Jarrett looks for answers in season of frustration
Quote selected text Published July 22nd, 2007 in NASCAR News
The national pastime figures heavily into Dale Jarrett’s plans for the last off weekend of the season in the Nextel Cup Series. Jarrett will take in a game with his family at Yankee Stadium on Thursday before heading to Cooperstown, N.Y., for his first visit to the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Exploring those hallowed institutions is about as close as the 1999 NASCAR champion gets to greatness these days.
Jarrett, who moved to Michael Waltrip Racing’s start-up Toyota team after 12 years with Robert Yates Racing and Ford, is suffering through the worst season of a career that dates to 1984.
The 32-time winner has become accustomed to spending Sundays at home since his streak of 424 Cup starts ended at Richmond International Raceway in May. He hasn’t qualified for six of the past 10 races, dropping to 40th in the points standings.
“Even though I knew it was a huge undertaking, I felt like things would probably go better than they have,” said Jarrett, who was named one of NASCAR’s 50 greatest drivers in 1998. “The difficult part is trying to find the answers as to why we’re not as good as what we feel we should be. If it were one thing, that would be easy.”
Starting with a cheating scandal before the Daytona 500, MWR has spent the year weathering crises. In addition to attempting to start a three-car team from scratch with a new manufacturer, the team has faced building two models of race cars because of NASCAR’s Car of Tomorrow rollout.
“We couldn’t have picked a more difficult time to do this,” Jarrett said.
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i have no sympathy for him. he had a solid ride with ford and yates, winning at talladega in 05, and now this. i hope he continues to have bad luck. stupidity deserves no respect.
You’re in a Toyota! DUH!!!!! Go to a Chevy team dude and you’ll do just fine!!!
joe, that was uncalled for. Yates was the one that fucked him over last year by firing his crew chief, his spotter, and whatnot. Dale is one of the 50 greatest NASCAR drivers of all-time. While I don’t approve of him going to a Toyota team, he really had no other options. Hi last year in the sport is next season, and only God knows iff he’ll have a ride available.
joe, that was uncalled for.
Even though he jump ship for an import he was just trying to help out a friend come on give the guy a break.
Joe, you’re right on one thing. No respect deserved for your stupidity.
Chris, I agree completely. Forewarning about swearing though-Just
don’t want to see an apparently intelligent person get blocked from
the boards for it.
DJ is not on his A-game anymore, that’s quite obvious. But I say as
long as he still has a passion for it, have at it. Hopefully he joins
up with a better team next season, however.
And by the way, the import bs is still just that: bs. As I’ve said
before, Toyota has factories in our country, Ford and Chevy have
factories overseas. It balances out, so it doesn’t matter if he’s in
an “import” model or not.
DJ is a perfect example of what Nascar has become. A place to collect a fat paycheck.
JOE!! THAT WAS FUNNY!!!! come on guy he went to MWM IN A TOY. DID HE THINK THAT IT WAS GOING TO EASY OR WHAT?? MIKE IS NOT A GOOD DRIVER. I KNOW ALL OF YOU OUT THERE ARE GOING TO SAY HE HAS TWO DAYTONA 500 WINS. IT JUST SUCK THAT HE WANTED TO BE ONE OF THE PIONERS OF THE TOYS IN THE CUP SIDE OF THINGS. STUPID MOVE ON DJ PART……. HELL YES…..TO GO WITH MIKE W? WHAT WHERE YOU THINKING???
Right now, he’s wondering if he is smarter than a 5th grader! We know he won’t be on Jeopardy!
Honestly what did you expect from Toyota?
A new Manufacter+a driver past his time= Success???
No.
DJ is past his prime but so is ricky rudd and he still makes races in part from the points that DJ got last year MWM or whatever may got in over there heads and Dale will pay the price hey he better watch his back 2 other older drivers lost their rides
Yeah. He definitely is not the same guy he used to be. While I still think he is capable of another couple wins, he DEFINITELY will not do it w/ MWR, maybe even any Toyota team. They are so far behind the other 3 manufacturers, that I would be surprised if a Toyota won a race next season either.
DJ being w/ MWR makes him look 10X worse than he really is. Dale is still a great race car driver. I would not go so far as to say he is still Sprint Cup winning material, but he should @ least be making the Chase every season. The main reason why his level of competitiveness has dropped, is b/c of him being w/ teams who are just not good enough. The last few seasons he was w/ Robert and Doug Yates, it just was not working well as it had in the late 90’s. If he were on Haas-CNC or Furniture Row Racing (which I heard might be a possible new satellite team for Hendrick in ‘08), he would be running as good as Mark Martin. Success in NASCAR is based more so on the driver, but the car and the manufacturer also play a significant role. Dale is still the man, but he is not on a good team.
Joe is completely right and as far as Breanna calling Chris intelligent is using the term loosely coming from a foul mouth, think they know it all. The reason Yates fired members of the #88 is because Jarrett got pretty good at using the team as his excuse as to his lack of driving ability. How many crew chiefs did Jarrett go thru the past couple years? How many of those crew chiefs went on to other teams and were successful? True Yates isn’t on top of his game these days, but like mentioned above Rudd is the same age as Jarrett yet he makes the races at least. I remember during a pre-race press conference at Daytona Jarrett feeling all cocky saying he can compete with the younger drivers….yeah he can’t even run with the Kyle Petty’s or Ken Scraders any more, but what can you expect when he team owner is a “never was” to start with and was known just for pushing Junior to wins and his goofy post race interviews. You know like I do he was hired strictly because he had past champion provisionals. You think Mikey hired Terry Labonte this week for the indy race because he’s a hard charger? Jarrett got exactly what he had coming to him.
If you knew much about racing you would know driver and crew chief
have to have a good working relationship or there’s no point
in keeping them around; that’s why he went through so many crew
chiefs. And if a driver isn’t going to go into the season with a
positive attitude there’s no point in going into it at all, so I
applaud him for his optimism. Yes DJ took a chance going
to a Toyota, but somebody had to and if he had no other better options
and he wasn’t winning at Yates, why not? Atleast he had the b__ls
to make the decision instead of resting on his laurels at Yates.
I believe he was lured by big bucks. They wanted his experience and champion’s provisionals, which he used up right away.
Breanna, you sure seem to think you know what it takes to have a set….
Why d’you feel the need to stalk me and personally attack me on every
board? It’s seriously getting old. And please, do tell me which part
of my post wasn’t true and/or atleast based on logic, even if you
don’t agree with it. DJ took the option he thought was best and it
didn’t work out, but atleast he wasn’t content to stay with a team
he couldn’t win with.
breanna…you are _ ________ _____ _____.
And you ___ __ ________ ____ for thinking so just because my opinion
differs from yours. Point? Once again, if anyone can prove to
me that my opinion isn’t atleast based in logic, whether you agree with
it or not, I’ll actually think your opinion intelligent enough to
consider. Yet no one can. Interesting.
ha re-reading through that article, he even admits his mistake. And
yet people still go on about how stupid he is, etc. Atleast he admits
he screwed up, that’s more than a lot of people on here will do. I
also don’t see why, if he’s such a hack, people consider what he does
important enough to talk about. So what if he’s not at the top level
anymore; he’s the one who left a so-called “cushy” ride-that he wasn’t
winning or being competitive in-for a new option, taking the chance
that it’d go better. That shows he has more competitive spirit than
a lot of the young guys out there, regardless of how the change
turned out.
DJ sold his soul for money.
Let’s be honest, he wasn’t going to win a boatload of races anyway….might as well pad his retirement account.
I DO have a very large set of b__ls…..and?
Ah, I see someone is still pretending to be me. And they even remembered
the period this time, though they still don’t know my email. I’m
flattered, really, but learn to let it go dude.
Breanna if you knew so much about racing you’d know that good drivers like Mark Martin can work with almost any crew chiefs out there and put up a top ten finish. Yates keep trying to find someone to make Jarrett race up front like he use to but he instead kept blaming his failures to the new crew chiefs and off they went and bring in the next guy. As far as MWR goes, why is it the 00 usually quailifies and finishes better than 44 or 55? Because he’s the only one left with talent left in his tank. Do I blame Jarrett for leaving Yates for the $$? No but come Daytona he didn’t have to bash Yates as being the problem. He gave Jarrett a championship caliber car one year and many top 5 and top 10 seasons. In my eyes he’s a jerk for kicking Yates in the teeth while he’s down. He could have kept his mouth shut and let the past be the past. I applaud it blew up in his face and Waltrip is getting the smug look wiped off his face he packed around last year. Also as far as you saying someone had to take the chance to go to Toyota?? Why? It was the money calling, so you don’t sound like you know S__t about racing.
What on earth money could you be talking about? It’s not like MWR
could pay DJ as much as RYR was, being a start-up team with a
start-up maufacturer. It was not wanting to be the driver who gave
up in his later years that made him switch teams.
She does not know ____ about racing, she is a lonely ‘wanna be’ race fan who has opinions and nothing else. What those opinions are based on is yet to be determined.
Toyota bought DJ with a fat paycheck and bought many others also, that is common knowledge within the racing community. Comments like that last one from ‘I grave attention’ show her level of racing knowledge, which is minimal.
My favorite was saying how Davey Allison made it interesting and he died when ‘it’ was 5 years old. I just bet she has some GREAT memmories of watching him race. BS!
No, actually, that was from looking up and researching clips of old
racing.
And here you go turning a board into a discussion about me again. Tell
me, if I’m worth so little of your time, why d’you keep trying to
do that? Give it a rest already; I get it, you don’t like me. Trust
me, I really don’t give a rat’s a__. You have yet to prove that
my opinions aren’t atleast based in logic, whether you find them
agreeable or not, which I have challenged you to do several times to
prove your opinions of me have any merit.
Well, I’ve said my piece, yet another board I can now ignore you on
cuz you’ll probably carry it on bashing me like you always do.
First I want to say, that what Joe said was completely uncalled for. DJ is a great driver and I beleive he still has it. However, he doesn’t have good equipment. There at the end the equipment that Robert Yates was giving him was crap, that is why Elliott Sadler left Robert Yates the same year. Yeah I know it is so easy to say it is because he is past his prime and he is to old and so on and so on, but if you don’t have good equipment then what can you do. I know of two races that DJ has been in this year where he was doing a good job, running in the top ten and then with less than 20 laps to go his engine blew, r u saying that is DJ’s fault. No it is the equipment.
I agree that DJ going with Waltrip and Toyota was a bad move but you know what, everyone learns from there mistakes. But he also wanted a challange and whanted to help his friend. Well he certainly has a challange.
And as far as crew cheifs go, u have to be able to be insync with one another and really know each other. Dale’s guy was Todd, when Todd started having family problems he lost faith in everything to the point he lost faith in his driver, therefore he thought that it was best to leave and get things settled and get his life back on track. And when he came back he just didn’t have the feel for it anymore. And DJ has had a lot of great crew cheifs since Todd but no one has been able to fit with DJ to create the succes that he and Tod had together. And I agree when RY had the rotating door for employees that is what he was focusing on and not focusing on his equipment and that is why he lost his drivers.
But I have faith that DJ will turn this into a positive he always does.
“Toyota bought DJ with a fat paycheck and bought many others also, that is common knowledge within the racing community. Comments like that last one from ‘I grave attention’ show her level of racing knowledge, which is minimal.”
what happened…no response to what is actually important? Does this mean you are wrong again?
No, it means I refuse to believe every person on this earth puts money
as their first priority because I’d like to retain even a small sliver
of faith in humanity. Why would DJ care that much about making more
money? He’s made plenty. As Leslie said, he wanted a challenge and he
wanted to help a friend out. Mark Martin did the same kind of thing,
left a “cushy ride” for a startup team. They’re both near the end of
their careers and they know it so hell, why not try something different?
MWR paid DJ with Toyota’s deep pockets, it’s well documented Breanna they have done this in other forms motorsports in the past that they were involved in. How’s that for facts? How do you say it “Prove me wrong!!”