[bob101]

Almost all rookies and to a certain extent guys in the top series under 2 years of experience normally get paired up with a veteran to help them move into cup racing. Guys like Buddy Baker etc...normally pair up with a guy and drive the car in testing and then turn it over to the driver and spots for him on the radio once the car is set up.

I don't think anybody now days comes into cup and just gets in the car and runs laps to see what their time is.

That's why you hear so many veteran drivers say they still have a deal with Hendrick, or Childress or whoever.

[wingkey1]

Originally Posted by bob101

Almost all rookies and to a certain extent guys in the top series under 2 years of experience normally get paired up with a veteran to help them move into cup racing. Guys like Buddy Baker etc...normally pair up with a guy and drive the car in testing and then turn it over to the driver and spots for him on the radio once the car is set up.

I don't think anybody now days comes into cup and just gets in the car and runs laps to see what their time is.

That's why you hear so many veteran drivers say they still have a deal with Hendrick, or Childress or whoever.

Bob1 - forgive first please any clear inability on our part to to interpret/interpolate your info above.

Seems, based on perhaps only the way you have chosen to word it, ("Almost all", "to a certain extent", "normally get", "normally get paired up", "normally pair up", "still have a deal with Hendrick, or Childress or whoever"), you may be viewing an approach within NASCAR that is not sponsored by the governing body, to one that is sponsored by the governing bodies that are IRL and F1. There's likely quite a difference in the intent and success definition.

The IRL and F1 "coaches" appear to be appointed and compensated predominately through the governing body rather than working on the behalf of owners/teams.

Now we here will assume first that we are completely off base, in error and/or and totally wrong as we ask the following. This is not in any way a baiting question or one with some childlike hidden agenda - is it your feeling/belief/knowledge that what you describe as the NASCAR approach is the same as the IRL coaching arrangement described in the article referenced in this string?

[bob101]

Your not going to get a program where the "coaches" are sponsored by NASCAR.

The people who could actually coach have deals with respective teams and also money. Your not going to get someone who is qualified who retired recently - let's say next year and pick DJ as an example. He will be fresh off the track. You think he would be willing to work for NASCAR to "coach" a new driver? Not likely. Will he be willing to "coach" someone on select teams that he has ties to? Likely. There's too many service contract deals and stuff that go on in NASCAR I believe for that to happen. Someone who drove for Chevy and had a personal services contract with Chevy isn't going to coach a Toyota driver no matter how much NASCAR pays them.

Not to mention, if you were Rick Hendrick and had a rookie driver (not likely but play along) would you want him being coached by someone appointed by NASCAR or coached by someone you had in your pocket and did what you told them? See where I'm going here.

I was just pointing out that it's not like rookies are taking to the track without some coaching at all.

[wingkey1]

Originally Posted by bob101

Your not going to get a program where the "coaches" are sponsored by NASCAR.

The people who could actually coach have deals with respective teams and also money. Your not going to get someone who is qualified who retired recently - let's say next year and pick DJ as an example. He will be fresh off the track. You think he would be willing to work for NASCAR to "coach" a new driver? Not likely. Will he be willing to "coach" someone on select teams that he has ties to? Likely. There's too many service contract deals and stuff that go on in NASCAR I believe for that to happen. Someone who drove for Chevy and had a personal services contract with Chevy isn't going to coach a Toyota driver no matter how much NASCAR pays them.

Not to mention, if you were Rick Hendrick and had a rookie driver (not likely but play along) would you want him being coached by someone appointed by NASCAR or coached by someone you had in your pocket and did what you told them? See where I'm going here.

I was just pointing out that it's not like rookies are taking to the track without some coaching at all.

Think I understand. Your position is that others can and seemingly have implemented a coaching element/approach, but NASCAR can't for reasons that may be unique to NASCAR. The reasons for "can't" are many and varied as you show/explain.

