Ford field manager Ben Leslie was once a crew chief for Mark Martin. Credit: Autostock

Conversation: Ben Leslie

MARTINSVILLE, Va. -- Ben Leslie comes from a racing family, but he's taken his involvement in motorsports to a new level in the last year.

Leslie's older brother Tracy is a former ARCA RE/MAX Series champion and NASCAR Busch Series driver, but Ben had pointed his career towards the mechanical end of the sport, first working on the family ARCA team and then following his brother to NASCAR.

Ben Leslie moved to NASCAR in 1991 and joined Roush Racing in 1994. There, he achieved the level of Winston Cup crew chief, where most recently he worked with Mark Martin at Roush and Ricky Rudd at Wood Brothers Racing.

Ben Leslie

But when Robin Pemberton left the position of Ford Motor Company's NASCAR field manager, working with its teams in the Nextel Cup, Busch and Craftsman Truck Series to take a position in NASCAR, Leslie got the call to step up.

At Martinsville Speedway, Leslie sat down with NASCAR.COM senior writer Dave Rodman to discuss the changes involved in working with all a manufacturer's team rather than one race team; Ford's performance in the Chase for the Nextel Cup and the future of Ford in racing.

Q: You're experiencing a little bit different dimension in Nextel Cup racing this season, going from being the crew chief for a single car to the "daddy" of a bunch of Ford teams. What's that experience been like for you?

Leslie: Well, it's been a pretty neat experience. You get to see a whole different side of that aspect of racing. You end up not focusing on one particular team, obviously, and not focusing on one particular set of problems but kind of looking at a general set of problems that several teams are having to deal with.

You don't focus on going down the road focused on nit-picking problems -- you try to find a more general solution. It's really pretty interesting and it's really been pretty exciting.

And then also, from the manufacturer's standpoint, you're looking at making improvements on upcoming models, body changes in upcoming years. You've got a more broad range of racing as opposed to kind of being focused on one particular deal.

Q: Have you found that to be the biggest challenge, where you have to take, as you say, that broad-brush look instead of focusing on one car's performance?

Leslie: It's for sure different. I don't know if I'd necessary call it a challenge, but it for sure is a different outlook on racing, as opposed to what I've had throughout my whole career, and obviously throughout my Cup experience.

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It's really neat in a way, though, to try to do things to help out a group of people as opposed to just focusing on one thing in particular, or one deal in particular.

Q: As I understand it, you're involved with Ford's programs in the Busch Series and the Craftsman Truck Series as well as Nextel Cup. How does your time divide up among them, and again, working with trucks has got to be a different, and interesting experience?

Leslie: Yeah, the trucks are something I haven't really been involved in, even though throughout my tenure at Roush they obviously had the truck teams and everything. But I wasn't very closely involved with them at all.

That's been something that's kind of been a learning experience. To divide the time up, you just try to touch base with everybody on a weekly basis and get a feel for who seems like has the most urgent problems that a manufacturer can address for them.

Then, obviously, with this Chase for the Cup going on and Ford being fortunate enough to have four top-notch teams involved in the Chase for the Cup, which is as many as any manufacturer in the Chase, that has got a lot of focus of attention right now.

Q: From a manufacturer's standpoint, what is your take right now on this whole Chase concept?

Leslie: It kind of remains to be seen. It's something different for everybody (because) it's kind of a new way to look at the end of the race season.

The only thing that worries me a little is that as we go through the last 10 races and everybody is really focused on the Chase for the Cup, there's a lot of really good teams out there that wasn't fortunate enough to make the top-10.

It's hard to get in the top-15 in points, as competitive as the Nextel Cup Series is any more. So those teams running 11th, 12th, 13th and 14th deserve just as much adulation or acknowledgement as the guys in the top-10 in the Chase do.

That's the only thing I see as a (problem). There are a lot of really good teams out there putting a lot of really hardcore effort that's not in the Chase for the Cup. We just need to make sure we don't forget about those people that's racing week in and week out also, that were just not fortunate to have made the top-10 at the cutoff point.

Q: From a performance standpoint, Kurt Busch has been leading the Chase and Elliott Sadler and Mark Martin came into Martinsville in the top-five. You've got to be pleased and Ford has to be pleased on the performance end?

Leslie: Oh, for sure. You know, Elliott has done an awesome job this year, especially coming off the season that he had last year; that was less than spectacular. Him and Todd Parrott and everybody over at Robert Yates Racing have done an awesome job turning that program around.

