Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 8, 1992 TAG: 9203080193
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BOB ZELLER SPORTSWRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Long
They were at it again Friday after losing the pole for today's Pontiac Excitement 400 at Richmond International Raceway to another Ford driver, Bill Elliott.
Allison qualified second, but it might as well have been 22nd.
"We got beat," Yates said as he rolled the old engine toward his hauler on an engine hoist. "Gotta change something."
The irony is that Yates and Allison were beaten by their own ideas.
Yates' work on cylinder heads gave Allison the engine power to win five races last year. This year, Yates' work has allowed the Fords to dominate the circuit, leaving the General Motors teams, particularly Chevrolet teams, to grumble about the disadvantage.
And, in a large measure, Elliott used Yates' work to beat Yates' driver for the top starting position in today's 300-mile race.
In some quarters, that's illegal. But there are no patent laws or licensing statutes to protect the innovations Yates has introduced to the Winston Cup Series.
As Elliott merrily gave interviews in the garage Friday, Allison stood nearby, pondering this question: What does he think about someone else using his own team's secrets to leave him in the dust?
Allison struggled with the question for a moment, then answered:
"The racer in me says when you come up with something good, you keep it a secret. But the businessman in me says that if it's good for the sport as a whole by keeping Ford competitive, then it sure didn't hurt us."
During the past six years, Yates spent thousands of hours working on his Ford cylinder heads to make the Ford engine more powerful.
"We've been brave," said Yates, 48. "We took chances. We fell out of a lot of races, burned a lot of pistons and blew up a lot of engines to prove this stuff works. And it paid off for us."
But last year, just as his work was really beginning to pay off for Allison, Yates was obliged to share his engine secrets with the other Ford teams.
The cylinder head - a rectangular block of metal with a maze of ports and channels - is the key to engine horsepower. There are two cylinder heads on each engine. They are mounted on the engine block above the cylinders.
The cylinder heads facilitate the flow of vaporized fuel into the engine and the flow of exhaust gases out. If an engine builder such as Yates can make that flow more efficient, he increases horsepower.
When Yates started working on Ford engines in 1986, they generated about 650 horsepower. But Yates started chopping up the standard Ford heads to rearrange the air ports and channels and change the valve angles, among other things. Then he welded them back together.
By 1991, Yates was getting 700 to 710 horsepower from his engines.
While Yates was spending enormous amounts of time and money doing major surgery on his cylinder heads, the General Motors teams were doing the same thing.
But for the past few years, most of the GM teams have been working with a "Pontiac" cylinder head that actually was manufactured by Brodix, an automotive company that is not owned by GM.
NASCAR, concerned about the soaring costs of this cut-and-paste work on cylinder heads (it took weeks to make one pair of heads), told the Winston Cup teams and car manufacturers last July to settle on their best cylinder heads and make them standard for each car.
Yates had been concerned that NASCAR might ban his cylinder head. After all, much of his work, as well as the work of the GM teams, was not exactly mandated by the NASCAR rule book.
So when NASCAR President Bill France Jr. asked Yates if he was willing to let all the other Fords use his innovations, he said yes.
Ford moved quickly. By late July, Alan Kulwicki had the Yates-designed heads on his car at Talladega and was going much faster.
But when Dale Jarrett used the heads to beat Allison by eight inches at Michigan last August, Yates was unnerved.
"Our guys in the pits didn't say a word after that race," Yates said. "I thought, `Whoa. How am I going to handle this deal.' "
The Yates heads improved the performance of other Ford teams. After a miserable first half in 1991, Mark Martin began going faster - and won the final race of the year at Atlanta - after his team started using the Yates-designed heads.
"I think everybody had their own little tricks with the engines, but his worked the best," said Steve Hmiel, Martin's crew chief.
In the meantime, General Motors was consolidating its motor sports program under one boss, Herb Fishel. He picked one cylinder head for all GM cars - Chevys, Pontiacs and Oldsmobiles.
Fishel did not select the Brodix head GM teams had spent years developing. He picked a Chevrolet-made cylinder head.
Many GM teams believe the Chevrolet head is a good piece of equipment that generates just as much horsepower as the Ford heads.
But Richard Childress, the owner of Dale Earnhardt's Chevrolet, said his team so far has been able to generate only about 650 horsepower with the new heads. There are concerns about the reliability of the engines. And the engines don't seem to accelerate as quickly as they did with the Pontiac heads.
In any event, all the GM teams agree that the Chevrolet head needs development, and that is why the Fords have such an advantage.
Keywords:
AUTO RACING
by CNB