Wanted only to understand if you may perceive a difference in what IRL and NASCAR are presently doing. Believe your answer to this is "yes" ("Your not going to get a program where the "coaches" are sponsored by NASCAR").

All I needed to know. Thanks.

[DOF_power]

What exactly are these coaches doing ?!
And when were there "coaches" used in F1 and sponsored by the FIA ?!
I know Brundle was giving LH advices, but I don't know of other cases. The problem with the old guys is that they start with "in my days" speeches and they're not very good at understanding/dealing with the present or the future.
That's why they failed as team bosses.

[wingkey1]

Originally Posted by DOF_power

What exactly are these coaches doing ?!
And when were there "coaches" used in F1 and sponsored by the FIA ?!
I know Brundle was giving LH advices, but I don't know of other cases. The problem with the old guys is that they start with "in my days" speeches and they're not very good at understanding/dealing with the present or the future.
That's why they failed as team bosses.

DOF and all other - Scanning entries in this string, I appear guilty of introducing F1 in the mix. Have no friggin' idea where/why I perceived this was mentioned/appropriate/whatever.

It and I is/am ignorable. Forget any mention to F1 "coaches" in this string. I am wrong, have clearly erred, apologize. Hate it when I pollute a conversation with errors/assumptions.

Dang. Sorry again.

[DOF_power]

No problem.
But wouldn't it end as an "in my days" scenario for NASCAR in the end ?!
Because I kind of think it would, cause the only constant is change.

[WestCoast]

Buddy Baker was hired by Pensky to mentor Newman when he first started.
Most drivers at Rousch credit MM for bringing them along.

[LSC9901]

Originally Posted by WestCoast

Buddy Baker was hired by Pensky to mentor Newman when he first started.
Most drivers at Rousch credit MM for bringing them along.

Maybe Buddy Baker is better than I think but he stopped driving in 1992 at age 51. If he mentored Ryan I cannot imagine what he could have passed on that was valuable. In 2000 Ryan was 22 and baker was 59. 59 years old and hadn't driven competitively in 8 years. In 33 years of racing he had 19 wins (32nd on all time win list). Newman has 13 already. It would be interesting to know what Ryan thought about the mentoring by Baker.

[WestCoast]

Originally Posted by LSC9901

Maybe Buddy Baker is better than I think but he stopped driving in 1992 at age 51. If he mentored Ryan I cannot imagine what he could have passed on that was valuable. In 2000 Ryan was 22 and baker was 59. 59 years old and hadn't driven competitively in 8 years. In 33 years of racing he had 19 wins (32nd on all time win list). Newman has 13 already. It would be interesting to know what Ryan thought about the mentoring by Baker.

Buddy Baker was a big part of "driver development" at Penske Racing, just as other old timers are/were....

