[JBurtonFanInMayberry]

and forms an alliance with Gillette-Evernham.

FOX Sports on MSN - NASCAR - Gordon leaves Ford, partners with Gillett Evernham

[Quality88]

Good move at this point.

[bears9]

I give credit to Evernham, there all these small Dodge who can't seem win but Evernham is merging with small teams to give his boys a chance to win and doing a very good job of it.

[wingkey1]

Interesting. With Evernham now pretty much on the sideline and out of the picture, gotta wonder the reasoning for Robbies move. Could be with Evernham less/not involved he's see's better times coming? No idea but the move after Evernham is sidelined makes one wonder. The Evernham teams performance has certainly been on the downslope comparatively.

Will be interesting at seasons end to see how thin plays out for Robbie.

[Bob Tanner]

A couple of statements Lee quoted Robbie as saying confuse me a bit. Can anyone explain?

". With the whole Dakar thing, that put us off edge a little bit, and this was a way to get back on track and keep going forward until they figure out what they're going to do with the Dakar Rally."

I must be missing something... this statement doesn't make sense to me.

"(The alliance) put us in, I'm going to say, a little bit of financial trouble, and put us in a position where I needed to look elsewhere for opportunities to grow."

What alliance? The only alliance I saw mentioned was his alliance with GEM. It seems strange that a owner/driver team, already struggling, would knowingly put itself in a financial bind. Things are already tough enough. Why stir up the already muddy water?

Finallt, I sure hope it works. Pessimistic Bob has a lot of doubts; these "Let's play together" deals historically works only when Hendrick is involved.

[LSC9901]

Originally Posted by Bob Tanner

A couple of statements Lee quoted Robbie as saying confuse me a bit. Can anyone explain?

". With the whole Dakar thing, that put us off edge a little bit, and this was a way to get back on track and keep going forward until they figure out what they're going to do with the Dakar Rally."

I must be missing something... this statement doesn't make sense to me.

"(The alliance) put us in, I'm going to say, a little bit of financial trouble, and put us in a position where I needed to look elsewhere for opportunities to grow."

What alliance? The only alliance I saw mentioned was his alliance with GEM. It seems strange that a owner/driver team, already struggling, would knowingly put itself in a financial bind. Things are already tough enough. Why stir up the already muddy water?

Finallt, I sure hope it works. Pessimistic Bob has a lot of doubts; these "Let's play together" deals historically works only when Hendrick is involved.

My take is that Robbie sees the writing on the wall and just wants to align himself with anyone.

[wingkey1]

Originally Posted by Bob Tanner

A couple of statements Lee quoted Robbie as saying confuse me a bit. Can anyone explain?

". With the whole Dakar thing, that put us off edge a little bit, and this was a way to get back on track and keep going forward until they figure out what they're going to do with the Dakar Rally."

I must be missing something... this statement doesn't make sense to me.

"(The alliance) put us in, I'm going to say, a little bit of financial trouble, and put us in a position where I needed to look elsewhere for opportunities to grow."

What alliance? The only alliance I saw mentioned was his alliance with GEM. It seems strange that a owner/driver team, already struggling, would knowingly put itself in a financial bind. Things are already tough enough. Why stir up the already muddy water?

Finallt, I sure hope it works. Pessimistic Bob has a lot of doubts; these "Let's play together" deals historically works only when Hendrick is involved.

Cannot find specifics as yet on the Alliance", but with the cancellation of the Dakar Rally Gordon's significant preparation investments will not see the compensation associated with competing in the event. Additional quotes from Gordom:

“From the time Homestead stopped to Friday at 1 p.m. Portugal time, I know the NASCAR team has been working on this side, but the off-road team and myself have been just slammed testing and working out all of our systems. We built a really neat little race car, actually not one of them but two of them, and to build those cars – we have over a million dollars in each car – we were built to win this year. We optimized every piece of the rules we could. When you knock 20 percent of the weight out of a vehicle in one season, you’ve made big strides. There wasn’t any pieces of aluminum on the race car. Everything was carbon or Kevlar, and to have a race cancelled is a hard one to swallow. It puts us in a very precarious situation with our sponsors more than anything because, obviously, contracts have things like acts of God or terrorists and stuff like that, but you don’t like to put your sponsors in that position either".

