Speedway, Ind. — Even though both Robert Yates Racing teams started the day at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, neither one of them took to the track as the second week of testing for next month’s Brickyard 400 began. The No. 38 M&M’s Taurus team of Elliott Sadler performed prep work on its two cars and will practice on Tuesday and Wednesday, but the No. 88 UPS team of Dale Jarrett decided to head back to North Carolina and cancelled their planned session. General Manager Doug Yates spoke about the thinking behind both decisions Monday afternoon.

DOUG YATES
YOU’VE HAD A BUSY DAY ALREADY AND HAVEN’T EVEN BEEN ON THE TRACK. “Our game plan was to come here on Monday and set up so we could get prepared to have two good days of testing here. It’s such a big race and we feel there’s a lot of things that maybe we can learn here that will help our program in other places. We decided, in light of how the 88 team ran yesterday [at Chicagoland Speedway], that we’re gonna send those guys home and re-group. Maybe some things we learn here with the 38 will apply and they can come back next week and test.”

WAS THE CHICAGO CAR DALE DROVE YESTERDAY SIMILAR TO THE ONE YOU WANTED TO TEST HERE AT INDY? “Yeah, the car the 88 ran yesterday in Chicago was a brand new Hopkins car. It was untested, but we had high hopes that it would do well. Unfortunately, it was 180 degrees from that. It was probably our worst day of the year. We were planning to test that car here, but, obviously, there’s no reason to unload the car. It’s not gonna do much better here than it did there, so that’s why we’re gonna go home, re-group and figure some things out.”

SO ELLIOTT WILL TEST TUESDAY AND WEDNESDAY? “Yeah, and then we’ll see about bringing the 88 back next week. The 99 and the 12, guys like that, are supposed to come next week. You look around here today and it looks like we’ve got a race going on. That’s good and bad, I guess, because you get to judge off everybody else, but, at the same time, it’s pretty busy out there.”

YOU TALKED ABOUT GETTING BACK TO THE FUNDAMENTALS, BUT YESTERDAY WASN’T WHAT YOU HAD IN MIND AS FAR AS THE 88. “It feels like we’re trying to start over with a new race team halfway through the season and that’s not an easy task with the way the competition is these days. When you’re running 10th-15th, your goal is to try to get into the Top 10. Sometimes you’ve got to go to 30th to get back the other way and that’s kind of where we are with that team right now. I was actually just talking to Dale on the phone and I think he’s got some good ideas. We’re not giving up by any means. We know we’ve got a Winston Cup champion as a driver and we’ve got a bunch of good guys on our race team. Right now, we’re just missing something.”

WHEN THINGS AREN’T GOING WELL YOU PROBABLY EXPECT RUMORS TO START IN REGARDS TO YOUR DRIVER. IN CHICAGO THERE WAS SOME TALK ABOUT DALE’S STATUS. CAN YOU ADDRESS HIS SITUATION? “We do the same thing to other teams. When they get down we put some pressure on them, too. Everybody would love to have Dale Jarrett drive their race car. That’s natural. In a way, it’s flattering to us that other teams would be interested because we think the world of Dale. Dale and I have talked and we’ve come a long way together as an organization. He started that 88 team and we expect him to finish out his career in that car. Our goal is to give him something good to drive and for him to give us good feedback to make it good.”

WHAT IS DALE’S CONTRACT STATUS? “We’re working on an extension for Dale right now. We have a contract through next year with him and we’re working on an extension. UPS is signed for three more years after this, so things are real solid there. It’s embarrassing to us and Ford and UPS, and that’s really the biggest thing. We’re gonna have good and bad days, but UPS is a great sponsor and we’re letting them down right now. That’s what we’ve got to do a better job of and that’s a lot of our responsibility. The big brown truck doesn’t need to run in the back.”

IT’S BEEN LIKE A ROLLERCOASTER. “You’ll have that when you’re searching. We had a good car at Charlotte and finished in the Top 10, but then we went to Dover and thought we probably had a Top-5 car before breaking a connecting rod. Then we turned around and went to Pocono, qualified seventh and were racing in the Top 5 when a tire went down. It’s just the ups and down you go through. When it’s your season, it’s your season. Look at Matt Kenseth, his year is kind of like the 88 team was in ’99 - a bad day is when you finish 12th [like Kenseth did at Chicago]. You’ll have seasons like that - Bobby Labonte had one in 2000. When it’s your year, it’s your year.”