__________________________________________________

Veteran drivers offer rookies a high-speed connection
By Chris Jenkins, USA TODAY
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — At 190 mph, a puff of air at the wrong time can push a car slightly off course and turn a fast lap into a slow one.
A driver with experience at Daytona International Speedway can tell what the wind is doing on the backstretch, then position his car in just the right place in relation to the wall and the cars around him.
A rookie? If he's good, he might figure out how to play the wind over the next few years. But if he's good and he has help from the man who turned the fastest lap in NASCAR history, he just might figure that — and a bunch of other racing subtleties — out more quickly.
Short, shy and 23 years old, Kasey Kahne looks like he should be serving up fast food, not fast laps. But team owner Ray Evernham believes Kahne is talented enough to become a star in the Nextel Cup series, so he's chosen Kahne to take over for racing icon Bill Elliott in the No. 9 Dodge. Elliott, 47, semiretired after last season and will race in less than 15 races this year, but he isn't going away. He'll be at the track most weekends as Kahne's mentor. Kahne, who hadn't really sought help from fellow drivers until now, says it's helping already.
"It's only through trial and error, and we've only got so much time here," Kahne says. "You might get to figure it out (in) time, but it helps to have somebody help you with some of that kind of stuff that's not so blatant. You can't go out there and tell. You don't have a stopwatch. You don't know how fast you're going."
Ideally, Kahne and Elliott eventually will develop the same type of relationship that Ryan Newman and former racer Buddy Baker have had the last two seasons. Newman credits Baker, his driving coach on the Penske South team, with much of his remarkable early success. Baker will continue to work with Newman but also has started coaching Penske's new rookie, Brendan Gaughan.
"I think the other teams are now seeing that it's nice to have somebody that's been there and done that to tell a kid, 'Don't do that,' or 'Do this,' " Baker says. "So far it's been like magic for us. I've had two people, and I've enjoyed the heck out of them."
As drivers get younger and sponsors' expectations get higher, it would be logical to expect more teams to invest in a formalized coaching process for drivers. But outside of Baker and now Elliott, there isn't a lot of formal driver-on-driver mentoring in NASCAR. Teams might hire experienced crew chiefs to work with their young drivers, and some young drivers count on veteran teammates for advice, but few teams have actual driving coaches.
Says Elliott, "I'm surprised there's not more than what there is."
Don Miller, a part-owner of Penske Racing South who brought the 63-year-old Baker in to coach the 26-year-old Newman, believes more teams will hire coaches.
"I think they're going to have to, because the price of playing poker has just gone up so high," Miller says. "You can't take two or three years to roll in slowly like you used to. You've got to do it and get it done as early as possible, No. 1, because it can hurt a driver tremendously if he goes out and (fails) out there. You don't need that. No. 2, financially, you can't justify it anymore."
Tough love
By Tim Dillon, USA TODAYBuddy Baker, left, is helping rookie Brendan Gaughan learn the NASCAR ropes. Baker took a similar role with Ryan Newman, 2002 rookie of the year, and they continue to have success.
For a guy named Buddy, Baker can be awfully forceful with his students:
"Ryan, for crissakes, my grandmother could drive this car."
"Is that all you've got?"
"Don't make me come down there and kick your butt."
Funny and back-slappingly friendly in casual conversation, Baker can turn into a bear when he's standing on the spotter's stand above the Daytona grandstands and watching one of his students do something he shouldn't be doing.
"He is very aggressive in his teaching process," Miller says. "He's a guy that will go out there with you and tell you a couple of times, and if you don't do it he'll just say, 'You're not going to listen to me, so I'll leave.' He's very forceful but yet patient. I've seen a couple times, especially on superspeedways, when Ryan moves out of the groove — we'll be on radios and he'll be on the backstretch. All of a sudden, the radio's silent and you'll hear Buddy come over and say, 'Ryan, what the hell are you doing out there?' "
Newman says he isn't put off by Baker's criticism. "(Baker might say) things that could embarrass an ordinary driver, but I think if you've got your head on right, you just take it and you go and make things better," he says.
But anybody can holler at race car drivers. Can Baker — or anybody else — really provide them meaningful coaching?
"It shaves off about a year and a half's worth of finding out what will not work," Baker insists, adding a self-deprecating joke: "I'm an authority on what does not work."
Gaughan, who played basketball for John Thompson at Georgetown, says the right teacher can help somebody improve at anything. "Certain things about those aspects are unteachable," he says. "But you always can learn. Even (former teammate) Allen Iverson learns."
Gaughan wasn't thrilled with his team's backup car during a test session at Daytona last month, but the team wanted to see what a few changes to suspension settings would do to the car's handling. "And as a driver, you're like, 'God, do I have to get into it again?' Being a little baby about it," Gaughan says.
But one of the first things Baker teaches a driver is that for a team to get meaningful information from a test session, he has to make every lap the same — follow the same line, hit the brakes at the same point before a turn and get back into the gas pedal at the same point in the middle of the turn; racers call it "hitting your marks."
"So I went out there one time and just kind of didn't hit the same marks, didn't do the same thing and really didn't give it a legit run for the guys — that would be me hurting the team," Gaughan says. "And Buddy came on the radio and called me out, said, 'Hey, quit playing around. You still have to take those seriously.' And that helps you a bunch when you have a guy up there who helps you not fall asleep at the proverbial wheel and let the guys down."
