From the Pit Box: Q&A with team owner Ray Evernham

Now in his seventh season as a full-time car owner, Ray Evernham sees blue skies ahead.

But three races into the 2007 season, things have not gone as well as he had envisioned. All three of his Evernham Motorsports race teams were penalized heavily for rules infractions discovered in post-qualifying for the season-opening Daytona 500, putting each of them in a hole from which they have yet to fully climb out.

Kenny Francis, team director for the No. 9 Evernham Dodge driven by Kasey Kahne, will not be on the pit box this Sunday at Atlanta Motor Speedway as a result. Last year Francis helped direct Kahne to one of his six 2006 victories there in the spring race, then known as the Golden Corral 500 and this year christened the Kobalt Tools 500.

Francis will be serving the final leg of the four-race suspension handed him by NASCAR at Daytona, where he also was slapped with a $50,000 fine for failing to cover some holes that supposedly aided Kahne's car aerodynamically. In addition, Kahne was docked 50 driver points and Evernham 50 owner points.

Also suspended at Daytona for two races each were Josh Browne, the crew chief for the No. 19 Dodge driven by Elliot Sadler, and crew chief Rodney Childers of the No. 10 driven by Scott Riggs. They also were each fined $25,000 for unapproved decklid modifications, and each team also was docked 25 driver points and 25 owner points.

Topics directed at Evernham recently included the suspensions, Atlanta and the Car of Tomorrow:

Q: Could you talk about what you guys have gone through this year, with the early suspensions of some key team members at the Daytona 500, and where you are now?

Evernham: I think we've made gains in our team. We're a stronger, better team; we've just not been able to show it. We went to Daytona, and our plate program is probably our Achilles' heel. But even with all our problems that we had, we were able to bring two top-10s home. We raced good. Then we went to California and had all kinds of problems.

Little things are stopping us from showing what we have. Overall, I think we've ran cars that were top-10 competitive. The 19 and the 10 should be able to complete in the top 10, and the 9 should be able to compete in the top five week-after-week. (Continued)