE STATE OF YOUR ENGINE DEPARTMENT AS A BUSINESS RIGHT NOW? HOW MANY OUTSIDE ENGINE PROGRAMS DO YOU HAVE AND ARE YOU GOING TO DO ANYTHING LIKE INDY CARS, CART, IRL, ANYTHING LIKE THAT? "We have seven teams total in Winston Cup, including out two teams. We’d like to have a total of eight for next year."

WILL YOU HAVE CAL WELLS BACK NEXT YEAR? "Yes, his two cars next year. We want to become as strong – and where we’re looking is what’s the most sophisticated form in the world? F1. What do those guys do? We’re looking at the European style of building engines. And that’s where we have to go if we’re going to be better."

CAN YOU EXPLAIN THAT FURTHER? "I guess what I’m saying is in the past, engine design in the past, is make sure your dynos running 24 hours a day. Now, it’s making sure your computers and stuff are working 24 hours a day, designing the engine and doing the design of the engine on computer, and then testing it – instead of just those labor-intensive hours, you’re really doing a lot more sophisticated design work ahead of time, and that costs a lot of money.

WHAT ABOUT COSWORTH AND FORD? COULD THAT BE SOME SORT OF COMBINATION DEAL THERE? "Yeah, there could be some – there are talks of Cosworth, Ford bought Cosworth and they want to come Winston Cup racing. But they know also that if they come and compete with our team, than it’s going to be bad for them because it’s gonna make Jack … it’s not going to sit very well. There’s some talks of Cosworth and us getting together to work on some things, and Cosworth probably opening it up to the Busch and truck series to build engines. Cosworth made their money over the past 20 years building engines for racing. But what they also want to do is design parts, and make money. So, probably, we’re gonna work with them and design some components."

HAS THAT PROGRAM STARTED? OR WILL IT START SOON? "We’re in talks with them now. We’ll see. Ford’s focus is to win a championship, and the only way they can do that is to get good parts and good race teams – and that’s the way they help that out. We really appreciate Ford for giving us good stuff and we’ll work with them."

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE NEW DODGE ENGINE? "I think a lot of things start with the block. The bore center – they can get a lot bigger bore than we can. It’s 80-thousandths wider than ours, I believe. The cam location is way up so the push rods are real short in it."

WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? MORE HORSEPOWER? MORE TORQUE? "Actually, the valve train is more stable, so more rpm, you can spin it faster. So, the shorter stroke, bigger bore, shorter push rods – it can be a pretty powerful piece, if we don’t watch it. In my opinion they should run the truck engine. I think I heard that from somewhere … They’ve been racing, they’ve been racing competitive."

BUT THAT’S A ROLLER-CAM ENGINE, ISN’T IT? THEY’RE NOT GOING TO LET ROLLERS IN HERE, ARE THEY? THEY HAVE DONE A BUNCH OF DIFFERENT STUFF. "Slide a cam out, slide one in. It’s sounds pretty easy to me. They change them every week. I don’t know. We’ll see. They’re gonna treat them fair. I’m sure the Garys (Nelson) will make them sweat a little bit and back off some things."

THE POTENTIAL IS THERE. "The potential is there. But also, this is NASCAR, it’s gonna be a good show, and like I was telling these guys, we gotta do our homework. We’ve got to get one year smarter than we are right now or they will be ahead of us. There hasn’t been a single year since I got in this business that we haven’t made more power the following year than we did now. How do we get that one-year smarter?

THE TOP GUYS ARE MAKING 800 HORSEPOWER RIGHT NOW. WHAT’S THE MOST YOU’VE HEARD? "That’s about it."

MORE THAN EVER, RIGHT? "Right."

THAT’S WAY TOO MUCH HORSEPOWER FOR THESE CARS, RIGHT? YOU DON’T NEED THAT MUCH? "I don’t know. That’s to be debated. That’s kind of out of my hands. To me, I’m an engine guy. I want more power. It’s kind of a hard question. Robert would say we need safety, we need to slow then down. It’s just so it’s a good race. It’s not about having 1,000 horsepower or how much downforce, it’s just how competitive the race is and if it’s safe and nobody gets hurt. As you can see it’s not always a horsepower thing. I mean, Adam Petty, at 500 horsepower and that happened to him. It’s about safety, make sure these cars are safe and keep that going. I don’t know, maybe some day they do need to cut the engines back, but I wish if they would they would do it soon – sooner than later – because there is a lot of money involved."

ANY IDEAS ON HOW TO CUT BACK ON HORSEPOWER. CUBIC INCHES? "Definitely deal with cubic inches because as we see the 390 carburetor is not a good deal, because that’s your whole engine development. If somebody has a carburetor that’s 20 horsepower better, they go win. That’s why we don’t, which I think they’re talking about doing some of that. So, the cubic inch thing would be ideal for us. Set some bore and stroke limits and the cubic inch rule, and it’ll be a fair playing ground."

TALKING ABOUT TECHNOLOGY AND DESIGN, USING COMPUTERS AND ALL THAT, IS THAT PART OF THE REASON WHY THE PRICES OF SPONSORSHIP IS GOING SO HIGH? WE’RE HEARING $15 MILLION NOW, AND THAT’S APPROACHING FORMULA 1. IS IT BECAUSE OF THE TECHNOLOGY INVOLVED? "Yeah. Our engine program, you know, we have to do lease business to be able to create these things, to create revenue for it. An engine program for the 88 and 28 is three to three and a half million dollars per team. Where if you have a sponsor worth seven, and you spend three and a half on engines, by the time you buy tires and travel, you’re out of money – and that’s not even counting the race shop and the driver. We spend every dollar we get to race. You guys now, we love to win and we’re very competitive. We don’t have big houses or big yachts, and we want spend everything we can get. If we get twenty we’re gonna have more computers and more fancy equipment."