"It’s not a hobby for us. Don’t get me wrong, I love to do it, but at the same time it’s a business for us and we spent an awful, awful lot of money. I explained this to someone the other day and I think some people misunderstand all the way until you start explaining it like this. It was 16 races. It was half of a NASCAR season in a 17-day period, so all the parts are bought. The transmissions, the axels, all the stuff is bought. The trucks were shipped. We were gonna run two cars so we were basically gonna cram a full NASCAR season into a 16-day period. You can imagine the amount of preparation it takes to do that. It was a 6,000-mile race. We had 10 gear boxes, 20 sets of axels and CV joints, and parts that just aren’t cheap. Gear boxes for those cars were like $40,000 apiece. They’re GTP cars or Formula One cars for the dirt and to have them cancel it and not just postpone it or re-think of a way to make the race happen and keep everything on track, it puts a lot of people, not just myself, it puts a lot of us in a very awkward situation.”

[wingkey1]

More from Robbie on Dakar:

“I think we spent $4.5 million.”

[FONT='Verdana','sans-serif']YOUR BUDGET IS BASED ON YOUR SPONSORSHIP? “Yeah, and for us we had a bunch of things in place – what if. If we win, this happens, this happens and this happens. That’s where we make our money. We were working on a deal with Microsoft, where people could race the rally next year via the internet with X-Box, and now that’s out the window. There are so many other side programs that are messed up because of this.” [/font]
[FONT='Verdana','sans-serif'][/font]
[FONT='Verdana','sans-serif']"Our deals with all of our Dakar Rally sponsors are through the 2010 Dakar Rally, but, obviously, this causes a problem so now we’ve just got to sit and discuss it. Those are some of the conversations that are gonna go on this week.” [/font]
[FONT='Verdana','sans-serif'][/font]
[FONT='Verdana','sans-serif'][FONT='Verdana','sans-serif']YOU WERE IN PORTUGAL ALREADY WHEN THEY CALLED THE RACE OFF? “We were in the line for tech. Our scheduled slot was 1:45 and they called the race at one o’clock".[/font][/font]
[FONT='Verdana','sans-serif'][FONT='Verdana','sans-serif'][/font][/font]
[FONT='Verdana','sans-serif'][FONT='Verdana','sans-serif'][FONT='Verdana','sans-serif']HOW MANY FULL-TIME GUYS IN YOUR SHOP HAVE WORKED ON THIS PROGRAM? “For the last three months we’ve had 40 guys there. That’s in our shop in Anaheim and they’ve just been pumping. The work weeks that these guys put in. I mean, 100-hour work weeks just aren’t a big deal".[/font][/font][/font]

[Racer Duck]

Robbie lost a bunch of money because the Dakar was called while he was in line for tech (kinda late for them to do such a thing, wouldn't you say?) Everyone was checked out of their hotel rooms and preparing to move to their next destination. So, there's maybe 6000 people standing there with no idea what to do, no warning it was coming, nothing. And forget trying to get airline tickets... what a mess. Robby was very outspoken against the organizers, while understanding why they did what they did, he could not excuse their complete disregard for the financial impact on the teams for their late cancellation with out even a backup plan or a query to the teams to see if they'd entertain running a modified event. They just shut it down and walked away.

Next, because the race didn't come off, (and Robbie was a favorite to win) lots of potential income was sacrificed in that single instant when it was called. That income had been planned to support RGR in all it's racing endeavors, now it has to be replaced or cutbacks made.

The "Alliance" Robby spoke of is the organizers of the Dakar Rally. It's an alliance of Frenchmen out of Paris. 'Nuff said about that!

Finally, I don't think it was lost on Robby the improvement in speed the Dodges were showing at Daytona testing. With Yates Racing going under, the writing was on the wall as far as Ford was concerned in NASCAR. "Best to jump ship as soon as possible" that's what he was thinking. (I'll bet you can buy a good Ford Chassis and engine from RGR right now .. never raced. go ahead, Robbie needs the money.) He needed less expensive way to keep on racing Cup. GEM was the ticket. Remember, Ray had accompanied Robbie to an off road race and came away promising to help Robbie, possibly with shocks - that's the connection that everyone is missing. So Dodge gets another "big name" sporting it's marque, Robbie gets "inside" help from GEM, and everyone (except Ford) is happy!

