Newsmaker: Chip Ganassi

Chip Ganassi has fielded championship teams in the CART Champ Car Series and the Grand American Road Racing Series. All that's missing is a title in NASCAR.

Ganassi met with reporters recently to talk about his three teams in the Nextel Cup Series and his plans to field Reed Sorenson in the Busch Series. Here are some excerpts from that press conference:

Question: What are your plans for the 2005 NASCAR season?

Ganassi: This team is about consistently competing at the highest level and at the same time providing more value to our sponsors and the investments they make or could make by operating smart and making efficient use of the resources we have. When you're investing heavily in the future -- we're certainly focusing on what's coming up at Daytona, what's coming up for the 2005 season -- but we're also focusing on the future. We're also proud of our driver development program. Our strategy with our driver development program is not to hire a bunch of guys and see who rises to the top. That's not it. Our strategy is to pick guys we believe in and make them a part of our team. Also last year, we recruited six top-level athletes and developed them as our pit crew members. This year all six of these athletes are strung among the 40, 41 and 42 cars and we're very excited about that program. Our Busch team is going to be running a full schedule this year with Reed Sorenson and our new sponsor Discount Tire Company. We're expecting them to compete for wins.The backbone of the company is the No. 40 Coors Light team and driver Sterling Marlin. Last year the 40 team did not perform to our expectations, so we sat down and had to make some significant changes. We did some restructuring, including making Steve Boyer the crew chief. We've reworked almost the entire pit crew, and we expect to see some significant improvement in the 40 car this season. Casey (Mears') performance last season was a huge jump from his first year in Nextel Cup. We're looking for a jump like that again in 2005. We'd like to see a little more consistency. Everybody on the Target team is back in 2005. Jamie (McMurray) and Donnie (Wingo, crew chief) and everybody on the Texaco/Havoline team are ready to compete for the championship. It's that simple. We got eked out of the top 10 last year by 15 points, but there's nothing older than yesterday's news. The only thing left for that team to do is win races and compete for the championship. With the improvements we've made to the whole team, we expect to see the 42 car in victory lane and making a run at this thing this year. It's that simple.

Question: You didn't have a team competing in the Chase for the Nextel Cup last year. How do you turn that around this year?

Ganassi: During 2004 we began to see more consistency in all three teams. I think that's a testament to the way we've turned this thing around. We're operating as one team. Every team here has the same resources and the same equipment. They share information. The only difference in the teams is our people. This summer in the southeast corner of our building we're going to continue our relationship with Ernie Elliott and we're going to put an engine shop up. We look forward to getting that program under way about March or April. I think you can always look for something interesting here.

Question: You've been around several racing series, so compared to others, how would you describe NASCAR's popularity?

Ganassi: Sports in general right now, the sports entities that are growing seem to be growing and the entities that seem to be faltering, there seems to be no end to their faltering. I think that's across the board in all sports right now. I think when something's good we latch on to it. When something's bad, we want to wash our hands of it and get away from it. Things that are going in a positive direction are going to keep going that way. Things that are negative are going to keep going that way. It's like hockey right now. Felix has the hockey team here in town and that's great at that level. I think the next level above it, nobody is really watching it or concerned about it. I don't understand why other sanctioning bodies don't adopt successful ideas or strategies that other winning organizations have. If I was one of these other sanctioning bodies, I'd start doing it the NASCAR way. It seems pretty simple to me. They own a lot of things, but they don't own the way of doing things. I'd start to copy that.

Question: Are you too patient with your Nextel Cup Series teams?

Ganassi: At the end of the day, we've got to win races. I don't know if I've been too patient, but I can tell you we're obviously at the point where we need to start being in front consistently and closing out the checkered flag.

Question: Is it difficult to stay on top of your game in racing?

Ganassi: Racing is a delicate balance of man and machine and attitude. You get a lot of lumpy things that have to go together to make a winning organization. It takes a long time to build that up. Once you have that you have to keep it, and once you keep it for a while, everybody in my experience, people in an organization, if you don't do a good job of preaching those values to your people, it provides opportunities for other people to come in and try to break up your team and your winning organization. I've seen it from a lot of different angles, and all I can tell you for sure is that it's a delicate balance of a lot of moving parts. Complacency isn't a big concern under this roof. That's not one of our challenges.

Question: Is there a benefit in competing in different racing series?

Ganassi: I think there is. We have so many costs today that are huge expenses in this business. If you can amortize those costs over two or three different teams, it makes it a little less expensive. At the end of the day, a racetrack doesn't know what kind of car is on it. All a racetrack knows is there's four patches of rubber that are touching it. It doesn't know if it's a Busch car or a Cup car or IndyCar, sports car or whatever. It's who manages those four patches of rubber the best that's going to be up at the front. You can share engineering concepts, there's a lot more crossover than you might think, and I don't want to tell all my competitors what it is.

Question: What is your management style?

Ganassi: I like to give the guys the tools they need to work with and I let them go do their job. I don't think I'm a micro manager, but I don't think I'm such a macro guy that I'm untouchable or I'm hard to get a hold of. I don't think I'm any of those. I would like to think I'm somewhere in the middle, and I have a lot to learn yet about this business. I don't know what my management style is, but I'm sure if you guys are around me along enough, you'll put some kind of label on it. I seem to have been able to get it done in other arenas. I guess the jury is out whether I can get it done in this arena or not.