Getting his act together��and taking it on the track 15: at 40, Michael Waltrip has new confidence and the results to prove it - NASCAR

Numbers don't lie, eh? Well, go figure, because if the recent numbers are to be believed, then Michael Waltrip really isn't that much of a driver.

(Insert yore own joke about Waltrip's driving record here. Hint: Think 0-for-his-first-462.)

Look, just because Waltrip has finished a desperate 42nd, 37th, 32nd, 26th and 42nd in his last five races and just because those finishes are almost perfectly representative of a career that could be generously characterized as lackluster does not mean that Waltrip isn't a good driver.

On the contrary, the wreckage of the last month is the measure of just how far--and how fast--Waltrip has come. Results like this might once have dropped him from, say, 25th to 29th in points. This year, file terrible finishes have dropped him from fifth to 11th. But if Waltrip, 40, has indeed become more than just Darrell's Little Brother, so, too, has he accepted a new designation: Semi-legitimate 20014 Title Contender.

Consider that 26th-place finish, which came at New Hampshire. Waltrip was a fixture in the top five for most of the race. He was leading late when he pitted for the splash-and-dash that might have set up for the win. But because of miscommunication--an avoidable human error--Waltrip left his pit stall too early ... with the gas can still attached. the poor finish.

The day before in his hauler, after morning practice and before Happy Hour, between bites of fresh vegetables plucked from a paper plate, Waltrip tried to quantify the ingredients that have given rise to his improvement.

"I think it's fair to say that I'm focusing more than I ever have," he said chomping on a carrot. " I hate to say that because"--he paused, apparently aware of the converse of that statement, that he hadn't been focused enough through out his career.

Another pause.

"I was going all I knew how to give then. I think I just know how to give more now. I don't know if there was any event that made me think I needed to change. I just grew. I just started to say, 'I want to be successful.'"

Whatever the exact explanation for the seemingly sudden turnaround, the fact remains that the transformation has been fairly stunning. Already in 2003 he has notched his third career victory--the rain shortened Daytona 500--and finished in the top five six times.

Hardly Jeff Gordon-like but noteworthy because Waltrip had all of 18 top fives in the first 15 full year of his career, before he got his first victory in the 2001 Daytona 500.

But, to be fair to Waltrip and to address the rumblings of some of the more cynical among us, his 2003 performance wasn't entirely unexpected. "I think (this year) didn't come out of left field" says Steve Park, a friend of Waltrip and his former team mate at Dale Earnhardt Inc. "I think if you looked at last year, there were signs on the wall that they were capable of having a good year."

True enough. In 2002, Waltrip had a win and four top fives, which helped him finish 14th in points Again, nothing Gordon-like, but he didn't finish better than 24th in the previous three seasons.

"My career has really been up and down; Waltrip says, "and it's been a real challenge to look at it statistically. I just feel like I can accomplish a lot in the next five years and make all those numbers look a lot better"

Waltrip deserves much of the credit for making a good start toward that goal. But as with every other Winston Cup story, the driver is merely the organization's most recognizable face.

"It's an example of putting the right group around the driver or the driver getting with the right group, however you want to say that" Jeff Burton says of the No. 15's improvement. "Slugger has done a better job of getting Michael what he needs than any other organization.

"Michael had struggled at DEI, Michael had struggled everywhere he'd been, and Slugger came in and was willing to look at things differently."

"Slugger" is Slugger (Richard to his mother Labbe, Waltrip's crew chief since the summer of 2001 and the man generally credited with discovering what makes Waltrip tick.

"You can buy cars, you can buy engines, you can go to tests, you can go to wind tunnels, you can do all that stuff; says Steve Hmiel, technical director at DEI, "but until you have people that want to work together, that listen to each other, that allow themselves to have arguments and still come back as friends and do things positively, you're never going to have what you need. Slugger and all of his guys have brought that to Michael.

Labbe, while mouthing all the Winston Cup platitudes about teamwork, chemistry and whatnot, says Waltrip has made some other, significant changes since he arrived.

"When I first got here," Labbe says, "the cars weren't very good, and Michael was overdriving and wrecking a lot. Now, he understands that if he backs off a little bit, we're going to pit and fix the problem He's become a smarter driver to make sure he's there at the end.

"Not that you point-race every week, but he keeps it in the back of his mind that you've got to finish."

The result of mixing a changed Waltrip with Labbe, et al.?

"He knows he's with the best team he's ever been with, and he takes it very seriously, and he's found a crew chief and a team that really believes in him," Gordon says. "That's what really counts: The team needs to see something in the driver that gives them the feeling that this is our guy, and the driver needs to do the same thing. The confidence between each other, the team and driver, is definitely increased and that makes all the difference in the world."

Right now, Waltrip is showing the world plenty of confidence.

"Coming to the green flag in qualifying (at New Hampshire) Michael's car jumps dead sideways in (Turns) 3 and 4," DEI's Hmiel says. "A year ago, two years ago or 10 years ago, Michael might have said, 'I'm not sure this thing is up under me. I'm not sure my guys really understand what I need. I don't have the confidence in my current environment to go out there and bust off a fast lap: So he's looking at the green flag, running dead sideways, and he's got the confidence in the system and his people that he decided to just drive it on in there."

Waltrip did, indeed, recovering and qualifying fifth. He agrees with Gordon about the value of confidence.

"I can't tell you the difference it makes in you not only as a racer but as a person," he says. "I just can't imagine how Jeff Gordon's felt all these years. He can get in his car and just think, 'I'm going to kick these guys' asses.' Many tames I got in my car thinking, 'This car wasn't real good yesterday: I wasn't negative, but I was nervous, I was unsure, and that's, not a good way for a racecar driver to be.

"As a competitor, you can don't want to have any excuse, and with this car, I don't have any excuses. We've got the best of everything, and we should be able to perform. We should be able to win. We should be able to run top five every week. I want to be the guy, you know?"

It's a measure of how far Michael Waltrip has come that statement can even be considered a possibility.

RELATED ARTICLE: Scouting Waltrip.

Michael Waltrip used have a well-earned reputation as a crash waiting to happen. But he's changed man. What gives? Former crew chiefs Larry McReynolds and Jeff Hammon, now FOX analyst, explain.

McReynolds: "I think it's a combination of things. You can see it his attitude, hear it in his interviews--he has just seemed to mature immensely. ... And then there's Michael Busch team--I used to see it in Davey Allison: Things wouldn't be going well the Cup car, Davey would go race in his Busch car, run well come back on Sunday, and all of a sudden it was like a different car and driver. I think Michael is experiencing some of that same thing."

Hammond: "I think since Michael's been at DEI, he has gained a maturity that's been pretty phenomenal. He knows he's getting older and that there's still al lot he wants to do, so he now has a focus, a desire that he has never had before....

"It's hard to call this a weakness since he has done such a good job with Slugger (Labbe), but I think Michael maybe just need to keep working on communication."--S.T.

Stephen Thomas is a free-lance writer base in Milburn, N.J.

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