Anyone still confused?

[jks812]

I think it's a good move on Robbie's part. Especially since nobody knows what's gonna happen with Yates and I really don't see Roush helping another team, even if it is a ford team. I mean, he even let his own team get behind. I hope it works. Would be great to see Robbie running good.

[Racer Duck]

When you look at Robbie's racing history, one thing pops out at you: he is NOT brand loyal. Before this change:

• His Cup and Busch cars were Ford Fusions
• His Off Road truck (for SCORE and CORR) is a Chevy CK1500
• His Dakar steed is a highly modified Hummer H3

[Racer Duck]

Originally Posted by Racer Duck

Robbie lost a bunch of money because the Dakar was called while he was in line for tech (kinda late for them to do such a thing, wouldn't you say?) Everyone was checked out of their hotel rooms and preparing to move to their next destination. So, there's maybe 6000 people standing there with no idea what to do, no warning it was coming, nothing. And forget trying to get airline tickets... what a mess. Robby was very outspoken against the organizers, while understanding why they did what they did, he could not excuse their complete disregard for the financial impact on the teams for their late cancellation with out even a backup plan or a query to the teams to see if they'd entertain running a modified event. They just shut it down and walked away.

Next, because the race didn't come off, (and Robbie was a favorite to win) lots of potential income was sacrificed in that single instant when it was called. That income had been planned to support RGR in all it's racing endeavors, now it has to be replaced or cutbacks made.

The "Alliance" Robby spoke of is the organizers of the Dakar Rally. It's an alliance of Frenchmen out of Paris. 'Nuff said about that!

Finally, I don't think it was lost on Robby the improvement in speed the Dodges were showing at Daytona testing. With Yates Racing going under, the writing was on the wall as far as Ford was concerned in NASCAR. "Best to jump ship as soon as possible" that's what he was thinking. (I'll bet you can buy a good Ford Chassis and engine from RGR right now .. never raced. go ahead, Robbie needs the money.) He needed less expensive way to keep on racing Cup. GEM was the ticket. Remember, Ray had accompanied Robbie to an off road race and came away promising to help Robbie, possibly with shocks - that's the connection that everyone is missing. So Dodge gets another "big name" sporting it's marque, Robbie gets "inside" help from GEM, and everyone (except Ford) is happy!

Anyone still confused?

Thought I'd give you an idea of the effort required to compete in the Dakar. Here's just the motorcade to take the support vehicles from Anaheim to Savannah so they can catch a boat to Lisbon, Spain. Those big dark trucks on the 22 wheeler's trailers are specially built garages that look like trucks that travel across the desert, swamps, and mountains to support the racers. The race vehicles stayed behind so they could get in a little more testing before leaving.


You can read more about it at Press Releases

[Bassdogs]

I'm sure someone will set me straight, but where does making a $4.5 million investment in an offroad race make any financial sense? Are we to believe you can invest this kind of money with the expectation of turning a big profit? Remember RG talked about using the proceeds to fund his Cup program this year. If there's that kind of money in the Dakar, why aren't the HMS, Roush, etc teams going after the gold?

[oncea3fan]

I think it's probably if he shows good at dakar, then what appears tobe monster energy drink, would pick up a set amount of his cup program.

[Racer Duck]

Originally Posted by Bassdogs

I'm sure someone will set me straight, but where does making a $4.5 million investment in an offroad race make any financial sense? Are we to believe you can invest this kind of money with the expectation of turning a big profit? Remember RG talked about using the proceeds to fund his Cup program this year. If there's that kind of money in the Dakar, why aren't the HMS, Roush, etc teams going after the gold?

like all types of racing the money to be made from competing in Dakar comes from the things that happen because you've competed, not from prize money.

what do you figure a new game on Xbox 360 is worth? that's part of the payback Robbie was hoping to get.

if the highest paid drivers are in F1, why aren't the NASCAR guys going after that gold? why do people drag race instead of run road courses? there's certainly more money in it?

people tend to do what they're good at, or think they are good at. most aren't willing to make that kind of investment because they think they might be successful, just like most drivers/car owners don't rush out and put together an Cup team. It's not like it hasn't crossed their mind, but more a situation where the reward isn't worth the risk.