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| Newman and Borland have a winning record |
“It’s
nice, said Borland of his new position, which comes in addition to his duties as
vice president of competition at Stewart Haas Racing. “It’s good to be back
with Ryan and we’ve got a great group of people at Stewart-Haas. Everybody has
just jumped on board and hopefully make a good run at these last four (races) and
get things rolling for next year.”
He
said it is unrealistic to expect the tandem to pick up where it left off six
years ago, adding, “it’s going to take a little while. He’s obviously been
doing this every weekend for the last 15 years and I’ve been not doing it for
the last six or so. It’s getting me back on the same page, but things are going
pretty good.”
Borland
said there are reasons for his previous success with Newman that he hopes to
re-create once again.
“I
think it’s just attitude and work ethic,” he said. “verything was about racing,
everything was about winning and everything was about that particular moment in
time being the best you can be. I think everybody on that team was in that
mindset, (and) the program was able to run very strongly. I think that was the
big piece.
“You
don’t have data acquisition on the car,” he said, “(so) you’ve got to be able
to trust what that driver is saying. You’ve got to be able to know that what
that driver is saying is right. So you’ve got to spend a lot of time talking
about what is going on with the car, what he’s feeling. Sometimes you might not
get that answer in the first 30 seconds of a conversation. It might be four
hours down the road and you’re like, `Wait a minute, you just said something there.
I remember you said something over here that matches that.’
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| Borland is back! |
“If
the relationship is not good, you don’t have those two, three, or four-hour
conversations. You end up with 30-second conversations. So then when you are
making decisions you don’t really have all the information that you need.”
He
called his decision to return to the crew chief ranks “a situation with our
company that made sense right now. We needed to get a good strong team under
Danica (Patrick) for next year, with her coming on board full time. Tony Gibson
and that No. 39 team have done an awesome job the last four years, so it’s a
good solid group to work with her and make that program solid.
“It’s
good to see everybody,” said Borland. “It’s good to be back in a familiar job
setting. The last four years I’ve been spending a lot more time working on
parts for the car, working on R&D-type stuff. Now, it’s more about tuning
the car (and) making the most of it on that day.”
He said the arrival of a retooled Sprint Cup Series
racer next season could serve to level the playing field, allowing lower-budget
teams to be more competitive, at least in the short term. However, Borland said
the dominant operations will likely still prevail in the end.
“I
think it’s still going to be the teams that are strongest in being able to
figure out things quickly,” he said. “Definitely, everybody is going to go back
to ground zero (with the new car). Then it’s going to be a race to see who can
find the package that works.”
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