Baker spends more time telling Newman and Gaughan what not to do than telling them what to do. And there are plenty of no-nos in the draft at Daytona, where picking the wrong path through traffic can send you to the back of the pack, or worse.
As a rookie, Gaughan wasn't part of last weekend's Bud Shootout exhibition race. So Gaughan and Baker went to the spotter's stand during practice sessions to watch cars in the draft. Baker was impressed by Gaughan's ability to point out other drivers' mistakes.
"We talked about drafting — 'sucker holes,' where you stick your nose in there and there's nothing there and everybody goes by on both sides and you end up at the back of the pack," Baker says. "And it's a lot easier to point it out when he can get a visual."
There's even such a thing as draft etiquette, something Baker explained to Newman early on. "I made him understand that moving around makes everybody around you nervous," Baker says. "Just stay in line, and when the right chance comes, you go for it. Don't make a split decision and back up on it. Once you decide you're going, go on."
But Baker's knowledge isn't limited to Daytona; he helps his father, Buck Baker, run a driving school at North Carolina Motor Speedway, so he's familiar with that track. He feels he can help drivers at other tricky old-line tracks, especially Darlington Raceway.
The first time a driver goes to an unfamiliar track for a test session, Baker will drive him around the track in a passenger car, showing him the fast line around the track. He'll also point out danger spots where debris tends to pile up.
But Baker keeps some of his trade secrets between him and his students. What, for example, do you do if another driver's engine blows up and leaves oil in the middle of the line you were using to get around the track?
"If I told you that, I'd probably have to kill you," Baker says, laughing. "But there's always a fast way around the racetrack when your preferred line is taken away from you."
Mentors tough to find
To some extent, older drivers have always mentored younger drivers in NASCAR. But it was a more informal and limited process.
When Elliott came into the series in 1976, he didn't have much luck getting advice from other drivers.
"I had so limited experience of driving anyway when I got started at this level it was unreal," Elliott says. "And there wasn't a lot of people you could go to who would tell you anything."
Nearly 30 years later, Kahne essentially has had the same experience coming up through the ranks. "I've done a lot of it on my own," Kahne says.
When Jeff Gordon first came into NASCAR, he often turned to Mark Martin for advice. And when Gordon hired Jimmie Johnson to drive for the team he co-owns with Rick Hendrick, he became something of a mentor to Johnson. Gordon says most of his advice to Johnson came in helping Johnson deal with off-track distractions and time demands — although Johnson remembers them sitting at a table and simulating drafting strategies with cell phones.
"If you have somebody that you can go to that's going to tell the truth and truly cares to see you do well, there's a difference," Johnson says. "(Gordon's) somebody that I can go to, and he was willing to give me information."
Now Gordon and Johnson will do whatever they can to help rookie teammate Brian Vickers. "I think all three of us like the setups relatively the same," Johnson says. "I knew that I had a huge benefit with Jeff, and now Brian's got both of us."
But what active drivers are willing to tell each other can be limited. Even Gaughan, a close friend of Johnson's, isn't entirely comfortable asking Johnson for advice.
"When you get to this level in the Nextel Cup, you can't just go to the guys any more like you used to," Gaughan says. "Jimmie Johnson's been my friend forever. And he may help me out more than most. But I can't just walk up to Jimmie and go, 'OK, how do you get around this place?' All drivers will help each other out. It's what we do for a living. We all take care of each other. But not to the extent of taking a guy out and putting him in a passenger car, really getting to the nuts and bolts of it. And that's what's nice about having a guy like Buddy Baker."
But Baker retired in 1992. Does his experience translate to today's racing? Gordon seems skeptical.
"Other than drafting, Buddy's not been in the car for so long," Gordon says. "The car drives so much different. He might just have a good eye for watching what's going on out there. ... I feel like I'm limited in what I can teach these guys, and I'm driving the cars."
Baker, however, still drives race cars at his father's school. "I can jump in the car and run just as fast as anybody out there," he insists.
Baker helped veteran Penske driver Rusty Wallace at Talladega Superspeedway last year. When Wallace asked Baker to drive his car, he turned laps at the same speed as Wallace.
Newman estimates that 75% of Baker's experience translates directly to what happens in racing today. "Buddy hasn't raced one of our intermediate cars at Charlotte," Newman says. "It's not apples to apples. It's maybe a sweet potato to an Idaho potato. It's not exactly the same thing, but it's still a potato. He can help me a lot to understand the basics of it. The rest of it, he relies on me to take care of it."
As Elliott showed last season, he's still fast behind the wheel. Because of that, Baker expects Elliott to be a "tremendous" influence on Kahne. "If he don't believe him, he'll get in there and show him," Baker says. "You're talking about somebody who still throws a good fastball."
Kahne had difficulty getting his car to turn properly going into turns. He needed to know whether that was normal or something he had to ask the crew to try to fix by modifying the suspension settings.
"Experience is what will be the only teacher," Elliott says. "All I can do is say, 'Well, yeah, this is normal,' or 'No, that's not normal,' and go from there."
Elliott figures they'll be able to help Kahne develop.
"I'm just here to fit in and be a part of whatever I can," he says.

