Evernham wants to get back to racing side of sport (cont'd)

Evernham said that he wants the freedom to get back closer to where he was in the days when he was a crew chief for Jeff Gordon, and during the early days at Evernham Motorsports, when his main focus was getting his cars to run faster.

"I loved it. To be able to come up with something new that nobody else had, God, yeah, I loved it. It was certainly a challenge and inspiring," said Evernham, who left Gordon's highly successful team at Hendrick to form his own company under Dodge's umbrella in 1999.

"Now people have to be inspiring in a different way. The guys of 10 years ago aren't the guys of today."

And, of course, the Car of Ten Years Ago is not the Car of Today and certainly is not the Car of Tomorrow. Evernham, an early opponent of NASCAR's new Car of Tomorrow, now supports the idea and said that he understands the need for it.

"There are still a lot of inspiring things you can do -- developing simulation, developing ways to make the cars better. I think that's where the fun is now: taking the car and saying I'm going to develop a new way to make it better or make it work -- rather than the old way of trying to circumvent the NASCAR rules," Evernham said.

"In the end, NASCAR had to change. And this Car of Tomorrow is one of the first things that's going to change it, if we're going to keep growing and keep expanding the fan base and keep attracting [investors in race teams like] the John Henrys [whose Fenway Sports Group joined forces with Roush Racing] and the George Gilletts and the people that are involved in other professional sports. If we're going to bring those types of people and those fans, we've got to have a lot more black-and-white [rules], and the Car of Tomorrow is the start of that.

"I know that the drivers have complained about it and the people have complained about it. We just have to figure out how to make it work and keep making it better, because it could well be the thing that does it for us. It's the future, and we've got to deal with it."

Evernham said that he simply hopes Gillett -- and the infusion of cash Gillett would bring -- are a part of the future at Evernham Motorsports. But he stressed that it is not yet a done deal.

"Right now it looks pretty good," he said. "But I've been through so many deals that just don't work, as bad as you want them to. I'm hoping this one works."