AUDIO Conversation Ben Leslie

Kurt Busch, I think we've seen the last two or three years that he's going to be someone who's going to be tough to deal with when everything falls in line for him. He's an outstanding driver.

There's really not much you can say about Mark. He's Mark. If you let your guard down in the least little bit he's going to be there to take it from you.

Then you've got Matt (Kenseth), and Matt and Robbie (Reiser, crew chief) are doing their strong position in racing like they've always done and they're kind of like Mark. The last thing you want to do is turn your back on them.

We've got really strong programs. Right now, looking at the Ford teams in a broader spectrum, with the addition of Fatback (McSwain, Wood Brothers Racing crew chief) and how the 88 (Dale Jarrett at Robert Yates Racing) has got their program on track right now, and with Carl Edwards stepping into the 99 car (at Roush Racing) -- I don't feel like we have a weak team right now.

We've got all of our programs really strong right now.

Q: How would you categorize your interaction with NASCAR now, as opposed to when you were a crew chief?

Leslie: It's kind of along the same lines, but then again, as opposed to asking more direct questions that directly involve a single issue with a single car, you're asking more general questions.

You're looking for stuff more on a general basis -- looking into next year and looking into the years to follow and what's to come with body changes and what not. It's just more generalized and then you're looking ahead a little bit more.

You're looking at two or three years down the road as opposed to the crew chiefs right now being really hard on asking (NASCAR Nextel Cup director John) Darby really hard questions for just 2005 -- we're talking to him about 2006, big greenhouse cars and looking further into the future.

It's a lot the same, but then again it's just a little bit different questions. It's about the same amount of questions, for sure.

Q: It sounds like you're part lobbyist, part intermediary -- maybe even part lawyer. Secondary to that, I think a lot of crew chiefs get away from the hands-on aspect of the sport they grew up with, and that they love. What's your feeling on the role you have now, because it seems like it's taken another step away from the mechanical involvement?

Leslie: Yeah, I miss that. But I think everybody misses that. I think when you look at any career that anybody does, whether it's a newspaper reporter, a mechanic -- anything. They look back at their beginning years as the fondest time and the simplest time, when they really enjoyed everything and had a lot of fun.

But if you really are truthful to yourself and you think about your mindset in those years, they probably weren't as fond as what you're looking back at. But yeah, you miss some of the hands-on stuff.

But fortunately with my position I'm also involved in a lot of the testing and a lot of R&D work with Ford, and that's a lot of hands-on stuff as far as aero goes and different testing matrixes and things like that, like improving systems on the vehicles.

And that helps with the culture shock of not being hands-on. That still kind of keeps me in the loop sometimes.

Q: People look at the action on the racetrack and see that it's fierce. But in the garage, it's friendly as well. Does that aspect spill over to the manufacturers' relationships with each other?

Leslie: I think it's the same as with the race teams. If you look at the race teams and how the 17 car (Kenseth) interacts with the 8 car (Dale Earnhardt Jr.) It's a lot the same.

Yeah, everybody is racing against each other and they want to be the best, and they want to go home with the trophy, but at the end of the day the racing season is too long, it's too strenuous to make enemies.

You're living with these folks on the road a larger percentage of the time than what you're at home with your actual family. Yeah, I'm doing everything I can to make sure that Ford wins the race, and I'm sure the Dodge guys are doing the same and the Chevrolet guys are doing the same for Chevrolet.

But you can't (be enemies). There's still some camaraderie because let's face it; you're still going to the same places 36, 38 weekends a year. So even though you work for opposing companies, you're not enemies because you see them so much.

I think it's the same thing you see with the race teams.

Q: Looking ahead to 2005, what's the most drastic change the fans in the stands might see?

Leslie: I don't think we have a real drastic change. The rules that NASCAR has come up with, shortening the spoiler, is going to be across the board, so I don't know that's that going to be a huge notice in the stands because it's across the board.

If you go in the inner workings of the garage area it's going to be a huge deal to the mechanics and the crew chiefs, but I don't know that we have anything that's really going to change the outlook.

We do have a couple teams -- prospects on the Busch side that are switching over to Ford. We're looking into our truck program, to really step up the pace there and to really be a competitive factor week in and week out and to compete for the championship.

Next year, we'll have more programs competing for the championship as opposed to just having the 99 (Carl Edwards) there this year. We're looking to double our efforts on that front.

It's one of those deals where everything's going to be going along the same lines -- we're just going to go back to the drawing board and re-double our efforts on every front and try to come out of the box next year more competitive than we came out of the box this year.