Conversation: Jack Roush

ROCKINGHAM, N.C. -- In his 16 years as a NASCAR team owner, Jack Roush has established himself as one of the most powerful men in the sport.

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He owns five Winston Cup teams, one Busch Series team and two Craftsman Truck teams. Away from the track, his Roush Industries employs more than 1,800 people worldwide, specializing in the automotive industry.

Roush has a mathematics degree from Berea College and a Masters degree in scientific mathematics from Eastern Michigan. He has been successful in almost everything he's done.

Yet before Matt Kenseth clinched the Winston Cup title Sunday at North Carolina Speedway, Roush had been shut out in his quest to become a championship car owner in NASCAR's top series.

On the eve of clinching his first Winston Cup championship, Roush spent some time with NASCAR.com's Lee Montgomery to talk about the championship and the long road that led there, about what gives him the most satisfaction, about NASCAR and, of course, signature Roush hat.

OK, a serious question to begin. Tell me about the tradition of the hat. How did that start?

Jack Roush: I've been racing for almost 40 years now with sponsors at big race tracks - a lot of attention, being public and intense. About 20 years ago, I was faced with a dilemma. I had multiple cars.

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It was actually a road race in Detroit, the Detroit Grand Prix. I had multiple road race cars and multiple sponsors, and each of them had a hat for me to wear.

Regardless of what hat I was going to wear, I was going to make somebody mad, so I just decided I wasn't going to wear a hat. I'd say, 'My head was my own domain.'

I had somebody who was with me go to a men's store and find me a gentleman's straw hat, not a cowboy hot, not a Crocodile Dundee hat or something like that. I wanted a gentleman's dress hat to keep the sun out of my eyes. That's what I did, I've done that ever since.

And that's kind of stuck. Do you remember the first engine you worked on as a little kid? Was it really fascinating then? What was it about it that drew you?

Jack Roush: The first internal-combustion engine that I worked on was a lawnmower engine we used to cut grass with. I had a lawn-cutting business for one summer.

	Roush (left) with Matt Kenseth at Talladega

My brother and I, in a small farming community -- 2,500 people, big yards, we cut over 20 yards a week with lawn mowers and trimmed around walks and shrubs and things.

So anyway, I had quite a time keeping my lawnmowers going, and enjoyed that. Along the way, I built myself a go-kart. I took an old wagon apart, just a kid's pull-around wagon.

I took the axles, got some wood and took one of my lawnmower engines and built myself a go-kart that I could ride around on.

I was working on internal-combustion lawnmower engines before I was 10 years old.

You left jobs, I read somewhere, with both Ford and Chrysler some time after college. Was it because you couldn't be creative with things? Or maybe was it because you didn't like sitting behind a desk?

Jack Roush: I don't want this to sound wrong, but you have asked the question. I left Ford because they denied me a transfer into an area involving research in internal-combustion engines that I had educated myself for.

I was highly motivated, and I saw that the career opportunities that Ford had for me in the direction of assembly plant operations and other things weren't in the direction of my greatest interest, nor I thought in my ability to be productive and creative.

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And so for that reason, I left and took a research-type job with Chrysler. I was living on one side of Detroit and driving to the other side. In the meantime, I had started teaching junior college at night when I was at Ford.

The last year I was with Ford, I taught two classes of junior college at night.

The year I spent with Chrysler, I started racing professionally with my parents' money and had a lot of pressure for about a 30-hour-a-week job away from my activities on the race track.

I looked at full-time teaching as a way that would give me an awful lot of time in the summer, virtually my whole summer, and would give me less than 40 hours a week for instruction and preparation for my teaching. The teaching was a half-measure.

I left Chrysler, not because I didn't like the work and not because they denied me an opportunity to do what I like, but because I was driven to be competitive on the race track. The teaching gave me the chance to have the time to do that.

Just curious. What were you teaching?

