Doug Yates: "Our No. 1 thing is for UPS to come back with us [in 2007]." Credit: Autostock

Doug Yates addresses the issues facing RYR

"It just hasn't felt like it's our company anymore."

CONCORD, N.C. -- The departure of team manager Eddie D'Hondt earlier this week means a new executive structure at Robert Yates Racing, one that requires Robert and Doug Yates to resume a more active role within the team in one of the most difficult times in the organization's history.

Will UPS come back? Who will replace Dale Jarrett in the No. 88 Ford? Is Elliott Sadler secure in his current contract?

Thursday at Lowe's Motor Speedway, Doug Yates sat down with NASCAR.COM's Marty Smith to lay it all on the table.

Eddie D'Hondt's departure means some restructuring at Robert Yates Racing. Why is he gone and what will it take to re-right the ship at RYR?

ALSO General manager Eddie D'Hondt became the first casualty in the restructuring of struggling Robert Yates Racing to make the Yates family more involved.  •   Complete story, click here

Yates: This has been a family business for a long time. He's been at it since '88 and I came shortly thereafter, in '90. We've done this together for a long time.

We've never really had a general manager until Eddie came. Eddie worked extremely hard and did some really good things for us. But it's a performance business and we're not getting the results. The results were actually going the wrong way for us.

So, one, from a performance standpoint we have to evaluate where our company is going. And, two, it just hasn't felt like it's our company anymore. So it starts there. If you don't feel like it's your company, some days you don't feel like walking in the shop. It's never been that way.

If you're willing to be in and make it work, and you're all-in, you can suffer through some good and bad. But when you're suffering and someone else is driving the ship it just doesn't feel good. So that's why we started at the top, and we'll work from there.

So did he assume so much control that you guys were unaware of some things going on?

Yates: Well, Eddie was doing what he set out to do. He was trying to take care of everything for us. He did what he felt was right. But for us it was a little bit too much. Some of the things we felt like we should be in, he controlled and did (execute).

I don't want to spin this the wrong way, like he was over-controlling. He was trying to do what he knew. But it didn't feel totally comfortable to us, and some of the directions he wanted to take it and (the directions) we wanted to take it were different.

So we had to start there, and we'll work on the performance thing. At the end of the day, somebody can handle getting people to the racetrack, but how are we going to get the cars to go around the track faster? That's the bottom line.

There's a lot going on with RYR right now. With Dale Jarrett leaving you're looking for a driver, and UPS is trying to decide its future. Update me with what's going on with UPS.

	JARRETT TO TOYOTA When Michael Waltrip went shopping for a driver for his Toyota-backed program in 2007, he looked at the list of those who would be contractually available.  His search stopped when he found that Dale Jarrett was willing to talk.  •   Complete story, click here

Yates: First, let me start by thanking Dale Jarrett for all he's done for, and with, our company. It's been a great relationship. I remember all the times with him -- some good, some bad. Started off at the Daytona 500 in his very first race with us, we sat on the pole. That was his first pole ever. Then we won a championship. Now we're where we're at.

Our intentions were for Dale Jarrett to retire in our 88 UPS car, so we were definitely caught off-guard a little bit. We're planning. We have some development drivers, but they're not ready today. So we're scrambling a little bit -- how we're going to react to Dale leaving, how we're going to react to either UPS going somewhere else or staying.

If they stay, we know we've got to do some better things for them. We've won races for them every year except one. We've done some good things. It's real easy for people to say some negative things, but you've also got to look at all the positive things we've done.

We just have to regroup, and go out there and see what's out there as far as drivers and sponsors. Our No. 1 thing is for UPS to come back with us. I think we can carry this thing on, but if not we'll have to move on.

Do you feel good about it?

Yates: I feel about 50/50. I think there's as good a chance of them going to somebody else as there is staying. But they know us. They know what we're about. I think they like us, they just want to see our performance get better.

I've heard a lot of rumors in the garage about Casey Mears. I keep hearing his name associated with your 88 car. Where does that stand, and how many drivers are you courting?

Yates: Like I said, we weren't prepared, and this year there's only a few drivers available. And Casey's a good one. We would love to have Casey Mears. But he has to make his decisions, as well.

I think he has a lot of potential, and he could be a winner in our car. There's some other guys out there, as well, that we're talking to. We'll just have to wait and see where it lands.

We also hear a lot about Elliott Sadler. We know he's signed through 2008. Do you feel confident he'll see that contract through to completion?

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Yates: Man, I hope so. I want nothing more than to take Elliott and do the same things we did with Dale Jarrett. That would be such a great story if we could take Elliott -- he is a superstar now, but really take him and do the things we all know we can do together.

