President Bush hosted Kurt Busch, car owner Jack Roush and team president Geoff Smith at the Oval Office upon winning the Nextel Cup title last year. Credit: Win McNamee/Getty Images

Chase Conversation: Geoff Smith

Roush Racing has set a new standard for achievement by placing all five of its teams into NASCAR's 10-team championship "playoff" system, the Chase for the Nextel Cup.

Roush Racing president Geoff Smith has racing and business in his background -- but as a younger man Smith competed on skis and that experience proved to him there was a better way to make it in business.

	Jack Roush teams have netted 11 wins so far this year. Credit: Autostock
	Inside the Numbers Jack Roush (Stats as Cup owner) Cateogry No. Years 18 Races 1846 Wins 85 Top-5 443 Top-10 773 Titles 2 ALSO •   Roush Racing Team Page

Smith met current NASCAR team owner Jack Roush when Roush was in the beginning stages of forming and organizing what would become impressively effective conglomerates in both business and motorsports.

And while Roush, the "Cat in the Hat" who literally wears many chapeaus while running his varied companies, concentrates on the performance side of the motorsports effort, Smith runs the business and marketing end of things.

After two races in the Chase, Smith took some time to discuss his history and role with Roush and such varied topics as the futures of Mark Martin, Kurt Busch and Jamie McMurray, as well as Roush's 2006 plans in Cup, Busch and the Craftsman Truck Series.

Q: Geoff, when you got out of law school, if you had to consider three possible career paths, in your wildest dreams would this have been one of them?

Smith: (Laughing) NASCAR, or motorsports, was not even on my radar screen. But sports was, because I was a ski racer at the University of Colorado. There were opportunities for me in the ski business that I passed on, to go to law school.

Whatever instincts I had when I was 21 years old, I was pretty sure that making a living in the ski business was not for me. It wasn't until later in life that I got a chance to be in sports, in a different way.

So sports was there, but I never thought you could marry a business career and sports -- at least not unless you were like a wealthy capitalist who would own a football team or a baseball team.

Q: Jack Roush has probably either broken a lot of molds or set a lot of standards, and I'm not sure if people know how diverse his background is, in both business and motorsports. How did you hook up with Jack and become involved with the race teams?

Smith: It happened over time. The story is I went to work for a tax and small business legal specialist whose father was the vice president of engineering for Ford.

This lawyer was also a race-car driver, who was a road racer, and he fit the mold of race-car drivers today (laughing), which was, when the clients came into the office, and they were recommended to him because there weren't many lawyers in motorsports and he was one of them.

But when they came into the office, he didn't want to do the work for them, because he was a driver and it would be beneath him to do work for the people you were either competing against or trying to have a certain peer level of respect with.

So I got the work, and that was where I got my start, in the late 1970s with a number of projects in the motorsports arena, representing drivers, some teams and companies that supplied parts to racing.

That was where I met Jack Roush, in 1977 or '78. His company hadn't been started that long ago. He had stopped drag racing and split up with his partner, Wayne Gap -- and there was a lingering problem with the paperwork that separated Gap from Roush.

Gap sued Jack and I represented Jack in the lawsuit -- and that was how we got started. At the time, Jack's was a pretty small company, as far as lawyers were concerned, and it wasn't for four or five years after that, that Jack got back into managing what I would call a race team, in road racing.

	Mark Martin has been the on-track face of Roush Racing since 1988. Credit: Autostock
	Inside the Numbers Most Wins -- Roush Racing Driver Wins 2005 Mark Martin 34 0 Jeff Burton 17 NA Kurt Busch 14 3 Matt Kenseth 10 1 Greg Biffle 8 5

It was in 1982, and Jack called on me to put together a partnership between him and a fellow from Germany, Erich Zakowski, whose company, Zakspeed, was a well-known racing company (using Ford vehicles). That was the first motorsports work I did for Jack, and I did all his motorsports business work from that date on.

Q: It's a lot of years to get from there to 2005, so skipping a little bit, maybe, what's a thumbnail sketch of your day-to-day responsibilities as president of Roush Racing?

Smith: It's evolved over time and it seems to evolve each day, but basically Jack and I split the business, conceptually in that he manages the competition and I manage the business.

So that means that I have to raise the money, do the marketing, do the selling, sponsor services, licensing, event marketing and overall cost management.

Of course, the overall cost management is awkward when (Roush) runs the competition side (laughing).