Jack Roush: I taught trigonometry, I taught physics, I taught internal-combustion engine theory, fuel systems, electrical systems, as it related to the kind of jobs that a person graduating from a junior college, a two-year college, would gather if they went to Detroit and worked in the automobile business.

You have a lot of other businesses outside of NASCAR, but you are very visible here. Is that an indication of how much you love racing?

Jack Roush: I love racing a lot, but I am 61 years old now, and my engineering business, not to the door maybe, but close enough to the door that they can carry on without me for a day or a week.

They did have me captured at Las Vegas this past week doing promotions around our Roush Performance parts and our cars that go to Ford dealers and other distributors nationwide.

The day-to-day operation of the engineering business is something that I'm basically isolated from. I perform a board-of-directors function, meeting with the guys who run that side of the company. I help them, and then they ask me, I advise them. But for the most part, that runs hands-off.

I am hands-on the racing business, and that is most of how I spend my days, either dealing with problems the racers have or at the race tracks actually helping with the races.

I've heard people say you like giving younger people opportunities, chances to prove themselves. Some business owners aren't like that? Why are you?

	Greg Biffle has driven -- and won -- for Roush Racing in three different series. Credit: Autostock

Jack Roush: I can't speak as to whether everybody's like that or whether they aren't. As far as I'm concerned, I get some of my greatest satisfaction today out of looking in a young person's eye and seeing their interest and their motivation, the desire they've got to do something that's competitive or creative and help them put the tools in their hands so they can do that.

In my case, my dad put tools in my hands when I was young and helped me and encouraged me and allowed me to build the mechanical skills.

And my mother helped me with challenges that she saw that were competitive in nature. The combination of them prepared me to go be competitive and to take on technical problems.

If I can help others that are one or two generations down my junior figure out how they can go get themselves harnessed to things that will be satisfying for them, where they can be creative, I can take great satisfaction from that.

I have great empathy when I look in young peoples' eyes and I see a part of Jack there, in terms of the emotion, the enthusiasm or the instincts that I have.

Did you see that in Matt Kenseth? Was that an easy choice for your team?

Jack Roush: I wouldn't characterize Matt as one of my finds. Matt was somebody that Mark Martin identified. He brought Matt to me and told me that he talked to Matt and what he though Matt was about and what Matt's motivations and his methods were.

	Kenseth (left) with teammate Jeff Burton Credit: Autostock

He really spoke to Matt and endorsed Matt as somebody that would meet this competition and deal with it in ways that he would approve of, and he thought that would if the circumstances were reversed.

So I took that. I took Mark's suggestion in that, and we incorporated Matt in our program. Matt is different than Mark, but Matt and Mark are very compatible. I probably wouldn't have found Matt, nor would I be involved with Matt today if it hadn't been for Mark.

Are you glad you listened to Mark?

Jack Roush: Oh, yeah. I always take Mark's advice. He's a cornerstone, he's a pillar of Roush Racing. I think of it as we partnered in (1988) to do this. He's stood the course. We've had some rough times, we've been frustrated, but he's hung in there with me, and we've built this thing to be what it is today."

By the time this comes out, you may have clinched the championship. Even if not, it'll be close. Would winning a championship help ease any of the frustration you've had with NASCAR in the past?

Jack Roush: No.

Would anything ease the frustration with NASCAR?

Jack Roush: It doesn't need to be eased, and it doesn't need to be changed. The things that happened in the past are in the past, and they're OK.

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If I didn't like what I was doing, if I wasn't willing to accept the way I've been treated, if it wasn't OK, I would be doing something else.

I'm not handcuffed to this deal. I had an accident to where I hurt myself very seriously a year-and-a-half ago, and I had about 20 minutes in 12 days when I was in the hospital when I took stock of what I was doing and made a decision that what I was doing was OK. I can do this.

When it goes bad, as bad as it's been so far, it's all right. The ratio of pleasure and satisfaction I get from things I do vs. the frustration and the displeasure from the things that are gone in ways that I can hardly tolerate is still OK. I'm all right with what we're doing, and I'm OK with what they've done.

