USA TODAY International Edition
First Brickyard was turning point
Evernham recalls Gordon’s historic Indy win
The phone calls went out to A. J. Foyt, Pancho Carter and Wayne Leary — Indianapolis Motor Speedway veterans all.
Ray Evernham wanted mation. And these were contacts, people in the know.
The 1994 Brickyard 400 was months away, and beyond all of the anticipation surrounding NASCAR’s historic first race at the formerly all- Indy- car speedway, there was the mystery of designing and preparing a stock car for unknown territory.
It was sort of like driving into the desert. At night. With no headlights.
But Evernham excelled. A relatively inexperienced crew chief working with a talented but largely unproven driver in Jeff Gordon, he put together a race car that became the template for success in that first — and very memorable — Brickyard 400.
Gordon, who had built a strong open- wheel résumé while racing out of nearby Pittsboro, Ind., won the first Brickyard 400 in storybook fashion, leading 93 of 160 laps and taking first place from Ernie Irvan with five laps to go.
The packed grandstands cheered even above the sound of the engines as Gordon clicked off the final laps for a popular victory.
The groundwork for that success had been done long before, however, as Evernham searched for the combination that would unlock the door to one of racing’s most coveted victory lanes.
The NASCAR- Indy experience began in June 1992 when nine teams conducted two days of tire tests for Goodyear at the speedway, testing not only tire compounds but also the general feasibility of racing heavy stock cars at the almost flat, rectangular track.
A two- day open test followed in August 1993. Gordon, then a Sprint Cup rookie, had the test’s third- fastest speed, behind those of Bill Elliott and Mark Martin.
There were other tests — teams had virtually unlimited testing opportunities then — at the track, and Evernham was busy working with both new information and old advice on the best preparations for what would be a historic race.
That brought Foyt, a four- time Indy 500 winner; Carter, a veteran Indy- car driver, and Leary, a successful Indy- car chief mechanic from the 1960s to the 1980s, into the conversation.
“When you don’t know how much you don’t know, sometimes it’s easier,” Evernham said. “There was not a lot of history of stock cars being on that racetrack, and it opened a door for us to be able to do some things.”
Although Evernham was relatively new to the NASCAR crewchief game, he had had experience working as a mechanic on the stock cars that had been raced in the now- defunct International Race of Champions series, and that work had put him in contact with legend Foyt and others with Indy backgrounds.
“I talked a lot with those guys about different front- end settings and the different characteristics of the car,” Evernham said. “We went there and tested a couple of times and found it to be very different from everywhere else. People often get so caught up in having to do everything one way because it’s the way people have always done it. Well, this was new. They hadn’t run on a track shaped like Indy since Ontario ( now- defunct Ontario Motor Speedway in California) and certainly not one as smooth.
“Our front- end and suspension settings were completely different, along with the way we did the springs and shocks. We wanted to keep the nose of the car down. We did things with that car that were totally unheard of. The left- front spring was the stiffest on the car, and we had big brake pans.”
When teams unloaded in the garage for race weekend, Evernham thought he had a good car. “But I was never reasonably confident until the checkered flag fell,” he said. “We worked to make that car faster until the checkered flag fell. If we were in the garage, we were working on that car or on parts for it.”
Gordon led chunks of laps, dominating runs of 22, 23 and 26 consecutive laps. He and Irvan had a fierce late- race battle for the lead before a tire problem forced Irvan to the pits. Gordon won by .53 of a second over Brett Bodine, now NASCAR’s pace- car driver.
The win was Gordon’s second in a Cup car. His first victory had come 10 weeks earlier at Charlotte Motor Speedway in the Coca- Cola 600. He won the 600 with a boost from late- race strategy, Evernham deciding to go with a two- tire change to put the No. 24 car in position to win.
The win at Indy served to solidify the team’s potential, Evernham said.
“After Charlotte, everybody was saying, ‘ You got two tires. You snookered them,’ whatever. People are always going to say we won that one by trickery in the pits. But winning at Indy really established us a young team and showed that we knew how to build a fast race car and knew how to call a race.
“We had become mature, a race team that was capable of winning pretty much every week. It was a big day for us.”
And it was a landmark moment for Evernham, who would go on to win three Cup titles with Gordon.
Evernham said he grew up on the Indianapolis 500. “That was all I knew,” he said. “Indy is a special place for me. I’m a giant old Indy- car fan.
“Just to get the chance to race there was amazing to me. It’s a place that still to this day is special to me. To get an opportunity to race there and work in those garages and be part of Indy and then to win it, it was really an emotional experience. When things like that happen in your life, you don’t know how to take it. I remember being kind of speechless that day.”