Conversation: Chip Ganassi

Chip Ganassi is one of those guys who keeps an eye peeled for the next big thing.

He bought into NASCAR with Felix Sabates, built a big shop near Concord (N.C.) Regional Airport, moved a lot of his other far-flung racing holdings to it, and all of that happened before most of the rest of the sport figured out that it was the smart thing to do.

Ganassi is a former driver, having started six Indianapolis 500s, and as a team owner has titles in Champ Car, the Indy Racing League and the Rolex Sports Car Series, to name a few. His cars have won the Indianapolis 500, too.

Franchitti and Montoya

He's also prone to doing what the establishment doesn't expect, bringing in open-wheel drivers to NASCAR's top level and letting them repopulate the gene pool, as it were.

Ganassi was on the run during the Lowe's Motor Speedway event, but took the time to talk about various issues, including his new driver, the sport in general and the need for interpreters in today's NASCAR.

Q: Bringing Dario Franchitti to NASCAR the year after you brought Juan Montoya ... was that like taking the best player available on the draft board?

Ganassi: Exactly. When a good guy becomes available, I think you have to go after him. If you're doing the right thing for your partners and your employees and your sponsors, when somebody good comes along, I think it's incumbent upon you as a car owner to take a look at him. That's been our plan, and that's pretty much what happened with Dario. Here's a guy that comes along and says, 'I'd be interested in NASCAR.' As a car owner, you have to say, 'Hmmm ... I have to take a look at that.'

Q: Why are drivers like Franchitti and Montoya interested in NASCAR now?

Ganassi: I think it's different for each and every guy. I see these stories lately where everyone says it's the money, it's the money. I don't think it's the money. These guys, on a per-race basis, they can make more money in open-wheel racing. I don't think it's the money at all. In fact, I would suggest to you that it's quite the opposite. A lot of these guys already have all the things that money can buy you. I would suggest that they are here for the racing side of it. They are competitive personalities and they want to be in a competitive situation. They want a challenge.

Q: As an owner, bringing in guys like Franchitti and Montoya, does that put more pressure on you to have them succeed quickly?

Ganassi: There's pressure to succeed around this sport all the time. If you're not trying to get better, you're getting worse, believe me. Nobody can put racers under more pressure than they do themselves. They're always challenging themselves. If they're not out there winning races, you're not happy, and you want to know why.

I don't know that this puts any more or less pressure on a team; it's just about building up and getting more quality people in your organization.

Q: On a side note, what did you think of someone asking Franchitti if he needed an interpreter?

Ganassi: I found that kind of funny. The guy speaks better English than half the people I know in the United States.

Q: Tony Stewart mentioned Chip Ganassi Racing as the embodiment of the feeder system in NASCAR working from more than one source, since you have Montoya and Franchitti on one side and a USAC driver, Bryan Clauson, on another. Is that true?

Ganassi: That's the way it's always been. It's never been a traditional path. Everybody wants to say that, for a while there, you had to have a guy that did the Busch Series, or ARCA or USAC or wherever. People are always going to want to put definitions on where you can find drivers, and they want to do a cookie-cutter thing, saying 'the last guy that won a race came from Monster trucks,' so all the guys from Monster trucks are going to be hot this week.

You have these sorts of spurts of interest from an area of racing. It happens in all series, not just NASCAR, and they come from a lot of different places all the time. Two or three or four guys come from one area, and then it switches again. Then you get two or three or four guys from there, and it switches again. Believe me, it won't be too long when the guys coming from open-wheel racing into NASCAR will be forgotten, in terms of where they came from, and they'll be judged strictly on their performance.

Then we'll get a guy from Supercross or Monster trucks or somewhere that we haven't even thought of yet.

Q: Where are you now with sponsorship for the 40 car for 2008?

Ganassi: We're talking to three or four different people. We've got a package together where we can piece something together, but we'd like to focus on one or two companies, and that's what we're working on now. We have a lot of interest, a lot of international interest, we have two or three different options that we're trying to get together here pretty quick.

Q: You've won titles in just about everything else/

Ganassi: It's the prize I want right now, the prize I'm working on. There are plenty of races to win out there yet. I don't look at it as a means to an end.

Q: How much of the operating capital of your teams is spent on personnel?

Ganassi: It's probably got to be 35 percent of our budget, 30-35 percent counting the drivers. Maybe higher.

Q: Is that going to be the biggest expense going forward, with technology limited the way it is?

Ganassi: People always say technology is limited. When you say technology in racing ... you know, there's technology in a butter knife. You can't just say there's no technology in it. We've made Cup cars a very high-tech spec. You can make a high-tech spec of a low-tech piece of equipment, and that's what we've done.

Q: Is there a technical area at which your team is better than anyone else?

Ganassi: We do some things well; I don't know that I want to tell everybody what those are, but there are areas where we get it done better than other teams. Each and every team should have something they do better than everybody else. If you're on a race team and you can't identify that, then I'd say you need to be re-evaluating your program.

Q: What was your opinion of the Talladega race, the first one with the COT on a plate track?

Ganassi: A couple of drivers came out and said they thought it was a boring race. Right away, everybody in the press picks that up and says, 'You know, we've got to keep working on those cars.' I don't know that that is the case. I don't know that we need to be reactionary to what a couple of drivers say. You don't think there might be any motivation in what they're saying, do you? You don't think they might be trying to gain an advantage? I wouldn't think that ...

Q: You'll be going to one-spec car next year. Will that save you money?

Ganassi: It certainly saves us money over this year.

Q: Going forward, you won't build as many COTs as you did current cars?

Ganassi: I think that's probably the case long term. I think in the short term, until everyone figures out exactly how they want their car, the big teams are still going to be building cars that they like.

Q: On the top-35 qualifying rule, do you have an opinion on all the yakking that's being done about changing it?

Ganassi: Didn't they know the rules when they came in? I thought the rules were pretty much set. Boris [Said] wasn't complaining when he qualified on the pole at Daytona. I didn't hear it then.

Q: How much does it bother you as a team owner that the TV ratings have been declining in recent years?

Ganassi: I don't know enough about why they are declining. If in fact they are declining, is it because of the perceived television show itself, or does it have more to do with the time of day the races are on? I don't really know. I don't have enough education about the subject to have an opinion on it.

Q: What's been your opinion of Montoya's first year in NASCAR?

Ganassi: I think he's done pretty well. When you look at the fact that he's won three races for us in three different types of cars, I'd say he's about on plan. He's very happy. He enjoys this type of racing, enjoys the fans, the bus life. He's able to have his family with him all the time, and that's important to him.