Dale Jarrett won at Talladega in 2005. Credit: Autostock

YIR: Dale Jarrett

Former Cup champ anything but happy with '05 campaign

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Dale Jarrett loves golf, but he makes his living driving Nextel Cup racecars.

So while he ended 2005 pleased with the direction his Robert Yates Racing team was headed, he was nowhere near satisfied with the distance the No. 88 UPS Ford's drive achieved this season.

Credit: Autostock

Inside the Numbers Dale Jarrett in 2005 Race Start Finish Daytona 500 1 15 Auto Club 500 7 11 UAW-DaimChrys 400 13 18 Golden Corral 500 34 23 Food City 500 21 5 Advance 500 32 14 Sam/RadSh 500 27 14 Subway Fresh 500 35 23 Aaron's 499 14 9 Dodge Charger 500 22 15 Chevy 400 35 34 Coca-Cola 600 7 8 RacePoints 400 14 23 Pocono 500 16 13 Batman 400 14 24 Dodge/S. Mart 350 30 5 Pepsi 400 13 5 USG 400 8 18 New England 300 34 16 Penn. 500 20 15 Allstate 400 24 14 Sirius at the Glen 9 22 GFS Marketplace 400 33 34 Sharpie 500 30 31 Sony HD 500 37 24 Chevy 400 9 39 Sylvania 300 33 18 RacePoints 400 15 15 UAW-Ford 500 2 1 Banquet 400 31 38 UAW-GM Quality 500 20 30 Subway 500 28 31 Bass/MBNA 500 9 14 Dickies 500 29 12 Checker 500 21 9 Ford 400 9 17 Average 20.4 18.2

For the second consecutive campaign, Jarrett was 15th in the final point tally, and while that was much better than his full-time career low point of 26th in 2003, it left the entire organization disappointed.

Neither Yates Racing entry made the Chase for the Nextel Cup, with Jarrett's teammate Elliott Sadler 13th. From 2004 to '05 Jarrett's march back towards the front of the field stalled.

Jarrett went through two crew chief changes during the season and, while there were some bright spots -- most notably an October victory at Talladega that snapped a 98-race winless streak -- his statistical production dropped.

In addition to the win, the team had one Bud Pole, four top-five, seven top-10 finishes and two DNFs during 2005 competition; and while the win and pole were improvements and the team had one fewer DNF, its top-five production from six and 14, respectively last season.

Jarrett said the intermediate racetracks, from 1.5 to two miles in length where a car's downforce is vital, and where the team had excelled in the past, were a problem for RYR and that it's the most critical part of its program that needs to be addressed during the offseason.

"You can't be pleased with how the season went," Jarrett said. "We won a race and that was good, but we have to get this part of our program a little bit better (because) it's been our bread and butter over the years, but it's what hurt us this year."

Before a lap-down, 17th-place finish in the season finale Ford 400 mercifully ended the season, Jarrett had posted three consecutive top-14 finishes, including a ninth at Phoenix, which was his first top-10 finish since winning at Talladega in early October.

Overall, it's the UPS team's performance in the Chase races that gave Jarrett some future optimism, despite a season in which, while being in the top 10 in the standings for eight weeks, he only led four laps.

"Some of our finishes the last month haven't been indicative of how we've run," Jarrett said. "We had a good car at Charlotte and Martinsville, but didn't get a good chance to show it because we were caught up in accidents both times.

"The cars have been running a lot better and it seems like we keep gaining on things, which is better than we were a year ago when we really weren't seeing any improvements.

"We're not battling for a championship but we're working on our program so that next year at this time we may be in a position to be battling for that championship."

Jarrett opened the season with his fourth career Bud Pole at the Daytona 500, meaning RYR's biggest highlights of the season came on the superspeedways.

Despite finishing all but three laps in the first 10 races and remaining within sniffing distance of the top 10 in the standings, Yates made the first crew chief change, from Mike Ford to Billy Wilburn, in late spring.

Through the heat of the summer, the team remained between ninth and 11th in the standings for five consecutive weeks, but by the fall, Wilburn's time as crew chief was over and, after wrecks at Richmond and Charlotte eliminated him from those races and knocked Jarrett to his worst spot in the standings this season, 17th, it was all damage control from there.

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The obvious highlight of Jarrett's season was the Talladega weekend, when RYR qualified second behind teammate Sadler. Jarrett's victory was the 32nd of his career and his 30th in a Ford.

"When you get to this point of your career, you're not exactly sure when that last victory is gonna be there, so you learn to cherish each one," Jarrett said, indicating he didn't think he was through, yet. "I think that we do have more victories to go -- I think in the next two years to come that we can visit Victory Lane a number of times."

But by the end of the season, the Yates hierarchy had decided to make another change, bringing in new crew chief "Slugger" Labbe -- who's been part of race- and championship-winning teams -- to work with Jarrett beginning next season.

Jarrett summed up the tumultuous season before it was anywhere near complete.

"We're always trying out," he said. "I don't know that there's a secure job -- we're all auditioning all the time, we're all fighting for our job."

And after two seasons outside the Chase for the Nextel Cup, Jarrett is ready to see that string end, as well.

"It's never been any different than any other year," Jarrett said. "If you were outside the top 10 or wherever you were in years past, you don't give up -- we get paid to race and race hard, regardless of the circumstances. We're fighting all the time to try to make things better."

Despite the personnel changes, Jarrett said some improvement at the end of the season that he hopes carries over to next season.

"I think the important thing for us was that we were able to get our cars running better," Jarrett said. "We kind of stepped it up a little bit more each race during the last eight or nine races.

"From Charlotte, we thought we were pretty good but we made some changes to go to Atlanta and we were a little better. Then at Texas, we were even a little better than we had been in Atlanta. We made some more aero changes for Homestead and it allowed us to do the things that we know we want to do with the chassis, so our program is much better than it was this past summer.

"We still have plenty of work to do so, hopefully we'll just continue that direction and that'll help us get off to a good start next year."