Singing “Changes”
On occasion the sport’s Comedy Central –
aka Silly Season – see a blockbuster change – or at the very least a
block-whacker change. And at Penske Racing South such a mini-blockbuster has
transpired with the termination of Robin Pemberton as crew chief for Rusty
Wallace.
The change ends a seven-season period for
Pemberton that, to be honest, lasted longer than I think at least some people
might have thought. Given the circumstances in which he entered and over his
tenure with the team, this longevity is remarkable.
The impression I had long had of
Pemberton’s tenure with Penske South was that he was on varying levels of thin
ice almost from the start, for he took over the team at a juncture when it was
THE team in stock car racing. The 1993-4 period was an apex for Roger Penske and
Rusty Wallace that few would have thought possible. With Buddy Parrott as crew
chief and Dave Evans as chief engine builder, Penske South exploded to a level
of domination the sport hadn’t seen since RCR’s 1990. After tumbling viciously
at Daytona, Wallace won in convincing style at Rockingham, nabbed top fives in
the next three races, then after Alan Kulwicki’s death went on a rampage with
three straight wins, and the momentum carried into Rusty’s worst racetrack,
Talladega, and he roared into victory contention. Getting Earnhardted and
suffering numerous bruises in the ensuing tumble shot his momentum, but by
September he had wrested it back and made a torrid run to the tune of six wins
in the final ten races – it was amazing the title did not come. When GM cut back
help to Pontiac, Ford stepped in and Penske South picked up where it left off,
though it took a few races to get the rhythm going. Rusty managed eight wins,
but blown engines in three of the last four races destroyed their title hopes.
Still, the team was one of the greatest ever.
Then Buddy Parrott left. Pemberton came in
and when the first quarter of 1995 went with less than successful results, the
hints of trouble began. 1995 was hardly a total loss, though, as Pemberton
chiefed Rusty to two victories, and the final third saw Rusty go on a top-five
tear indicating more wins would result in 1996. Once that year got underway it
appeared the team was getting back the form of 1994 – Wallace won at
Martinsville, Sears Point, Michigan, Pocono, and Bristol – but results were
curiously becoming more inconsistent.
For 1997 the team changed engine builders
with the hiring of Mike Ege, who’d powered Chad Little to six Grand National
wins; it turned out to be a strikingly weak season; their lone win at Richmond
was marred by an overnight teardown over excess compression, and blown engines
became the norm. The first serious hints of trouble came with quotes attributed
to Pemberton accusing Rusty of consistently making rookie mistakes, a direct
reference to incidents at Sears Point and Talladega.
The pre-1998 switch to the Taurus and the
extra six weeks of pre-season testing allowed by NASCAR provided a break; the
merger of Penske’s team with Michael Kranefuss and Jeremy Mayfield added another
spark; another change in engine builders, with the hard-luck Ege replaced by
Larry Wallace (no relation), was made. 1998 proved to be a substantially
stronger season as Wallace began to win poles with regularity again; he began
leading laps at a prodigious rate; his teammate Mayfield bagged his first career
win at Pocono. Rusty, Pemberton, and the team were doing everything right – but
wins for Wallace weren’t coming. It was not until October at Phoenix that a
rain-shortened win finally arrived.
The 1999 Daytona 500 was Wallace and
Pemberton’s date with career opportunity, and it disappeared in an insane
combination of Rusty’s worst habit and the brain-dead antics of Jeff Gordon, all
transpiring with Ricky Rudd the surprised bystander almost becoming the
crossfire victim. Rusty now went through a surprisingly up and down year
highlighted by victory at Bristol and reaching a nadir with a brutal head-on
impact in Pocono’s first turn wall. But the status as week-to-week challengers
for wins never faltered.
In 2000 it appeared Wallace and Pemberton
would finally reach the competitive apex of the team’s Buddy Parrott days, as
poles became almost a given and Wallace began to dominate races much as he had
in 1993-4; if he lost, as at Martinsville and Richmond in the spring, it was
because of pit strategy and the aero-push that had already all but destroyed
ability to pass. Eventually he hammered out four victories, but Sears Point may
have been the epiphany; NASCAR impounded his engine and tore it down for public
viewing by crew chiefs, to the anger and frustration of Wallace and company, as
rival teams now got a good look at the parts being used in engines that were
clearly head and shoulders over everything else.