SOME OF THE SMALLER GUYS WERE SAYING, ‘YOU CAN’T SPEND $15 MILLION, WHY DO YOU NEED THAT? "Not taking anything away from what people are saying about us, I think that their visions and our visions are just a little different, and hopefully that doesn’t come across wrong, but it’s just things that we’ve seen and the places we’ve been, the Formula 1 technology that’s out there is where we need to be. Maybe some of these guys say, ‘Well, you don’t really need all that,’ but if you’re gonna win these days, you have to have everything. You have to have everything right and the engine is a big part of it."

IT’S JUST A MATTER OF KEEPING UP WITH THE TIMES, RIGHT? "Yeah, I mean that doesn’t mean that you’re gonna go out and win every race, that’s what you got to do to keep up. I mean, Penske’s working with Ilmore, that’s his backbone, and if he’s gonna have that kind of technology, they can machine their own pistons and make their own parts and he’s sit on five poles. So, obviously, his engine program is pretty strong."

WHERE TO YOU FIT IN INTO THE MANAGEMENT OPERATION OF WHAT IS A BIG BUSINESS? "That’s things of the growing pains we’re going through. We’ve gone from – when I started, I’ve been doing this for 10 years as of May – and when we started there was four guys in the engine room, including myself. Management was pretty easy. You passed each other in the hall and said, okay, these are the things that need to get done. Now, we have 40 engine guys at our shop and 20 at our manufacturing facility. At our shop, the management hasn’t changed, it’s still myself and my dad. So, we’re stepping up and hiring some guys. We’ve hired for spots, relations people, and try to have a guy, Mike Egge, to run our manufacturing facility, and he’s doing a great job. You have to hire good people and trust them that they can do the job, which is hard when you hire somebody to do the same job that you have done, because you never gonna do it like you think you did. My role has really changed. I like the testing and development of the engines. But now, there’s a lot of times that I’m dealing with people, and everybody wants a review, and a contract. So, there’s a lot of things there. And that costs money, too. Just the lawyers, and – the money, as you see, is starting to stack up as we’ve sat here and talked the money has elevated."

YOUR FATHER HAS PUSHED YOU UP IN THE BUSINESS. HOW IS THE TRANSITION OF YOUR UPWARD MOVE BEEN? WHEN WILL YOU BE ABLE TO SAY, ‘THIS IS MY TEAM’? "I feel he has taught me really well as far as the engine side of it. I need some good partners, as far as the chassis side goes. Todd Parrott is definitely in our future. I think he said he had a lifetime contract. So he definitely runs the 88-race team. Hopefully, we’re grooming Michael McSwain to get into that role with the 28-race team. There’s a lot of key players involved, and I think when we get those key players put in place and Robert feels like the 28 is where it should be – and he has a huge responsibility to Texaco, wanting that to do well. I think when that happens then he can sit back and relax and show up when he wants to show up, drive the truck when he wants to drive the truck and do things like that."

ONE OF THE RAPS ON YOU HAS BEEN YOU’RE YOUNG AND VOLITALE AND EAGER AND WANT TO GET THAT EXTRA 10 HORSEPOWER. HAVE YOU MELLOWED OUT…? "Now, now, now. Last year…"

LAST YEAR HE CALMED YOU DOWN A LITTLE BIT, DIDN’T HE? "Last year, I realized how you win a championship in this sport. It’s not about who has the most power every weekend. Matter of fact it’s not been who has the most horsepower, it’s who lasted every single race, has been consistent. Now, you have to run good, you can’t lay back … you have to finish every race, you have to be competitive, but going out and blowing up does no good for anybody. It’s like Jeremy Mayfield last week. Everybody said, well, he had a great run – but if we run our qualifying engine they’d probably say the same thing about us – but at the end of the day, where did he finish or what did he do? So, really, it’s all about points. It’s all about getting on that stage in New York, and that’s what I keep stressing to these guys. Last year is the first year I ever went to New York and, hopefully, I’m fortunate to get back many years to come."

OVER THE LAST YEAR OR SO YOU’VE LEARNED ABOUT MELLOWING OUT, GOING FOR DUABILITY INSTEAD OF THE EXTRA HORSEPOWER? "You definitely have to have a good mix of both. I went to college and got a degree in engineering and when I got out I thought I knew a lot more than these guys, and right away I learned that I didn’t. But I pushed hard – I mean, if you’re an engine guy there’s nothing better than seeing your engines. I mean, that’s what I would rather see the dyno run or the engine run down the straightaway, run fast for a short period of time, than win the race, initially – I’m learning that’s not the whole picture, and you gotta rely on your driver, the team and the whole thing to pull it through. That’s the way championships are won. And that’s hard, that was really hard to get over. But, finally, I think I got past that, I’m learning more and more about how this sport works and what it’s about – it’s about relationships and people, and this is our family in here and we all gotta take care of each other. Once you realize that and realize how the sport operates, I think that’s a maturity level that my dad is looking for me to get to before he says, ‘Okay, I’m gonna go the Bahamas for a while and see you in a little bit.’ But I don’t think he’ll ever get to that point. He just wants to be where he can slow down and give some time back to my mom that she has given up through the years."