Despite overhaul, PPI headed in right direction

BRISTOL, Tenn. -- Someday, Ricky Craven will win a race without having to fight for it. He'll actually see the checkered flag, perhaps even take it alone.

"I can't say that I saw this one," Craven said of last Sunday's win in the Carolina Dodge Dealers 400. "I really can't."

	Ricky Craven Credit: Autostock

Wins are wins whether by two-thousandths of a second or two miles, yet Craven's last-lap victory at Darlington is memorable for more than just its margin.

A new manufacturer, a new in-house engine program, a new crew chief and a new engineer are all part of his 2003 menu. Some of the team's reconstruction was expected; some wasn't. But even with all the change, Craven sits fifth in the Winston Cup point standings heading into Sunday's Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway.

Craven, who starts 14th Sunday, said he, crew chief Scott Miller and engineer Kent Day are all pulling in the same harness. Nothing lost in the turnover, right?

Wrong.

"Change is always difficult," Craven said. "This has been a lot less difficult than I anticipated."

He appeared set last season with then crew chief Mike Beam and then engineer Roy McCauley, posting a 15th-place finish in the standings, one pole, three top fives and nine top 10s. The 2002 season marked the trio's second together, and it was a step up from 2001, when Craven won his first Cup race and finished 21st in his first full year with owner Cal Wells' PPI Motorsports.

But following the 2002 season finale at Homestead, Beam and McCauley accepted positions with other teams -- Beam becoming Jeff Green's crew chief and McCauley moving to Penske Racing. McCauley had been groomed to succeed Beam, with Beam moving off the road, possibly to coordinate a second PPI team.

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But when McCauley decided to leave -- unexpected, according to Wells -- Beam wasn't far behind. Owner Richard Childress, an old friend of Beam's, had approached him at Homestead to oversee the No. 30, and so Beam departed with Wells' blessing.

"Ricky was reeling a little bit, because we really felt, based on the momentum we had the first half of last year, that we could justify where we derailed during the middle of the year," Wells said. "We really felt we were going to be very, very strong with Mike and Roy staying on."

Instead, Wells had two significant openings. His solution turned out to be twofold: a good relationship with Childress and an engineering roster that already included Day.

Miller, a Cup engineer since 1994, was a Richard Childress Racing employee. He spent 2001 at PPI, where he'd worked with Wells' second team that folded at season's end after McDonalds announced it would pull its sponsorship.

Wells approached Miller with Childress' OK (RCR does PPI's restrictor-plate engines), and by Christmas, Craven had a new, although familiar-faced, crew chief.

"I had built the friendship with Mike and Roy," said Craven, who still retains those friendships (Beam congratulated him after last Sunday's race on Darlington's pit road). "Business is business, and you gotta separate business from pleasure sometimes. The cool thing is that I had always had a friendship with Scott, and Kent was with us, and I had already built a friendship with him."

	Credit: Autostock

"It doesn't feel like you're walking into a completely new situation and everybody's uncomfortable," said Miller, who'd tested with Craven during his previous PPI tenure. "They're trying to figure out who this new crew chief guy is and visa-versa. Well, we didn't have any of that, so we were able to just pretty much pick up running as soon as I walked in the door."

That doesn't mean it's been seamless. This is Miller's first turn at being a crew chief, and he accepts blame for a risky no-pit call that relegated Craven to a 26th-place finish at Daytona. Still, the team knew it was moving forward, not backward, when Craven finished fifth at Rockingham, one of his favorite tracks. At Las Vegas, Craven said getting caught up with a lapped car resulted in a 36th-place finish. He finished 12th at Atlanta and was a pre-race threat at Darlington (he'd claimed the pole there last spring).

"If he didn't have a good team in place already when I got there, there's no way in four months that we could win a Winston Cup race," Miller said. "There was a lot of real good things in place when I got there, and I really appreciate the opportunity to work for such a strong organization."

Miller, who served as an engineer with the late Dale Earnhardt's team during his stint at RCR in the late '90s, relies heavily on Day. Both have engineering degrees and speak the same racing language.

"A brilliant guy," Miller said of Day. "He really supports me well and helps me a lot. We've been friends for a long time. Sometimes the crew chief and engineer relationship is kind of strange, but we've known and worked together a lot in the past, and it works really well for us."

Last Sunday, Miller said he stayed quiet as Craven rattled door-to-door with Kurt Busch during their final, furious lap.

"He was on a mission," Miller said. "We just pretty much let him do his deal."

A congenial guy, Miller is said to be a good fit both with Craven's intensity and within PPI's engineering-dominated culture.

"He's very buttoned-down," Wells said. "He's a very, very good man. I really appreciate him as an individual. We're very lucky to get him."

"I'll have to give a lot of credit to the organization and the driver, because, man, he is really on top of his game right now," Miller said. "If we can keep giving him really good stuff, we should be able to stay up there."