Q: If there is a prototypical corporate CEO, does Jack fit that mold or does he go a step beyond, or re-make it with his "in the trenches" mentality?

Smith: We're what's called a flat organization -- extremely flat. We wear whatever hat we need to wear without worrying about the layers of management beneath us.

So Jack has two hats. He has what he calls the "general manager hat," and then if I want to over-rule the general manager then he puts on his owner hat (laughing) -- that I can't necessarily over-rule -- but sometimes I can.

I know you've seen Jack at a racetrack with his head under a hood during the race if something's happening, so you get this flat organization where we don't really stand on title.

Jack's business card just says "Jack Roush," so he can have whatever title he needs to have for whatever the situation is that he's facing.

Q: That seems that it would create a very effective operating machine?

Smith: It does, as the flatter you can have your organization and still have it function (is better). It gets harder, the bigger it gets because there comes a point where you have to rely on other managers to get expertise that's better than your expertise on a particular point.

And then you've got to rely on them instead of doing the job for them. But it's very effective particularly when you're in a performance-based business like we are, where every nickel that you don't have to spend on general administrative things can go into improving performance on the racetrack.

	Greg Biffle is tied with Tony Stewart for most wins this year. Credit: Autostock
	Inside the Numbers Roush Racing 2005 Driver W T-5 T-10 Rank G. Biffle 5 11 16 6 Ku. Busch 3 8 14 10 C. Edwards 2 8 11 8 M. Kenseth 1 7 12 9 M. Martin 0 7 14 4 Note: Thru 28 races

Q: To have five cars in the Chase for the Nextel Cup is significant, even though this is only the second year of the Chase, but from your perspective how long do you consider that building process to have been, to get to this point?

Smith: When you look at the way that we think, the multiple car concept was in Jack's brain from the moment Mark Martin set foot on the racetrack at Daytona in 1988.

In 1992 was the first moment when we were organized to effectuate it, when we added the 16 car with Wally Dallenbach (Jr.) driving. Depending on what you use as your starting point, the strategy for where we are today was already in place from the first time Jack got started in racing.

Q: That was because Jack had some real success with that model in sports cars, right?

Smith: Well, he had it in sports cars, he had it in drag racing -- he always believed that no one person is young enough, tough enough, smart enough, strong enough so that you can get the answers that you need from any one person or point.

So Jack has always looked for another program, for comparison. Comparison is the first priority, to find out what's true and what's not true. As you know, in this business where there are hundred of thousands of moving parts, the truth is sometimes elusive.

Once you have the flat-line comparison, you want to see how many more ideas you can get out of three or four or five units of people and then how do you get those best ideas into your organization, which is the second part of multiple car teams.

From 1992 to 1995 or 1996, we had a compatible chemistry between the two teams, Mark's and Wally Dallenbach's -- and later Ted Musgrave. But the whole boat of the two of them wasn't lifting, as they say.

So while we were succeeding in one part of the exercise, getting a comparison, we weren't succeeding in that both teams weren't adding energy to one another to improve themselves overall.

So it wasn't until we formed a third team in 1996, with Buddy Parrott leading it and Jeff Burton driving -- and moved it to another location -- did we get the new ideas emerging.

So then what developed was the communication and idea sharing that we wanted, between Mark Martin and Jeff Burton. This was the foundation of what was going on.

It's still undecided whether Mark Martin will return to the No. 6 next year. Credit: Autostock

Jeff was new, and he benefited from what Mark knew, and Mark saw that Jeff had some things that he didn't have, to where Mark was willing to give up his years of record keeping and knowledge to Jeff, in exchange for that.

So now the boat lifted, for Mark and Jeff in that period from 1996 through 2000, and they went upward together.

Then, in 1998 we were five cars in two locations. One location, which was Liberty (North Carolina), where Johnny Benson and Ted Musgrave -- and then Kevin Lepage were -- that imploded, basically.

So it really wasn't until 2002, when we had all the teams together here in Concord (North Carolina), when Mark Martin finished second to Tony Stewart in the championship and Matt Kenseth had the most wins, that it was pretty clear that we were on our way.

So this is our fourth year, but it took all those years, from 1988 to 2002 -- 10 years, or 14 years or wherever you want to start, for that strategy to be fully functional.

Q: If Mark Martin was the perfect lynchpin around which to build Roush Racing, when it came time for him to start sliding out of the sport, and he formed a plan, how difficult was it to discuss remaining in the 6 car for another year?

