Season Preview: Gillette-Evernham Motorsports

by Tim Zaegel on January 29th, 2008

It wasn’t long ago that life was looking on the up and up for former team owner Ray Evernham. In 2003, the bedrock of his team was built around racing legend Bill Elliott who drover the no. 19 Dodge for Ray and finished the season ranked 9th in points while Jeremy Mayfield, pilot of the no. 19 car, showed remarkable improvement by climbing the ranks to 19th. That would be Bill’s final season running full-time for Evernham, moving over to make room for the next racing phenom, Kasey Kahne. It didn’t take Kahne long to pick up where Bill had left off as he finished 13th in points while Mayfield, now the number one car for the organization, moved all the way up to 10th with two wins of his own and Evernham’s other rookie driver, Scott Riggs, finished 29th. That, however, would be the last time that Ray Evernham placed two teams inside the top 15 in points. Since then, only Kasey Kahne in 2006 has qualified to make the Chase field, finishing in a disappointing 8th place. In fact, 2007 had to be – for lack of a better word – a complete nightmare for Ray. After replacing Jeremy Mayfield in the no. 19 car for the likes of Elliott Sadler, that team finished 25th in points while the no. 10 Valvoline team of Scott Riggs failed to even finish inside the top 35 in owner points. Even Kasey Kahne could muster nothing more than a 19th place showing.

With the sudden turn for the worse the organization has taken over the past two racing seasons, it’s no wonder that Ray was so quick to sell majority ownership of the team to Montreal Canadiens owner George Gillette. With new ownership in an organization looms the possibility of new direction, and that could be exactly what these teams need. The first order of business has been to replace Scott Riggs inside the no. 10 car with former IndySeries superstar Patrick Carpentier, which means that the Gillette-Evernham organization now boasts three very capable drivers within the ranks, and very little room for excuse.

Cup Series Roster

No. 9: Kasey Kahne – In 2007, Kahne managed to finish the season ranked only 19th in points, failing to record a single win on the season. That shouldn’t worry Kahne fans too much, though, given his history thus far in Cup racing. Following his rookie campaign in 2004 when he finished 13th in points, the driver of the no. 9 Dodge dropped all the way 23rd, only to rebound the following year to make the Chase for the Cup field and finishing 8th in points. With new ownership and a new sponsor in Budweiser, Kahne will head into 2008 with a fresh new attitude and a lot of pressure to perform.

No. 10: Patrick Carpentier – The Canadian native hadn’t raced since he decided to given up open wheel racing in the Indyseries following 2005 … until the NASCAR Busch Series debuted in Montreal last August, that is. Carpentier entered his name for that race, won the pole, and went onto finish 2nd in that race, leading to a little more seat time for Gillette-Evernham that season and earning himself a full-time Cup ride in 2008. He’s going to have his hands full, though, since last year’s driver of the no. 10 – Scott Riggs – failed to qualify the car inside the top 35 in owners points, meaning he’s going to have to qualify that car on time right from the get-go, starting with Daytona.

No. 19: Elliott Sadler – Fans waited for this star in the making to breakout for years following his win at Bristol back in 2001, but it didn’t happen until 2004 when Elliott – then driving the no. 38 Ford for Robert Yates Racing – climbed up to 9th in points on the back of a two-win season and finished 13th in 2005. It’s been downhill ever since, though, as 2006 saw the Texan plummet down to 22nd, incidentally ending the relationship between Sadler and Yates Racing. 2007 seemed as though it would be promising when he hooked up with Evernham, but the combination produced very few results, as Sadler only finished 25th, earning 0 wins and only 2 top ten finishes. With both Sadler and the entire Evernham organization struggling, they will need to take everything they learned from 2007 and translate that into a winning combination at least on some level.

 Grades:

Driver Roster:  B-

Off-Season:  C+

2008 Outlook:  B

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