Does Mile Helton have a thankless job? Is that something you'd ever want to do?

Jack Roush: To answer your first question, I thank Mike for what he's done on many cases. Other times, I've reserved my thanks, I've withheld it.

	Mike Helton

Would I be willing to do a job that Mike's doing? Yes. I've got great respect for what Mike does. It's a difficult job. He does it very well - not always to my liking in terms of the outcome. But I'm sure he's true to himself and he's true to the covenants that the France family has given him. He takes care of business, he takes care of the sport, and he acts even-handedly as he sees it for everything that comes up.

NASCAR has developed into a huge enterprise, huge business. What's the biggest problem/challenge facing this sport, and how would you approach it?

Jack Roush: I'm going to give the rest of the answer to the first question. If the scenarios were just a tick different, I would be willing to take on the challenges that Mike has.

I think that it's a good job, it's a noble occupation being the president of NASCAR and presiding over all the things that have to be adjudicated.

Somebody has to do it, and I think he does it well. If my situation was just a little bit different that I could do a good job at that, too.

You have a couple drivers, Kurt Busch, Greg Biffle, who are pretty outspoken - and as far as the media is concerned, thankfully outspoken. Some car owners try to squash that, but you don't. Why not?

Jack Roush: That's an assumption on your part that I don't.

The drivers need to develop their own code as it relates to the relationship that they have with the media and that they have with NASCAR.

	Kurt Busch Credit: Autostock

My position on it is, as long as they don't create a scenario of disapproval with the media or with the sponsors or with NASCAR that prevents me from conducting my preparations for the race, as long as I'm able to get sponsorship, and as long as the fans are flocking to buy the T-shirts and things, then it's OK.

With that, I don't try to tell them what they should say or what they should do. But if there are scenarios where I think they're doing things that are self-destructive for themselves, then I'll advise them they might have a result from a particular action that would be not to their liking.

If they could just see the next two or three steps in the chain of consequences that go with what ultimately from what any of us do.

For 2004, I don't know if you guys have gotten approval for the new cylinder head yet, and I guess you're having a new car. Are things going to be more even than they appear to be now?

Jack Roush: Things aren't even this year. Like I said with NASCAR generally, it's OK. We've got a 1992 engine, an Chevrolet got an engine in the mid-90s, a second engine.

They had a new engine in '92; we got our engine nailed down in '92, and then they got an engine in the mid-90s. Dodge came in the late-90s with an engine that was very much like a Chevrolet.

	Mark Martin has finished second in the points on four occasions under Jack Roush. Credit: Autostock

The architecture of those engines is better and performance-wise has more potential than the engine that we've got. Our car is a 1997 car.

Chevrolet's been improved twice, and the Dodge has also come on the scene since then and has gotten an improvement that we weren't allowed to make in the headlight area of the front air dam. That allows them to make more downforce.

We're handicapped on not having as much power as we need, we're handicapped on not having enough downforce and aero function as we need, based on our car.

Next year, the car should be competitive. We've done enough testing that we think we know what we need to do to make our car be as good as the cars we're racing against.

And NASCAR has in fact, effective last Monday, given us a consideration where we can have the same valve-train geometry, the same valve-guide positions, the same port heights as the Chevrolet and the Dodge that will allow us to have a better performing cylinder head and, I believe, close the gap on the engine."

Back to the championship, if/when it happens, would it be something you would have time to enjoy it, or is there just too much going you wouldn't even be able to celebrate?

Jack Roush: Oh, I'll celebrate. I've got to have my leg worked on about a week later, and I've got to go to pilot's school. And I've got some other things that fill up the rest of my December before Christmas.

I won't be gone to the Bahamas and I won't be gone to Hawaii and I won't be taking a cruise. But in quiet solace, I'll enjoy the fact we've won, if we do in fact win.

With all you've accomplished in your career, everything's that's gone on in your life, would this be the most fulfilling thing that's ever happened Where would it rank?

Jack Roush: Well, top five.