Conversation: Doug Yates

On race morning, Doug Yates is all business. He walks briskly from one Ford car to another, ducking under the hood, listening to make sure all his engines are making the right sounds. As the president of Roush-Yates Engines, they're all his responsibility. So is Robert Yates Racing, which he co-owned along with his father Robert until they partnered with the Newman/Haas/Lanigan open-wheel team last week.

Yates, like his father one of the genuine nice guys in the Nextel Cup garage, has been around the sound of revving engines for as long as he can remember. His dad worked for giants such as Holman-Moody, Junior Johnson, and DiGard Racing on the way to becoming one of the preeminent engine builders of his time. His son has followed in his footsteps, and took a few moments to chat prior to last week's event at Indianapolis Motor Speedway:

RYR partnership

Robert Yates Racing has set up a partnership with Paul Newman, Carl Haas and Michael Lanigan combining the forces of Yates' stock-car operation with a team that has more than 100 victories and seven championships in CART and Champ Car.

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Q: You're a car owner now. You're supposed to spend all race morning sitting in a director's chair chatting it up with sponsor representatives, but instead you've got your head buried under a car hood. What's the deal with that?

Yates: That's why I love racing. I don't think I'd have it any other way. The fun part to me is the mechanical part and the competition side of the business. That's what I love to do.

Q: You were just leaning in close to Matt Kenseth's engine. What are you looking for there?

Yates: We're just going through the Sunday morning warm-up procedure, to make sure everything is good, that there are no leaks or anything like that, checking your ignition systems out. You're doing your final jetting of the carburetor and setting the ignition timing, which is really critical. That's how risky you want to be, how close to optimized. For Indy, we kind of let it all hang out, so to speak.

Q: You're under there with no earplugs. Do you worry about hearing since you're under the hood so much?

Yates: Well, I kind of have selective hearing. You can ask my wife about that. For me, it's just kind of old school a little bit. It's hard to hear it when you have earplugs on. You're listening for certain things, and even in the shop when we're operating the dynamometers and everything, I'd rather not wear headphones or earplugs if I can get away with it. Sometimes it hurts. When the jets fly over before the race, I hold my ears. But these engines, they're kind of talking to you, so you want to be able to hear them.

Q: This isn't just a job to you, it's the family business. Did that make the weeks leading up to the partnership with Newman/Haas/Lanigan emotional ones?

Yates: We've been going through this process about a year and a half, trying to figure out how to make our program stronger. In that time frame, I've kind of hardened in some ways and accepted some things. On one hand, it's a little bit sad to see RYR go to a new chapter. But then, it's very exciting. And the partnership with Paul Newman, Carl Haas and Mike Lanigan and his family, we couldn't have found a better fit for our company. The guys are really similar, and we have similar backgrounds. Carl Haas was also sponsored by Texaco for many years, and so were we, and there's the Ford involvement. We wanted to make sure that we surrounded ourselves with people we'd like to be like. To have Paul Newman in the press conference the other day is really neat. He's 82 years old, but he's still Paul Newman, and he's still cool. He doesn't say much, but when he does, people listen. It just lights up the room. That's very special. That meant a lot to us, but now we've got to go to work and make this thing work. We have more pressure now than ever, because we have more people to answer to.

Q: Given that your father was an engine builder, we have this image of you sort of being tutored at his knee. Is that the way it happened?

Yates: That was really the case. My dad, he's my hero. Ever since I've been a little boy, in diapers, I've been with him, hanging out in the engine shop. When he worked for Junior Johnson, his regular routine was, he'd come home, eat dinner, and go back to work and work most of the night. I'd go back with him, and I remember spending the night on cots there in the shop. I remember doing my first [engine] block when I was 10 years old, tearing down engines and washing parts. It's been awesome. It really has been awesome. I'm not that old, but I have kind of come from the older school, which is something I really treasure. The guys coming in these days don't see the things we saw. Dad drove the truck, built the engines, jacked the car, changed the tires, everything. We were involved in every aspect of it. Today it's so specialized. It's big business, and that's great. I'm glad it is where it is today, with TV and the media and the sponsorships. But back then it was a lot simpler time, and it was about one car and one driver against 42 other single-car drivers. You worked everything you had. That was special to me. As times change, we must change with the times. I'm just glad I got to live that part of it.

Q: Your bio says you were the head engine builder at RYR at 25. True?

Yates: I don't know. I graduated college with a degree in mechanical engineering, and I watched this racing thing, and it was pretty tough. I was like, I need to make sure I get a good education and give myself options. My junior year in college, my dad got an opportunity to buy the team, and my mom said, "Why don't you come back and really think about things and really help the family business?" I got really serious about it. The day after I graduated, I went home and started working, and all my buddies went off on vacation. I've been there ever since. Really, there were only three people there, so I might have been head engine builder the day I graduated. It was kind of by default. But that's what I love. I love the competition side of it, and that's why I love being under the hoods of these cars. It's funny, my dad walked into the engine shop the other day and I was in the dyno room. He said, "You're getting a little therapy?" Actually the most relaxed time for me is when I'm working on the engines. That's the fun part of this sport. Managing the 180 people and sponsors and drivers and stuff like that, that's the stressful thing. If you ask Robert Yates or you ask Jack Roush what their most enjoyable time in the sport is, I guarantee you they'll probably say working on the engines.