[loco4pablo]

Gee, when I clicked on this thread I thought it was about the guys that drive the motor coaches for the drivers!

[DOF_power]

WestCoast +1. Great find.

[Bob Tanner]

It might be a decent enough idea but I think there are problems NA__AR needs to address before implementing any Driver Coach Program.

Personally I think there are a number of current active drivers who could be good mentors for a crop of rookies. The past drivers...??? It takes a certain type of person to be a good mentor. It's not a job for just everyone. For example I noticed in your list of IRL Driver Coaches Anthony Joseph Foyt Jr. wasn't listed. I repeat, it's not a job for everyone.

Buddy Baker has worked with all the new Penske drivers.
Rusty has tried to give Steve Wallace some pointers but we see how well that's worked.


Before NA__AR starts a Driver Coach Program I'd like to see them start a "Knife & Fork School," helping the rookie with dealing with the media, giving them professional advice on how to handle their new found wealth, and schooling them on positive but now smarmy phony Public Relations.

[Racer Duck]

Originally Posted by Bob Tanner

It might be a decent enough idea but I think there are problems NA__AR needs to address before implementing any Driver Coach Program.

Personally I think there are a number of current active drivers who could be good mentors for a crop of rookies. The past drivers...??? It takes a certain type of person to be a good mentor. It's not a job for just everyone. For example I noticed in your list of IRL Driver Coaches Anthony Joseph Foyt Jr. wasn't listed. I repeat, it's not a job for everyone.

Buddy Baker has worked with all the new Penske drivers.
Rusty has tried to give Steve Wallace some pointers but we see how well that's worked.


Before NA__AR starts a Driver Coach Program I'd like to see them start a "Knife & Fork School," helping the rookie with dealing with the media, giving them professional advice on how to handle their new found wealth, and schooling them on positive but now smarmy phony Public Relations.

I think that's a father-son problem. Stephen is pretty arrogant (remember the Snowball just last December?)

I also think Rusty blames himself for letting his little boy turn into such a pain in the arse. Worse thing he did was give his boy a ride.

[Bob Tanner]

Originally Posted by Racer Duck

I think that's a father-son problem. Stephen is pretty arrogant (remember the Snowball just last December?)

I also think Rusty blames himself for letting his little boy turn into such a pain in the arse. Worse thing he did was give his boy a ride.

Yepper! Stephen reminds me of a kid who really is in need of someone knocking the crap out of him. He reminds me somewhat of Loy Allen Jr. Remember his brief NASCAR career?