Wallace went from nine poles in 2000 to
none in 2001, from four wins to just one in 2001, and at New Hampshire in
November he looked positively abysmal, getting lapped under green with seeming
ease at one of his best racetracks.
"We read the press releases with a
grain of salt; I have a whole shaker full of salt" is how Dave Despain put
it in 1996, and it is a truism to always be kept in mind. The press releases
indicate an amicable departure for Pemberton, and certainly seven seasons
together cements a close bond between him and the team. But it can’t help but be
felt that there was a sense of inevitability here. People expected Rusty to win
eight or more races a year, and for the enormity of success in 1993-4, there was
still a sense of unreality about the expectations. It is to the team’s credit
that they kept Pemberton as long as they did – any other team might have fired
him after 1997.
As it was, such did happen to Pemberton
after many years in the sport. Coming to Petty Enterprises circa 1976 around the
same time as fellow New Yorkers Steve Hmiel and Mike Pfister, Pemberton by 1983
had become a co-crew chief and played a role in the infamous Pettygate race at
Charlotte in 1983. Working with Kyle Petty in 1984 he became part of "The
Lollipop Kids," but was soon with Hmiel at a new team, Roush Performance,
and a driver given up for dead career-wise five years earlier, Mark Martin.
Pemberton’s second win with the team proved fateful – the carb spacer caper at
Richmond in 1990 cost Pemberton a hefty fine and the team the points that would
have shot down the Earnhardt blitzkrieg dead.
It got worse before getting better – at
the 1991 Atlanta 500 Roush blew up and just about assaulted Hmiel and Pemberton
in the pits. When Gary Nelson left SABCO for NASCAR officialdom Pemberton
reteamed with Kyle Petty, now at SABCO Racing. The pairing started fairly slowly
and several times in the first two-thirds of the year momentum seemed to stall.
Kyle first flexed muscle during Charlotte’s ten days in May, losing The Winston
in the slam-bang finish to end such finishes, then lost the World 600, after
leading the most laps, to fading handling and pit-speed cheating by Earnhardt.
He began to assemble some consistency, but it was a test at Watkins Glen that
changed it all – all year the team had chafed that the Pontiac had insufficient down force,
but then Pemberton decided to work more on the nose than the rear, and to the
team’s astonishment it worked better than they could have hoped. Kyle won at
Watkins Glen and began to explode to greater consistency, and after pummeling
the competition at Rockingham was in condition for the title, but it was a
chance that went up in the smoke of the engine in the waning laps of the Dixie
500.
For 1993 a new Pontiac air dam improved
things greatly, but the Daytona 500 began with huge hope of victory and ended in
the trioval and a fight with Bobby Hillin. Kyle battled to the front race after
race, but as the year went on the strength of the team began to dissipate. A
dominant win at Pocono came in June, but after that things went wrong, from a
busted clutch at Pocono in July to crashes at Watkins Glen and Bristol. Kyle
still finished fifth in 1993 points, but it was a harbinger of worse to come. It
came in spades in 1994 and Robin Pemberton was fired by Felix Sabates. A brief
return to Roush Racing preceded the move to Penske.
Now Rusty has a new crew chief in Billy
Wilburn, and Robin Pemberton will presumably spend time with family, but I doubt
we’ve seen the last of his crew chief days – already rumor has begun of a
reunion with Kyle Petty in some capacity with Petty Enterprises.
Speaking of rumors, Jayski had a rumor a
little while back about a publishing house which approached some crewmen with
experience at Penske South looking for material for a tell-all type NASCAR book.
The proposed book may get some serious juice – the story goes that 20 remaining
crewmen from the shuttered Jeremy Mayfield #12 team went to Penske South to hear
about the Pemberton deal, and when they returned to their regular garage the
locks had been changed.