But we've got to perform. I don't expect him to be happy if we're not performing. We're not happy, either. Sometimes in all racing you've got to get in a room and clear the air, say, hey, what's wrong with the driver, what's wrong with the chassis, what's wrong with the engine? Put it out on the table.

But when we leave that room we've all got to be together. I think that's where we are today.

Total out-of-the-dark question on my part because I've always wondered: Roush Racing has obviously gotten a ton of return out of the Roush/Yates Engines partnership. You guys haven't. I'm wondering if it was ever discussed that you'd get chassis help from them, and if so, where is it?

Yates: First of all, I want to make sure everybody understands that we have gotten a lot out of that engine relationship. Sure, our cars haven't won as many races as their cars, haven't won championships. But we had to combine our engine efforts, and it was very healthy for us as a group for Ford, for Roush and for Yates. So when people say we haven't gotten a lot out of it, that's kind of ... one-sided ...

Wrong?

Yates: Yeah, wrong. We have gotten a lot out of it. We have better engines today than we would have had if we did it on our own. Have we helped Roush's engines more than our engines? I think it's a collective effort. We got here together.

I'm very proud of that company. That's what I've been doing for three years, now. I've got 180 employees that I love, and a great company, and I'm proud of everything we do. We've got to continually work hard every day to make the engines better, because you can't sit still on that, either.

Some days you look at the Roush organization, and if he only had two cars at Darlington and they both broke oil pump belts, he'd be sitting here talking to you in a similar way that we are today. What we missed out on is we had an opportunity to grow and we didn't grow. And really, that's part of the issue.

It's not the whole issue but it's part. Would four cars help us today? No. We've got to get our technical part better. If we have four bad cars or two bad cars what's the difference? But four cars gives you the resources to go and do some of the things we're not doing today.

Thinking about a third team next year?

Yates: Sure. We have to grow.

Is that the plan right now?

Yates: The plan is to get these two right, and to secure sponsorship for this car, whether it be UPS or somebody else. That's Step 1. But we'd like to have three cars. We don't want to grow at a rate that it hurts us, or hurts the people we associate ourselves with. But we need to grow.

This is a business and we have to look at it that way, more today than we have in the past. It's a racing business, but in the racing business, NASCAR set a template of four teams and that's what you need to get to if you want to compete in this thing long term.

Sadler was taken out of the No. 90 Busch Series car. Now he's back in it. Why?

Yates: Very true. Our Busch car hasn't performed, and to be honest he doesn't want to drive two bad cars in one weekend. That's as straightforward as I can be. But it's very important to CitiFinancial that Elliott Sadler, their star, drives that car.

As much as Matt McCall and Stephen Leicht and all those guys are doing a great job, it's very important to everybody that Elliott Sadler drives that car and do good.

Last year we had 10 top-10 finishes and came very close to winning Richmond and had great performances. We have to work on that in concert with this and then he'll want to go drive that car.

D'Hondt is gone. Do you plan to bring anyone else in or will you and Robert assume what he was doing?

Yates: I think, right now, we're so focused on making sure we put the pieces in place to make our cars perform good that that's secondary to us. Long term for me, for Doug Yates, is I love engines and I'm very passionate about engines.

But I love this race team more than I love those engines. This is my future. I have two young sons that I want to see this thing be around for in 50 more years, so this is where my heart is. So I have to wear a couple hats here, and I have to be very sensitive to engines for everybody and our team for our family, but long term this is my best interest.

Am I a general manager? No, I'm a terrible general manager. I like working on stuff. But I like an organization that has key people in place, where they all can do their jobs and function very well.

Who will assume your position at the engine shop? Will someone move up?

Yates: No. I have great people in place there. I'm splitting some time right now. Jack (Roush) and I have talked about that, and he's very supportive in Robert Yates Racing getting back to where they need to be. And he knows a little bit of my time will be spread.

But I have such good people in place -- I've worked very hard over the past three years to get that organization where it can keep going without me there every minute of the day.

Toyota's coming in. I know their factory-backing is going to be huge, so their teams won't have to go out and get as much sponsorship dollars as some teams are accustomed to getting. Does that scare you?

Yates: Yes. That's the part about Toyota that really concerns me. I don't think you'll find anybody that's going to get up any earlier or stay up any later than us, and that's 180 people, not one. So as far as the product and those things, that's the fun part. We can compete on that level. We'll have fun in that challenge.

But the thing that scares me about Toyota is the money, and what they can do with the money. If they buy up all the drivers and all the good teams, and then can go out and sell sponsorships for less, that's pretty tough to compete with. That's what we're up against right now with the sponsors we're looking at -- including UPS.