Friday, June 14, 2002
Atwood rolling at just the right time
By JENNA FRYER
AP Sports Writer
BROOKLYN, Mich. — There could be no better time for Casey Atwood to get his season rolling.
Atwood has posted consecutive season-best finishes and shown the potential car owner Ray Evernham was certain the 22-year-old had when he first picked him to drive two years ago
It sends him into this weekend's Sirius Satellite Radio 400 at Michigan International Speedway on a high note and has everyone associated with his young program ecstatic.
Sirius, making its first venture into auto racing this year, sponsors both Atwood's No. 7 Dodge Intrepid and the race. The company is celebrating this weekend with a special paint scheme on Atwood's car of a Latin group that is playing at a concert it's hosting. The Blues Brothers will also play, which had Atwood especially excited.
“Ray and I are introducing the bands at the Sirius concert, it should be pretty neat,” Atwood said. “It'll be neat to see the Blues Brothers. I didn't realize they were a group, I just thought it was a movie. It should be a lot of fun for everyone.”
After a rocky rookie campaign, Atwood is finally starting to have a little fun himself.
His first year wasn't exactly smooth as Evernham also struggled to figure out how to be a car owner after making his name as Jeff Gordon's crew chief.
Near the end of the season, Evernham realized he needed someone a little more experienced in the car to help veteran Bill Elliott, his other driver.
He hired Jeremy Mayfield to replace Atwood, but instead of casting Atwood off, Evernham bought a piece of Ultra Motorsports and put the youngster in that car to keep him under his umbrella.
Still, things were rocky at the start of the season. But there's been a turnaround since Tony Furr left Hendrick Motorsports last month and Evernham snatched him up to be Atwood's crew chief.
Furr's presence has helped dramatically — Atwood first had a season-best finish of 14th two weeks ago in Dover, Del., then bested it with his 11th place finish at Pocono last week.
“We've brought in Tony and he sees a lot of potential here,” Evernham said. ” I needed to bring an experienced leader to that team and he's already paying off.
“He's providing new structure for the team, he's helping them improve the ways they are doing things and he's wringing more performance out of the team.”
Gordon, who Evernham won three Winston Cup championships with, is the defending race champion. But he's winless in 22 events, the worst slump since the first of his 58 career victories in 1994, and like Atwood is looking for a big finish on Sunday.
He likes Michigan with its 2.0-mile D-shape and has been fairly successful here, giving car owner Rick Hendrick his 100th win with Gordon's victory last June.
But should he not be in contention to win again this weekend, Gordon could set another milestone: A top-10 finish would give Gordon his 200th career Winston Cup top 10 in just 308 starts.
“It's hard to imagine that we've got that many top-10's,” said Gordon. “It just goes to show how consistent this team has been over the years. I think it's a pretty good testament to how hard we've worked.
So far this season, Gordon has nine top-10's including his current streak of four-in-a-row. The consistency has him third in the points standings, 165 behind leader Sterling Marlin.
“I'm happy with our current streak of finishes, but we need to turn those into wins and top fives if we want to stay in the thick of the championship chase,” he said.
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Atwood rolling at just the right time
