A prolonged slump raises questions about Michael Waltrip Racing and its future as a viable contender.
Not too long ago everything seemed so promising within Michael Waltrip Racing. After an inauspicious 2007 debut -- which included the car of driver/co-owner Michael Waltrip found to have an additive thought to be rocket fuel -- and years of underachievement the organization seemed poised to fulfill its potential and join NASCAR's elite.
The year was 2012 and saw Clint Bowyer, in his first season with MWR, win three races and finish runner-up in the championship. Teammate Martin Truex Jr. also qualified for the Chase for the Sprint Cup. A third car, shared primarily by Mark Martin and Brian Vickers, came close to winning several times.
Each of MWR's three teams was fully funded. Bowyer and Truex were in their primes. MWR's future was glaringly bright.
All that was further reinforced the following season when Bowyer, though winless, continued to run up front, while Truex snapped a lengthy losing streak, and Vickers pulled off a surprise mid-summer victory. With just one regular season event remaining, Bowyer and Truex were virtual locks to qualify again for the playoffs.
Then it all went awry that Saturday night at Richmond International Speedway. And, as it is with karma, MWR has never been the same since.
The events of that race and what unfolded afterward are well-known. To ensure Truex made the Chase, MWR manipulated the outcome by ordering Vickers to pit road and Bowyer to deliberately cause a caution. NASCAR discovered the duplicitous and slapped the team with stiff penalties, including ejecting Truex from the playoffs and fining MWR a record $300,000.
In the aftermath, longtime sponsor NAPA yanked its sponsorship off Truex's car. Devoid a high-dollar sponsor, estimated at $16 million, MWR entered a tailspin culminating with the shuttering Truex's team and considerably downsizing.
Heading into the 2014 season, MWR officials repeatedly said a more streamlined organization would be more efficient and there would be no decline in performance. They were wrong. There were no victories. No Chase berths. Just the obvious signs of a team regressing.
"Looking at last year, it was frustrating," Waltrip said in January during the NASCAR Media Tour. "We worked really hard (in 2014) -- there was a lot of dedication in the last year -- and it was so frustrating, because we just couldn't find the answer. It was literally to the point you'd go the racetrack and it was like, ‘Man, this is all we've got and it's not for lack of effort.'
"It's the worst year I've ever had, but sometimes you need that wakeup call in life and it makes you work hard. There's a lot of area when you look back on the long offseason like we have that you can do better, that you can step up and work harder and put more into. I'm looking forward to (2015)."
Yet despite an offseason of hard work and a renewed sense of optimism, 2015 is playing out similarly to 2014, if not worse.
Since placing seventh in the Daytona 500, Bowyer has finished 24th, 21st, 24th and 30th, and in the past two weeks has been woefully off pace. Most troubling is the communication of the No. 15 team has deteriorated significantly, giving no indication anyone involved knows how to solve the countless problems.
As if a lack of competitiveness weren't enough, MWR was dealt a serious blow when Vickers underwent emergency open-heart surgery in December. Forced to miss the opening two races, he returned at Las Vegas only to suffer a re-occurrence of blood clots last week and is sidelined three months, if not longer.
At age 31 and a proven winner, Vickers was supposed to be a MWR lynchpin going forward. Yet, this marks the fourth time in his career Vickers had to remove himself from the car due to health issues. Although Vickers wants to return, what MWR badly needs is stability. It's hard to build a team if there is uncertainty about the most important element, with any potential sponsor leery of a revolving door of replacement drivers.
"This is a rebound year, a rebuilding year and we get back to our winning ways and back where we once were," said Bowyer in January when it was expected Vickers would miss just two races. "It's very, very crucial that happens and focusing on not replacing Brian Vickers, but focusing on the task at hand so we can make our cars better so we can compete is definitely beneficially."
The exact scenario Bowyer and everyone at MWR wanted to circumvent instead came to fruition. Short-term, MWR tapped team test driver Brett Moffitt to occupy Vickers' seat. The 22-year-old has shown potential, including an eighth in his first race as a fill-in in at Atlanta, but he's unproven, having never ran a full of season in a NASCAR national touring series division.
Beyond just its driver lineup, MWR must address why its cars have shown such little speed.
An obvious factor is a Toyota engine that for a second straight season lacks horsepower compared to its Chevrolet and Ford counterparts. Even still, Joe Gibbs Racing, Toyota's other flagship team, still found success in 2014. All three of its drivers earned a spot in the Chase, with Denny Hamlin nearly winning the championship. Although JGR underperformed, it still greatly outclassed MWR, which points to something deeper.
When asked in the offseason if contraction and the jettisoning of several key personnel impacted MWR, team officials said no. Other organizations like Team Penske had proven a two-car model could work and MWR would do the same.
But consider the exodus included Truex, his crew chief and entire pit crew along with Vickers' crew chief Rodney Childers, who announced before "spin-gate" a jump to Stewart-Haas Racing, how could the loss of brain power not effect performance?
Among those gone, the departure of Childress is most damning. Paired with Kevin Harvick and tasked with constructing a team from the ground up, Childers did just that. In their first season together, he and Harvick stormed to the championship winning five times. This season, they have two victories and haven't finished worse than second.
Any organization, much less a still-developing one, cannot sustain losing the likes Truex, who owns top-fives in every race in 2015, and Childers, who's among the very best crew chiefs in the garage.
"This is our ninth season and we're trying to build one of the most competitive teams in the sport," said MWR co- owner Rob Kauffman during the Media Tour. "We're committed to winning. It's not a goal for us, it's an expectation."
That's a lofty standard for a team still in transition, and going by the early 2015 returns a benchmark likely to be unfilled. If anything, MWR is far closer to its 2007 performance level than the lofty heights it achieved just three years ago.
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