Effect of the Various Levers (1 Viewer)

[Justin@NRE]

While I fully agree that money is a key issue, and you can't succeed without it, I'm not sure it's all of 50%. If you look at someone like Wilkerson, he has shown that a great team, crew chief, and driver can be successful and in contention for the championship (just a couple years back) without a bottomless checkbook. And as someone else noted, Morgan Lucas certainly hasn't been at a loss for funding but has had team turnover and struggled to get commensurate results.

I think some of these are, in fact, levers -- tradeoffs. You can offset some lack of funding with a great team, a marvelous crew chief can help a novice driver succeed, a great driver can peddle a car that's tuned too hot and turn a loss into a win, and so on. So I'm not sure you can get very precise with these numbers.

I do agree with the general consensus that driver's aren't as key as perhaps ESPN wants to make them appear. But I think several of you are underestimating the effect of teams. Great teams can overcome a myriad of problems, making parts last for yet another round, or giving drivers a sense of confidence in their equipment, or helping to make that final qualifying round miracle happen. Sport is filled with examples of mediocre teams making championship runs seemingly on willpower alone, and drag racing is not immune.

Money buys you crew chiefs/tune ups/latest and all new parts and just general resources at the disposal of the top notch crew you can afford. I wish people would stop citing Lucas as an excuse to what money does and doesn't get you. I don't think they spent near as much as the other spenders up until this year. I also think money helps give the crew chiefs a little more "testicular fortitude" when it comes to leaning a little harder on things.

Crew Chiefs and Crews are the lynch pin. Crew chief can have a perfectly good tune-up, but if the crew can't execute the tune up properly or miss something on reassembly, battery not charged, fuel/oil mishaps, that car isn't going anywhere.

That being said, drivers are fairly important to the tune up as well. Everything they do before the pass has to be incredibly consistent for the crew chiefs to be able to focus on making the car faster instead of just making it go down the track. Money can also give the driver confidence that if they are in eliminations and it drops a hole or becomes a pedal fest, the driver can stay in it knowing they have spares instead of lifting and probably losing the round.

Money 40%
Crew Chief 25%
Crew 20%
Driver 15%

 

[rckymtn3]

hmmmm.....I've always thought it was the parts, the team, then the driver, and the driver gets moved around in that order depending on his/her input. Sometimes it's the same person (money-cc-driver)

Hard to pin the driver down, as sometimes they're along for the ride on a well prepared machine, and at other times, they win the race regardless of the preparation. An explosion, and they get right back in to do their job.