DATE: Sunday, October 5, 1997               TAG: 9710050178

SECTION: SPORTS                  PAGE: C2   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY BOB ZELLER, STAFF WRITER  

                                            LENGTH:   74 lines

ROUSH TAKES TEAM CONCEPT TO NEXT LEVEL WITH PAIRING WITH MARTIN AND BURTON UNDER THE SAME ROOF, HE'S CREATING A MONSTER.

Now that Jack Roush has committed to running five Winston Cup teams next season, car owner Felix Sabates, himself an owner of three teams, was asked recently if there is a limit to the effectiveness of multicar teams.

``I've been kidding Jack Roush about his five teams for 1998,'' Sabates said. ``I told him he's the Bruton Smith of car owners. If I was a betting man, I think he's getting Roush Racing ready to go public.''

Roush says he has no plans to take his racing company public. But he's obviously taken the stance that the sky is the limit as far as owning Winston Cup teams.

Technically, he owns only two of them, because that's the limit set by NASCAR. But Roush controls them all, no matter who is named as the owner of record.

Roush has Mark Martin in the No. 6 Valvoline Ford Thunderbird. And he's sticking with Ted Musgrave in the No. 16 Family Channel Ford. Roush believes that Musgrave's team had been neglected and is making progress under crew chief James Ince.

Both of those teams have been based in tiny Liberty, N.C., more than an hour northeast of the Charlotte-area hotbed of racing.

Roush also has Jeff Burton in the No. 99 Exide Ford, based in Mooresville, N.C. He's adding Chad Little in the No. 97 John Deere car because he saw the opportunity to keep the company in the sport by becoming involved with the team. And he's adding Johnny Benson in a new, No. 26 Ford.

And that may not be the end of it.

The multicar team concept has bred a new phenomenon - driver pairing.

``I don't think that single-car teams, except for Rusty Wallace and maybe Ricky Rudd, can do as well as teams where drivers share information in a very personal way,'' Roush said. ``I don't think they can do as well alone as they can in pairs.''

By the same token, Roush believes that more than two teams can't effectively work together. But four teams, or six, are OK as long as all of them are paired.

Roush now has two pairs and a single driver. Whether he adds another team - for a total of six - or pulls back to four teams in 1999 depends on how things go.

``I think the long-term plan could be either,'' he said Saturday at Charlotte Motor Speedway. ``But for the time being, I see the prospect of putting Chad in with one or two Busch Grand National teams.''

Meanwhile, Benson will move in with Musgrave. And in the most dramatic intra-team development, Martin and a portion of his old team will move to Mooresville and pair with Burton.

It was Martin's choice, and he agonized over it. It meant leaving his longtime partner, Steve Hmiel, who will stay in Liberty to work with Benson. But Martin ultimately decided to leave because Burton and his crew chief, Buddy Parrott, have thrived by doing things Parrott's way.

``I've credited the separate path that they've taken as being the biggest reason in the improvement of the 6 car,'' Roush said. ``We were doing things the best we could for every part of the car and they came out and did some things different and they went better, so we made those changes to Mark's car, and he went better, too. That's just been huge.''

``I'm excited,'' Martin said. ``The hardest thing about this deal is leaving Liberty. Jack and Steve won't let me take a lot of the people who are really close to me, so there will be some new faces. It's going to turn everything completely upside down.''

But all the Ford teams will be using the new Taurus next year, so everyone is going to have to reorganize anyway.

Roush said no one at NASCAR has objected to his expansion boom, although he said, ``I felt a pause when they looked at me like, `Are you crazy or what?' ''

But Roush has been in Winston Cup racing for 10 years and he's still looking for his first championship. And no one should underestimate his competitive drive and his willingness to do anything it takes to win.

``I've been disappointed a lot since I started Winston Cup racing,'' Roush said. ``It's supposed to be that way. It's supposed to be a struggle that just about brings you to tears.''

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu