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LOUDON, N.H. – Consistency.
That will be the emphasis of the PPI Motorsports Team next season after a strong second half, including a win at Martinsville, established owner Cal Wells III, Newburgh driver Ricky Craven, crew chief Mike Beam and their Tide Ford team as an up-and-coming entity on the NASCAR Winston Cup circuit..
It was a particularly memorable year for Craven, who re-established himself as a driver worthy of a full-time ride after three years as a journeyman driver with under-financed and under-manned teams.
He not only claimed his first victory in 174 career races when he took the checkered flag at the Old Dominion 500 last month, he had annexed the first ever second-place finish earlier this year at the Pepsi 400 in Michigan.
He wound up with seven Top-10 finishes which matched his previous best in 1997 when he was part of the Hendrick Motorsports Team along with 2001 points champ Jeff Gordon and Terry Labonte. He concluded that season a career-best 19th in points.
Craven and his second-year team finished 21st in points but, more importantly, they laid the foundation for the future.
“I’m very excited about what is coming up next year,” said Wells, who came over to NASCAR from the CART series two years ago. “We had a big year. My biggest disappointment is we weren’t very consistent. We’d have a great weekend and three bad ones; another great week and three bad ones.
“We’ve got to get rid of that. We’ve got an opportunity to do a lot better and really make a run at the top 15 in points if we stop shooting ourselves in the foot,” added Wells, whose team’s average start was 20.5 and average finish was 24th.
However, following their top-10 finishes, their average finish in the next race was 28th.
They had 11 finishes of 35th or worse this season.
“We have built a real good foundation,” said Englishman Nick Harvey, the team manager who came over to NASCAR from CART and has worked with Wells for five years between the two series.
“We obviously have a great driver and now we have a good support crew,” said Harvey. “When we dropped down from two cars to one, we got the cream of the crop. We were able to take the best of what we had.”
Harvey was referring to the McDonald’s Ford driven by Andy Houston which was scrapped late in the season after 17 races.
Houston was 46th in points when he was released by PPI-Motorsports.
“We have a good group of people who work together very well,” continued Harvey. “We’ve got a chemistry going now. The momentum we built over the end of this season will carry over into next year.”
Harvey feels making a run at the top 15 in owner points is “pretty conservative.”
Jimmy Kitchens, a member of the crew, also has high expectations.
“Next year could be an awesome year for the Tide Team,” predicted Kitchens, who joined the team in July and feels a top-10 finish in the points next season “isn’t that far out of reach.
“For a team that’s only two years old in this series, it has come a long way,” he said. “Naturally, the mistakes we made this year, we’re going to benefit from them next year. We won’t make the same mistakes twice.”
Kitchens said the chemistry between first-year crew chief Mike Beam and race engineer Roy McCauley is developing nicely.
“The more they work together, the more they start thinking alike and kind of mind readin’ a little bit on what the other guy is thinking. So it seems to be working out really well,” said Kitchens. “The longer a team works together, the more everybody becomes a team and understands more about what’s going on. The changes you make, you’re going to make them quicker.”
Wells said the crew will stay intact and he is looking for improvement.
“We need to do a better job getting our cars prepared,” said Wells. “For right now, we want everybody to get some rest. It’s been a tough season. We’re going to build a few more cars and we’ve got a lot of new stuff in the pipeline. When we get back, we’ll need to test properly. If we do, we’re going to be a factor.”
Craven said it was a great year.
“I’m proud of our guys and proud of the team,” he said. “I’m really looking forward to next year. We won one race, we contended in several others. We had a car capable of dominating the race last week [at the NAPA 500 in Atlanta] until we had our [transmission] problems.”
He said the expectations are so high now “that anything short of winning is a disappointment.”
Craven and the team will spend this week in their shop in North Carolina before heading to the NASCAR banquet in New York.
“Then I’m going to Jamaica and to Moosehead Lake for 10 days,” Craven said. “I’m going to enjoy the next month. This has been a hard year. It’s like baseball. It’s a long stretch. I’m excited about next year but I want to have some fun with the family for a while.”
Then they began gearing up for the opening race of the 2002 season.
The Budweiser Shootout on Feb. 10 and the Twin 125s four days later will be followed by the first official points race, the Daytona 500, on Feb. 17.
Dale Jarrett, who finished fifth in points, thinks the Tide team will be in the thick of things next year.
“I assume their future is good. It’s hard to tell because I have no idea who is going to be on their team next year,” said Jarrett. “But I have to think that because they came a long way this year, they’ll use that to their advantage and improve again next year.”
One of the vital ingredients that creates consistency is stability.
It took Wells two years to put the pieces of the puzzle together.
He gambled on Craven, whose crash-related injuries had made him damaged goods in the minds of some owners.
By racing for the flash-in-the-pan SBIII Motorsports Team, which became defunct almost as quickly as it surfaced, and Midwest Transit, Craven was forced to use every one of his racing skills just to qualify the cars and finish in the top 30. That’s when they raced.
They didn’t enter a lot of races because they didn’t have a car capable of competing.
When the PPI Motorsports Team called on Craven, not only had be become a more seasoned driver, he was also grateful just to be racing every weekend.
So when there would be a misfortune during a promising race, Craven took it in stride and began thinking about the next race.
He knew, for the first time since 1997, his career was back on track.
The team had growing pains but continued to improve. Five of the seven top-10 finishes occurred during the last 17 races.
Pit stops went from 17 seconds to 14.5 seconds, where they should be.
Craven is racing as aggressively as ever.
During the New Hampshire 300 on Friday, he bumped both Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Jerry Nadeau to let them know they were holding him up and he was going around them.
Which he did.
Now, it is up to Wells, Beam, Craven, McCauley and the crew to transform those 30th-43rd place finishes into top-20s.
And you can expect at least another win or two if the team continues its positive progression.
Craven race stats
RACING REVIEW
Ricky Craven’s race statistics for the 2001 NASCAR season:
Average start: 20.5
Average finish: 24.0
Total points/place: 3,379; 21
Money winnings: $1,908,119
Wins: 1
Poles: 1
Top 5 finishes: 4
Top 10 finishes: 7
Season highlight: Craven drives the No. 32 Tide Ford to his first career Winston Cup victory in the Old Dominion 500 on Oct. 15 at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway. He holds off a late charge from Dale Jarrett for the first victory for PPI Motorsports and owner Cal Wells. Craven had qualified sixth for the race.
Next race: Budweiser Shootout, Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway, Feb. 10, 2002
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