Maybe Jack Roush can draw a bit of
inspiration from rivals Rick Hendrick and Robert Yates. Hendrick won
his first championship in his 12th season as a car owner, collecting
the 1995 title with Jeff Gordon. Yates won last year's title
with Dale Jarrett in his 11th season as an owner. By those standards,
Roush is due. This will be his 13th season as an owner. During
that time he has won 42 races, more than all but Hendrick and
Richard Childress Racing. Roush also has fielded at least one
championship contender throughout the last decade. Since their
second season together in 1989, Mark and his No. 6 team have
finished second in points three times and been in the top 10
every year. He has finished in the top five nine times, including
the last seven in a row.
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For the past three years, Jeff Burton
has given Roush two contending teams and one of the best two-car
tandems on the circuit. Burton has won 11 races, eight of them
while sharing a shop with Mark, and finished in the top five
three straight years. Mark and Jeff finished third and fifth,
respectively, last season. Could this be the year that one of them
breaks away from the pack and Roush finally wins the big one?
He has two legitimate contenders in Mark and Jeff and possibly
a third arriving in rookie Matt Kenseth, who will run his first
full season with the a new Roush team. With his experience and
remarkable consistency, Mark would appear to have the best shot,
but he is coming off back surgery that will keep him out
of a race car until February. If his recovery goes as planned,
he could return to his 1998 form, when he won a career-high seven races,
and challenged Gordon for the title.
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Burton, meanwhile, enters the 2000 season
as one of the hottest drivers on the circuit. He had more laps than Mark
and Jarrett last year and won six races. - second only to Gordon's
seven - and was a factor in a dozen others. If he can improve his
qualifying and consistency, he, too, will be a strong contender
for the 2000 title. Kenseth, a Mark protege, is expected to battle
Dale Earnhardt Jr. for top rookie honors and should be the favorite
with Mark and Burton as teammates and Roush's wealth of resources.
Perhaps the biggest question with Roush is, how long will he
continue to field five Winston Cup teams. No other organization
has more than three and none have produced more than two winning
teams in one season since Hendrick in 1989. Chad Little scored
five top-10 finishes last year, but finished just 23rd in points.
Johnny Benson, who finished 28th, was granted his release
after the season and his N0. 26 team folded after General Mills
elected to switch its primary sponsorship to Petty Enterprises
this season.
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Kevin Lepage was respectable in his first
full season, finishing 25th, but lost his sponsor at the end of
the season. As of Jan 10, he was planning to start the year
without a primary sponsor. Roush plans to move the teams featuring
Little and Lepage to the Concord, N.C., area this year, teaming
them with Kenseth's rookie operation. But unless they show
remarkable improvement, they will continue to play second
fiddle to Mark and Burton. Roush has already established himself
as one of the sport's winningest car owners and proven the
mulitcar concept works. All that is left is the elusive
championship. Will this be the year??
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