Smith: Well, it was (laughing) -- Jack doesn't believe that people should retire -- any people should retire (laughing).

So he'd been pretty consistent all the way through with Mark, saying "Are you sure you want to do this, Mark? You still have what it takes. There's still a lot of years in racing, so let's keep going, Mark."

Q: In other words, it wasn't too hard to make that horse drink, once you brought him to water?

	Carl Edwards has six wins this year in the Cup and Busch series combined. Credit: Autostock
	Inside the Numbers Roush Racing 2005 Busch Series Driver No. W T-5 T-10 C. Edwards 28 4 11 17 M. Kenseth 10 1 4 9 M. Martin 6 2 4 5 H. Parker Jr. 1 0 0 0 2005 Craftsman Truck Series Driver No. W T-5 T-10 R. Craven 20 0 3 7 T. Kluever 20 0 5 8

Smith: Well, he'd been doing it a lot, before. The thing that changed the dynamic was from the exit of Jeff Burton to pulling Carl Edwards out of our planned cycle, and then suddenly we didn't have the continuation of the 6 team that would coincide with Mark's retirement from the Cup Series.

That created a significant business issue for us, and Mark also didn't want to leave with a really good team not having a driver.

It wasn't Jack, (because) Jack had stopped approaching Mark on driving. But I approached him on it. I said to Mark, "This was not how any of us wanted to end this in Cup racing" -- and he agreed.

Q: At Dover over the weekend the question came up to Rusty Wallace and he remarked that "the attorneys" were still working on Kurt Busch possibly driving the No. 2 car for Penske Racing in 2006. Can you put a percentage on the chances of that happening?

Smith: I have sponsors, and Jack Roush is very willing to continue the program (with Busch) that we have, next year. It's very easy for us to do that.

I place a much higher percentage on the status quo being maintained than I do that there will be an exit opportunity available for Kurt. Kurt did ask for an exit opportunity and Jack said that he would look at that, which meant that I got the assignment to go look at that.

Then I had to put into motion a very elaborate and sophisticated (laughing) effort to work with about six different parties in order to even see that there would be an opportunity for that exit to occur.

By the way, we're not through with all of that and there are lawyers involved, because you've got Kurt's lawyer following up and I've got all these other six parties I'm talking with -- which have to do with different sponsors and race teams, drivers and so forth.

But it's so complicated, and generally when there's a level of complication like this, I'd say it's unlikely (Busch would leave). I'm using my best efforts to see whether there's a solution -- and it's possible.

But I've been telling everybody you've got to wait until between the first of October to the 15th of October until I can take it from a lower percentage to the point where, if everything worked right, it would go to a 50-50 percentage (laughing).

But it's not there, yet.

Q: With the Cup teams and sponsorship for 2006, I understand that the 16, 17, 97 and 99 are all pretty well solid and in place, but what's the status of the 6 car?

Smith: We have a completed sponsorship arrangement on the 6 that will be announced shortly. We're just waiting for the last possible minute as to whether Jamie McMurray will be free or not.

We're not expecting that, but that impacts it, so the announcement is on hold just for another couple of weeks.

Q: Looking at the Busch Series program for 2006, what can you say about Carl Edwards again running the full Busch schedule, for Todd Kluever to move into a full Busch program and for Greg Biffle to come back in-house in Busch?

Smith: We're going to have some really exciting Busch programs next year, both from a sponsorship and marketing point of view and a pure racing point of view.

Yes, it's true that Carl is going to be coming back for a full year. We have sponsorship that we'll be announcing shortly, and that's the same with Todd Kluever. We're going to move Todd into the Busch Series next year, and we have a sponsor lined up there.

Then we have limited programs for Greg Biffle, Matt Kenseth and very few for Mark Martin -- so we're going to be hopping here at Roush Racing in regards to Busch racing.

Q: Finally, in the Craftsman Truck Series we've got the "Gong Show" driver that we'll be seeing on television shortly, and Mark had said that his truck team would be under the Roush umbrella -- so what will the makeup of that program be?

Smith: We're going to have a minimum of two, and there's a possibility we might have three. We're planning on two for sure, and Mark is going to run seven truck races that are run in conjunction with the Cup races.

We're going to partner him up with a rookie, which will be David Ragan, and maybe even Todd Kluever will run a couple of races. But primarily David Ragan will run with Mark in one truck.

In the other truck, we haven't announced the driver or the sponsor yet, but we're not expecting that to be Superchips. I think if they remain they'll be in a more limited role.